Tell No Lies: Decolonizing Cinema in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique

March 2–April 24, 2024

Tell No Lies explores the birth of African cinema through a selection of diverse films on the liberation struggles of the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, as well as contemporary films that continue to consider the legacy of colonialism.

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Spell Reel
Sambizanga
Quantum Creole
48
Kuxa Kanema: The Birth of Cinema
Vitalina Varela

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Films

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Susana de Sousa Dias
Portugal, 2009
Saturday, March 2 4 PM
Susana de Sousa Dias’s hypnotic film is composed of photographs taken upon the arrest of political prisoners during the forty-eight years of the Portuguese dictatorial regime. With A Story from Africa (Billy Woodberry) and Soldier Playing with Dead Lizard (Daniel Barroca), which also examine historic photographs.

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Kuxa Kanema: The Birth of Cinema
Margarida Cardoso
Mozambique, Portugal, 2003
Thursday, March 21 7 PM
Three films reveal the power of an image and the importance of archives through their explorations of the role of newsreels and film documentation in the struggles of Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau against Portuguese colonization.

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From Colonial Statues to Carnival Masks: Amílcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau
Thursday, April 4 7:30 PM
Introduced by Pheng Cheah
Four films, all concerned with Guinea-Bissau’s and Cape Verde’s struggles for independence, from different time frames and perspectives, include an analysis of four colonial statues and a celebration of carnival mask making.
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Sambizanga
Sarah Maldoror
Angola, 1972
Sunday, April 7 4 PM
One of the first feature films made by a woman in Africa is an urgent call for political change. It is a fictionalized chronicle of the events leading up to a 1961 prison rebellion in Angola. With Foreword to Guns for Banta (Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc), an excavation of a lost film by Sarah Maldoror.

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Vitalina Varela
Pedro Costa
Portugal, 2019
Sunday, April 14 4 PM
Vitalina Varela travels to Lisbon from Cape Verde, only to discover that her husband has died, in Pedro Costa’s emotionally and visually compelling work, winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno. For Costa, dramatizing Varela’s true story gave him “the chance to approach the Cape Verdean immigration from the woman’s point of view.”

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Mueda, Memory and Massacre
Ruy Guerra
Mozambique, 1979
New Digital Restoration
Screen Slate Pick!
Wednesday, April 17 7 PM
Three films reveal the history of the Mozambique liberation struggle through different cinematic forms. Ruy Guerra documents a reenactment of the massacre that triggered the Mozambique War of Independence, a protest song and dance recalls the migration to work in mines in apartheid South Africa, and a recent fictional reconstruction examines rural land dispossession.

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Resonance Spiral
Filipa César, Marinho de Pina
Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, Germany, 2023
Sunday, April 21 5 PM
Filipa César in Person
Moments from a collectively built new community space in Malafo, “a laboratory for archival practice, community gatherings, and communion with the ancestors’ knowledge, nature, and new technology” (Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video). With Mined Soil, on Amílcar Cabral.
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Spell Reel
Filipa César
Germany, Guinea-Bissau, 2017
Tuesday, April 23 7 PM
Filipa César in Person
After decaying archival film materials from Guinea-Bissau’s war of independence were digitized, a mobile cinema screened them in the places where the original footage was shot. The resulting film is “a tribute, a documentary, and an excavation” (New York Times).

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Walking Archives: Thoughts on Mangroves, Schools, Round Houses, and Weaving
Wednesday, April 24 7 PM
Filipa César in Person
Three of Filipa César’s collaborative projects draw on memories and oral tradition: a militant school is re-created, Creole weaving is used to explore computer programming and globalization, and traditional round houses are compared to contemporary square ones.

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Tell No Lies: Decolonizing Cinema in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique

March 2–April 24, 2024

“Tell no lies,” the influential African thinker and anticolonial leader Amílcar Cabral advocated in his 1965 call to practice a revolutionary democracy—an aspiration that also underpins a diverse range of films that explore the liberation struggles of the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. One of Cabral’s foundational goals was to create decolonizing forms of education through militant schools—and via cinema. This “re-Africanizing” cinema drew on radical content in newsreels, speeches, songs, and novels to reveal history as it unfolded; later films also utilized radical forms, from reenactments and fictional reconstructions to personal testimony and artist histories. European filmmakers such as Sarah Maldoror, Mario Marret, and Jean Rouch created anticolonial films in solidarity; some provided training and resources, as did Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker. Independence and the birth of...

The legacy of the colonial occupation continues to be critiqued in recent films addressing ongoing issues such as immigration and the exploitation of land and resources. Contemporary Portuguese filmmakers and artists—including Daniel Barroca, Margarida Cardoso, Filipa César, Pedro Costa, and Susana de Sousa Dias—work with archives, personal collections, and African collaborators to fill gaps and interrogate silences in this complex ongoing history.

We are delighted that Filipa César will be in residency for the three concluding programs of Tell No Lies. Her film essays and performance films radically examine colonial and postcolonial struggles in Guinea-Bissau through research, collaborations, archival restorations, workshops, and community projects. Her Navigating the Pilot School (2016, 12 mins), made with Sónia Vas Borges, will be shown on BAMPFA’s outdoor screen from March 21 through April 24 at 10:00, 2:00, and 6:00. Luta ca caba inda—the struggle is not over yet.

—Kathy Geritz, Former Film Curator

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Series curated by Kathy Geritz, who recently retired as Film Curator from BAMPFA.

Presented in collaboration with the Center for Portuguese Studies, UC Berkeley, with special thanks to Duarte Pinheiro and Deolinda Adão, in conjunction with events marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. We are grateful that the center’s support, in collaboration with Camões I.P. and the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), makes Filipa César’s visit possible. Cosponsored by the Center for African Studies and the Decolonial Knowledges Group at the Latinx Research Center, UC Berkeley. Our series is indebted to The Colonial Question, curated by Amarante Abramovici in 2022, as well as Liberation Movements, curated in 2011 by António Loja Neves, both presented as part of DocLisboa. The work of César, DocLisboa, and Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video has led to uncovering and preserving much of this historical material. We are grateful for the suggestions and assistance of Amarante Abramovici, Jon Shibata, and Billy Woodberry, as well as Angelika Ramlow, Alexander Boldt, and Markus Ruff at Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video; Chimurenga; and Light Industry.

Supporter

Camões I.P.
Supporter

Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD)
Supporter

Center for Portuguese Studies, UC Berkeley