In Ethiopia films are financed entirely by private businessmen, who anticipate profit out of film production; in a best case, individuals who want to finance films for the love of the art and as a side business with less anticipation of big profit. Yet both groups of producers want to see their production at least covering its own cost and become a sustainable sector.
Carlos is the character I am most worried about. I’d only spent a few hours with him before, and I am not sure what he will reveal about his time in Angola and how that will fit into the film. He is a fisherman, his skin deeply tanned from a lifetime at sea.
This year, as we embark on the sixth edition of Dockanema, my purpose is also one of remembrance, so that we do not forget the importance of documentaries in our society, and above all in our collective memory. To reaffirm this purpose once more, there could be no better choice for the opening of the 6th Dockanema than the Patrício Guzman film Nostalgia da Luz, in an edition intended to pay homage to the master filmmaker Ruy Guerra.
Even today, an analysis of the complex role of music in film is often forgotten by critics, many of whom remain prostrate before the dictatorship of the image. Yet as a manifestation of culture, music has a privileged position with respect to the study of representations of identity and ideology; moreover, in its subversive and dialogic aspects, it can reveal significant directorial decisions related to dynamics of power and exclusion.
The writer of '20 Navios' speaks to us of the chronicle and its melancholy, opening with “This (rear?) Window”, where he probes his identitary affiliations - the aforementioned triangle-: “From this window before me, when night falls, and Lisbon turns to dust beneath the anonymous city lights, I may imagine myself in Maputo, Havana, or Rio, or whatever other of my stomping grounds, but I know now that I can never fool myself, because I am inevitably alone, with my afro-latin schizophrenia.
Documentary cinema in Africa more or less follows the same trajectory as African Literature. The methodologies and forms of expression are certainly different but the discourse on Africa remains the same, evolving with the continent’s history. In the 1920s, colonial reportage and ethnographic films were already a success. Africa and Africans were filmed subjects.
Our interview takes place in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, where Zézé Gamboa and a few members of his team are resting for a few days after the intense shoot for his film “Grande Kilapy”, which tells the story of Joãozinho das Garotas, an Angolan during colonial times who engineered a sting with the colony’s finances. There’s just a week in Luanda left for the film to be ready for editing, following the takes in Portugal and Paraíba in Brazil, so this is the right time to weigh up the experience and bring to public attention some aspects of the work done by someone who is considered to be “the most consistent” of Angolan directors.
Starting from original political determinations of Mozambican propaganda films, the Off-screen method induces or just identifies the unfolding of relational transformations that are raised basically from putting perception itself at play. It suggest that archive genealogy or any other documentary organization approach combines a relational process with a sizeable shift to the realm of the (political) present.
Since its launch, the DOCKANEMA Festival has aimed to offer the different audiences in Maputo the twin opportunities of becoming acquainted with the best that is being produced in the world of documentary films and of taking a break from the run-of-the mill audiovisual diet that is available for the rest of the year.
Among the artistic and other disciplines that pursue the representation of reality, the documentary film is most certainly one of those that raise the most questions. Traditionally favouring a fragmented glimpse of the world around us, and of what arises from events, documentary films today pose problems and challenges for us, with the added difficulty of both attempting to fit it in to some predetermined type and of interpreting its message.
There is something transversal in Ângela Ferreira's video work, something that deals, fundamentally, with a kind of non-correlation between the concrete identity of the filmed places and its investment in open juxtapositions over a constellation of spacial axes and discontinuous temporalities. If territorial duality, inseparable from a certain biographical trajectory, from frequent journeys between Africa - Mozambique and South Africa - and Europe, undoubtedly marks Ângela Ferreira's work, it is precisely this territorial duality that has written history in the indeterminate space of video discourse, pointing to issues of geopolitics and exposing us, simultaneously, to the work of deconstruction of iconography and the colonial and postcolonial imaginary that is being systematically developed by the artist.
Angola is a leading oil producer in Africa and one
might have expected that some of the financial
benefits of this valuable commodity would be passed onto the country’s film industry. Veteran Angolan filmmaker Mariano Bartolomeu provides an insight into the state of the film and television
industry in this Portuguese speaking country.
Behind the Rainbow explores the transition of the ANC from a liberation organization into South Africa's ruling party through the evolution of the relationship between two of its most prominent cadres, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Exiled under apartheid, they were brothers in arms. Under Mandela they loyally labored to build a non-racial state. Now they are bitter rivals. Their duel threatens to tear apart the ANC and the country, as the poor desperately seek hope in change and the elite fight for the spoils of victory. Behind the Rainbow features key interviews with ANC current and former leaders, including Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Pallo Jordan, and Terror Lekota.
