The film intersects different textual registers, from an archival speech by Amílcar Cabral to poetry. How was the relationship between these different elements conceived?
I’ve wanted to work with archival materials for a long time, especially with excerpts involving the presence of Amílcar Cabral. I knew that re-enacting, or repositioning quotes as powerful as those of A. Cabral, bringing them to a context after the time of the Guinea-Bissau Liberation Struggle, would bring layers of transversality in everything that could be seen as an interpretation of the author. Poetry illuminates the film, because there is an insurgent unfolding of meanings. It proposes an intergenerational leap between the characters (Joãozinho da Costa and Aliu Santy) and the intentions that identify them, by combining the female voice of a young Guinean speaker-narrator (Suaila Cá), with contemporary images of a colourful and celebratory Guinea. If this is poetry, I would say that all these elements are sensibly influenced by a dramaturgical approach, which is reinforced by A. Cabral’s speech. But as we can see from the cinematic language, Duarte Lima and I were not concerned with recreating a film that was conventional to documentary film as a genre. This is the third film we’ve made together, and we decided to imagine a living story, a form of “proto-narrative” for a film made with real people, in a real territory, with real and cross-sectional implications for its authors. But don’t look at it as if it were just a film. Instead, listen to what this land says (Guinea-Bissau, Portugal).
What meaning does dance and movement have in this film? How was it developed with Joãozinho da Costa?
The Pindjiguiti Massacre took place on August 3, 1959, in the region of the old port of Bissau. There, in the heart of the capital Bissau, about fifty Bissau-Guineans were shot dead by Portuguese colonial guard officers, because the colonial administration did not tolerate those people demanding better working conditions. This fateful milestone left Cabral with no other alternatives to negotiate, but to start an armed struggle. Cabral reluctantly uttered the fratricidal slogan “We have never mistaken ‘Portuguese colonialism’ for the ‘Portuguese people’. Our struggle is against Portuguese colonialism.” These historical data made me understand that I needed to show the historic centre of Bissau (Bissau bedju, or Bissau Velha) from a performative perspective. That is, through a cinematic scope in which the body of the performer and dancer Joãozinho da Costa could interact with the spatiality, memory, and architecture of that place. We based the improvisation of movements upon this logic of space transformation through gestures, and through the interaction of the body with its external elements. This improvisation led to the choreographic composition in different moments of the film, when we follow the character through the city of Bissau. It is important to mention that, in this universe, the rooster symbolizes all the complexity of factors that influence the life of Guineans. This also marked the guidelines I have set to Joãozinho, so that we could determine a set of movements that would allow us to identify a dancing body, but which is also transmutational – and therefore resilient.
Regarding Guinea-Bissau, what role do you think cinema has in retrieving the country’s collective memory?
I believe that my cinema is a cinema of belief. A cinema that doesn’t work if it’s not discussed. Therefore, I see myself more as a transdisciplinary artist, and not specifically as a film artist. What I mean is that, to me, cinema is just another way of generating possibilities for dialogue, and consequently, for confrontation. Dialogue is the way to restore truths omitted by the narrative perspective of foreigners in African territory. Transparent dialogue is the only way to convey an honest expertise on the particularities that make tolerance not yet truly practiced in the political-social sphere of pro-democratic conventions, which are at the base of the ideals of freedom (individual, and collective) that guide the western world. As a social practice, dialogue ensures that every form of artistic expression will find a potential in its own realization. A potential that establishes a relationship that recognizes differences, and that strengthens and deepens those same differences. And as I am here making considerations about art, I understand why poetry transforms all formalities into sensibilities, thus raising our awareness. It is from this perspective that I consider cinema, from this humanist perspective that it can indeed contribute to the retrieving of values that underpin the collective memory and sovereignty of a country like Guinea-Bissau.
