When it comes to being black, they are much more open minded and the struggle for work is taken seriously. They still complain, of course. But the difference is that a black actor in Brazil is a Brazilian, but in Portugal you feel like an immigrant - and how! If we are excluded from all sectors of society, what can we do? But there’s the other side of the coin: what do black actors do to counteract this situation?
Face to face
11.10.2010 | by Marta Lança
"René Tavares translates lines, dashes, blots, a personal synthesis of his own identity always in process (“unfinished”) set in constant movement in between past and present references".
The last exhibition at Galeria Bozart (Lisbon).
Face to face
07.10.2010 | by Lúcia Marques
In July 2009, the campaign for the second round of presidential elections in Guinea-Bissau had been on the streets for a week. But the leading players are not only Kumba Ialá and Malam Bacai Sanhá, but also the people, who reject violence and fear the power of the military and narcotraffickers.
To read
01.10.2010 | by Pedro Cardoso
Luanda 2005. Some predators arrive possessed by amino acids of opportunities. It is the beginning of a series of projects and businesses, the rules are drawn with which wild capitalism will be mercilessly ingrained. Consolidated peace, will and dynamism, spirit of reconstruction. One invests in the country with economic growth potential, rich in natural resources where no one is out to lose.
City
01.10.2010 | by Marta Lança
This article asserts that names are an important aspect of any language. It argues that they act as a summary statement of the lives of the named and or those who give the names. The paper further observes that names that the Shona give are an indicator of their response to their situation in life. The situation includes success, failure and misfortune. The paper also observes that some names start off as nicknames and end up becoming family names. It again highlights that some names are not permanent, especially to the younger ones. They can assume new ones, especially with the passage of time due to changed circumstances like when one assumes a titular name, especially when she or he becomes chief or head of a clan.
To read
25.09.2010 | by Shumirai Nyota
Mestre Paulo Kapela takes an exceptional position with his life and work within the artworld of Luanda, Angola's booming capital. The artist is a fugitive in his own country, a Mukongo from Uige and came to Luanda in 1996. Today he is a kind of artistic and spiritual master for the younger artist generation, even if he barely speaks Portuguese, but French. He became a role model with his unorthodox way of living and his personal universe, but also with his unique way of art-production through a combination of disparate objects and the creation of new contexts.
Face to face
23.09.2010 | by Nadine Siegert
I can say, perhaps, that this trip has increased our awareness of the uncontrollable aspects of nature (the Icelandic volcano has now served notice to the oblivious) and revealed to us the existence of populations that are able to combine complex social organization and ownership of simple natural resources, which can only be the result of their deep knowledge of the territory.
To read
22.09.2010 | by Cristina Salvador
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.
Afroscreen
20.09.2010 | by Pedro Pimenta
"Africa: See You, See Me!" portrays the history of African photography and its influence on non-African imaginings of Africa and the African diaspora in all their diversity. Together, the photographs are texts of African subjectivities, archives of history and societies in the making, and methods for understanding how images contribute to emancipation.
I'll visit
20.09.2010 | by Awam Amkpa
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.
Afroscreen
20.09.2010 | by Francisco Noa
The book has received critical acclaim as a work by an African writing soberly on “such things”, in “journalistic language, backed by rigorous research.” It is a first in terms of its internal discourse, since it provides us “with a view of an African thinker and fighter from an African perspective."
Face to face
18.09.2010 | by Marta Lança
The independence of the Congo witnessed tensions between different groups which resulted among others to the Katangese secession eleven days after Belgium officially granted the Congo independence. Lubumbashi therefore became the capital of a state whose main goal was to perpetuate western industrialists economic interests and of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga. This history started ± 50 years ago since the assassination of Patrice Lumumba on the 17th of January 1961 up to the time Mzee Kabila took up the power through a statement rebellion movement.
I'll visit
14.09.2010 | by association PICHA
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.
Afroscreen
13.09.2010 | by Raquel Schefer
The concept of nationality is not that important to me. I relate very strongly with territories, that is. And I have a strong relationship with Africa, particularly southern Africa, including where I was born, Mozambique, and South Africa, and this Iberian corner of Europe. If I had to define myself culturally in terms of identity, it is somewhere between these two areas of the world that references to my person are found.
Face to face
13.09.2010 | by Lúcia Ramos Monteiro
From Melilla to Poland, Cypress to the Canaries, thousands of people daily attempt to leave their places of origin and reach the European continent in search of better living conditions, leaving behind the most varied settings – wars, fires, droughts, floods, repressive regimes, massive unemployment, poverty wages, fundamentalists – and confronting, everywhere, the same repressive strategy, the same barriers and persecution, the same racism and the same violence.
Games Without Borders
09.09.2010 | by Ricardo Noronha
is craft comes from experience, from much observation, but it’s as if he had been there before. On top of this, he often repeats that there is a cultural sense to making clothes, like a gesture that happens every day but goes back to the very roots of humanity. “It all comes from the divine idea that “Adam sewed leaves and God sewed skins.” Sewing is also cultural. In all families and in all societies we come across those who have this strong cultural element. It’s like learning how to make home-made bread.”
Face to face
08.09.2010 | by Marta Lança
Among us Angolan refugees, especially among the elders, there were those who had a special passion for the Portuguese language. I recall spending holidays at Uncle Jeremias Bandua’s house in Meheba refugee camp. In the day, we would often go to the fields to look after the vegetables etc with older Angolan men. Some of these men were also on holidays as they had scholarships and were attending different college in the urban areas.
To read
03.09.2010 | by Sousa Jamba
Musseque residents would likely have said, “my suffering, yes, but ours as well.”
Music, in late colonial Angola took private grief and by performing it publicly made it collective. The sound, and perhaps even the process, was attractive to whites as well and in an ironic twist on the lusotropical narrative, by the early 1970s, whites made their way to the musseques in sizeable numbers to hear Ngola Ritmos and other popular bands play.
Stages
01.09.2010 | by Marissa Moorman
And I believe, having arrived at this point in life, that I can’t stop wanting to understand that the world, all over and not just here, conspires and produces utilizing always, or almost always, the use and abuse of others’ good faith. I’m afraid I will never be able, even oldish, to resign to this and become the subject well done, dissimulated, pirate, adaptable and finally adapted, that never, throughout my entire life, have I managed to be.
Ruy Duarte de Carvalho
31.08.2010 | by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho
Can you imagine the Portuguese language at the centre of a learning-at-play exercise in the heart of Angola, where the main character, the protagonist, has no kind of academic training? It’s possible. In fact, in a tale told by the writer Uanhenga Xitu, it happens.
Face to face
18.08.2010 | by Luis Kandjimbo