"Our Forbidden Places", an extraordinary documentary by Leila Kilani, returns to the political repression in Morocco in the time of Hassan II. Three generations of Moroccans evoke a completely human story of heroism and fortitude. Belying their serenity, all the characters form a perfect picture of Morocco today –they are still frightened by memories of being “buried alive” in Tazmamart prison and of countless cries of despair that few dared even to listen to. "Our Forbidden Places" is not really a film about a particular country, but rather it echoes all human memories of torment by extreme forms of state violence, be it blind or selective.
Filmed in 1965, “Catembe”, is a fictional documentary directed by Manuel Faria de Almeida about the everyday life in Lourenço Marques. The most outstanding aspect of this film is the fact that it represents the first critical interpretation of the Portuguese colonial reality. After the original piece was censored – with 103 cuts and obliteration of the censored parts – the second version was banned. Only half of its 2400 original metres survived, which led to a reference in the Guinness Book of Records as the film with most censored cuts in the history of cinema.
In sub-Saharan Africa - with the possible exception of South Africa - the prohibitive cost to produce films, the poor state of cinema houses, the absence of governmental support for filmmaking, and the large offer of foreign films have tied many filmmakers to foreign funding, equipment, expertise, and audiences. Thus, African films have been dependent on overseas financial support which conduces to a type of cinematography not always well-received by African audiences.
I began to feel the painful lack of African history in my curriculum and the absence of Afro-Brazilians amongst my college peers. The way blacks were represented (or absent from) the media had bothered me since I was a child. Now, as a film producer, it made me even more uncomfortable. To escape this dilemma, I felt I had to follow my dream of making my own films, but where to begin?
Dakar became overpopulated towards the beginning of the fifties. A displacement of families away from the inner city neighbourhoods was decided by the colonial state: they were truly "evictions" framed within urban planning projects. The Pikine department was created, regrouping "all of Dakar's excluded". Today it accounts for about one million persons: there is talk about "Pikine-Peking".
In Ethiopia films are financed entirely by private businessmen, who anticipate profit out of film production; in a best case, individuals who want to finance films for the love of the art and as a side business with less anticipation of big profit. Yet both groups of producers want to see their production at least covering its own cost and become a sustainable sector. 
Carlos is the character I am most worried about. I’d only spent a few hours with him before, and I am not sure what he will reveal about his time in Angola and how that will fit into the film. He is a fisherman, his skin deeply tanned from a lifetime at sea. 
This year, as we embark on the sixth edition of Dockanema, my purpose is also one of remembrance, so that we do not forget the importance of documentaries in our society, and above all in our collective memory. To reaffirm this purpose once more, there could be no better choice for the opening of the 6th Dockanema than the Patrício Guzman film Nostalgia da Luz, in an edition intended to pay homage to the master filmmaker Ruy Guerra.
Even today, an analysis of the complex role of music in film is often forgotten by critics, many of whom remain prostrate before the dictatorship of the image. Yet as a manifestation of culture, music has a privileged position with respect to the study of representations of identity and ideology; moreover, in its subversive and dialogic aspects, it can reveal significant directorial decisions related to dynamics of power and exclusion. 
The writer of '20 Navios' speaks to us of the chronicle and its melancholy, opening with “This (rear?) Window”, where he probes his identitary affiliations - the aforementioned triangle-: “From this window before me, when night falls, and Lisbon turns to dust beneath the anonymous city lights, I may imagine myself in Maputo, Havana, or Rio, or whatever other of my stomping grounds, but I know now that I can never fool myself, because I am inevitably alone, with my afro-latin schizophrenia. 
Documentary cinema in Africa more or less follows the same trajectory as African Literature. The methodologies and forms of expression are certainly different but the discourse on Africa remains the same, evolving with the continent’s history. In the 1920s, colonial reportage and ethnographic films were already a success. Africa and Africans were filmed subjects. 
Our interview takes place in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, where Zézé Gamboa and a few members of his team are resting for a few days after the intense shoot for his film “Grande Kilapy”, which tells the story of Joãozinho das Garotas, an Angolan during colonial times who engineered a sting with the colony’s finances. There’s just a week in Luanda left for the film to be ready for editing, following the takes in Portugal and Paraíba in Brazil, so this is the right time to weigh up the experience and bring to public attention some aspects of the work done by someone who is considered to be “the most consistent” of Angolan directors. 
Starting from original political determinations of Mozambican propaganda films, the Off-screen method induces or just identifies the unfolding of relational transformations that are raised basically from putting perception itself at play. It suggest that archive genealogy or any other documentary organization approach combines a relational process with a sizeable shift to the realm of the (political) present. 
Since its launch, the DOCKANEMA Festival has aimed to offer the different audiences in Maputo the twin opportunities of becoming acquainted with the best that is being produced in the world of documentary films and of taking a break from the run-of-the mill audiovisual diet that is available for the rest of the year. 
Among the artistic and other disciplines that pursue the representation of reality, the documentary film is most certainly one of those that raise the most questions. Traditionally favouring a fragmented glimpse of the world around us, and of what arises from events, documentary films today pose problems and challenges for us, with the added difficulty of both attempting to fit it in to some predetermined type and of interpreting its message. 
There is something transversal in Ângela Ferreira's video work, something that deals, fundamentally, with a kind of non-correlation between the concrete identity of the filmed places and its investment in open juxtapositions over a constellation of spacial axes and discontinuous temporalities. If territorial duality, inseparable from a certain biographical trajectory, from frequent journeys between Africa - Mozambique and South Africa - and Europe, undoubtedly marks Ângela Ferreira's work, it is precisely this territorial duality that has written history in the indeterminate space of video discourse, pointing to issues of geopolitics and exposing us, simultaneously, to the work of deconstruction of iconography and the colonial and postcolonial imaginary that is being systematically developed by the artist. 
Angola is a leading oil producer in Africa and one
might have expected that some of the financial
benefits of this valuable commodity would be passed onto the country’s film industry. Veteran Angolan filmmaker Mariano Bartolomeu provides an insight into the state of the film and television
industry in this Portuguese speaking country. 
Behind the Rainbow explores the transition of the ANC from a liberation organization into South Africa's ruling party through the evolution of the relationship between two of its most prominent cadres, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Exiled under apartheid, they were brothers in arms. Under Mandela they loyally labored to build a non-racial state. Now they are bitter rivals. Their duel threatens to tear apart the ANC and the country, as the poor desperately seek hope in change and the elite fight for the spoils of victory. Behind the Rainbow features key interviews with ANC current and former leaders, including Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Pallo Jordan, and Terror Lekota. 
"Our Forbidden Places", an extraordinary documentary by Leila Kilani, returns to the political repression in Morocco in the time of Hassan II. Three generations of Moroccans evoke a completely human story of heroism and fortitude. Belying their serenity, all the characters form a perfect picture of Morocco today –they are still frightened by memories of being “buried alive” in Tazmamart prison and of countless cries of despair that few dared even to listen to. "Our Forbidden Places" is not really a film about a particular country, but rather it echoes all human memories of torment by extreme forms of state violence, be it blind or selective. 
Filmed in 1965, “Catembe”, is a fictional documentary directed by Manuel Faria de Almeida about the everyday life in Lourenço Marques. The most outstanding aspect of this film is the fact that it represents the first critical interpretation of the Portuguese colonial reality. After the original piece was censored – with 103 cuts and obliteration of the censored parts – the second version was banned. Only half of its 2400 original metres survived, which led to a reference in the Guinness Book of Records as the film with most censored cuts in the history of cinema. 
In sub-Saharan Africa - with the possible exception of South Africa - the prohibitive cost to produce films, the poor state of cinema houses, the absence of governmental support for filmmaking, and the large offer of foreign films have tied many filmmakers to foreign funding, equipment, expertise, and audiences. Thus, African films have been dependent on overseas financial support which conduces to a type of cinematography not always well-received by African audiences.
I began to feel the painful lack of African history in my curriculum and the absence of Afro-Brazilians amongst my college peers. The way blacks were represented (or absent from) the media had bothered me since I was a child. Now, as a film producer, it made me even more uncomfortable. To escape this dilemma, I felt I had to follow my dream of making my own films, but where to begin? 
Dakar became overpopulated towards the beginning of the fifties. A displacement of families away from the inner city neighbourhoods was decided by the colonial state: they were truly "evictions" framed within urban planning projects. The Pikine department was created, regrouping "all of Dakar's excluded". Today it accounts for about one million persons: there is talk about "Pikine-Peking". 
