Luta Ca Caba Inda - Conakry Premiere
June 7th, 20:00
Ballhaus Naunystrasse, Naunystr. 27 Berlin
You are warmly invited to an evening of screenings, discussion and music to celebrate the African Liberation Movement and Amílcar Cabral. The film program includes archival film from Guinea Bissau, recent related works and the Berlin premiere of “Conakry”. The discussion will tackle a complex cultural landscape of militant imagery, privilege, post-colonial struggle, avant-garde aesthetics, narration and the political conditions of production - with Enoka Ayemba, Filipa César, Grada Kilomba & Diana McCarty, moderated by Manuela Sambo. The evening continues with funky beats by Infinite Livez and DJ Zhao’s fusion of ancestral rhythms and urban bass pressure, traditional and modern music.
http://www.ballhausnaunynstrasse.de/
https://www.facebook.com/events/164300440403131/
“Luta Ca Caba Inda” (Creole T. The Struggle Is Not Over Yet), is an homage to the African Liberation Movement and Amilcar Cabral, based on recovered archival film material. The short film “Conakry,” (by Filipa César with Grada Kilomba & Diana McCarty, 2012) is a 16 mm single shot film and part of this homage. “Conakry” travels through time, space and media to revisit the political landscape of Guinea Bissau. Staged at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and based on 70s archival images of the Conakry Congress at the Palais du Peuple shot by Flora Gomes, Sana na N’Hada, Josefina Crato and José Cobumba Bolama, the film layers fictional media accounts of the archive, subjective readings of the images, and questions the role of these images, post-African liberation. César invited the Portuguese writer Grada Kilomba and the American radio activist Diana McCarty to reflect on the images and their history. “Conakry” describes and exposes how accessing almost forgotten footage of militant imaginary can be an instrument for recovering memory.
Conakry (D 2012, 10‘20“, by Filipa César in cooperation with Grada Kilomba and Diana McCarty)
Directed by Filipa César
Texts by Grada Kilomba and Diana McCarty
Performance: Grada Kilomba, Diana McCarty
Photography: Matthias Biber
Sound: Didio Pestana e Nuno da Luz
Assistant director: Marta Leite
Production: Johanna Höhemann and Marta Leite
Technician: Norio Takasugi
Set photograph: Diana Artus
Location: shot at the Reboot FM radio studio and at the House of the World Cultures, Berlin in September 2012
The project “Luta ca caba inda” was initially about finding and making accessible the remains of this short phase of militant cinema in Guinea-Bissau. In collaboration with two of the filmmakers involved – Flora Gomes and Sana na N’Hada – and with the collaboration of the National Film and Audio Visual Institute of Guinea-Bissau. César worked for the preservation and digitalisation of the archival material. The homage to Amílcar Cabral also traces the paths of the filmmakers Flora Gomes, Sann na N’Hada, Josefina Crato and José Columba Bolama, all of whom were trained at the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos) between 1967 and 1972 at Cabral’s behest.
After independence in 1974, Guinea-Bissau experienced a short-lived socialist phase that ended in a military coup in 1980. Most of the footage the young filmmakers had shot throughout the country since 1972 remained unedited raw material, which, in the context of the country’s unstable political situation, was soon forgotten and, as a result, much of it was left to disappear or disintegrate over time.
Film Program:
Conakry (Premiere!)
D 2012, 10‘20“, by Filipa César in cooperation wih Grada Kilomba and Diana McCarty
Cuba
2012, 10‘24‘,‘ by Filipa César in cooperation with Carlos Vaz, Joanna Barrios and Suleimane Biai
O Regresso de Amílcar Cabral
1977, 31’, by José Cobumba, Josefina Crato, Flora Gomes and Sann na N’Hada,
Participants:
Enoka Ayemba is a film curator and freelance writer living in Berlin. He is Co-founder of the Berlin based anti-colonial film group “Remember resistance”. Since 2004, he has produced several film programms mainly highlighting the works of filmmakers of African descent for cinemas and NGOs in Germany and Austria. Since 2008, he is curating the monthly film programm “Afro Digital” at the Werkstatt der Kulturen Berlin.
Filipa César is an artist interested in the porous relationship between the moving image and its public reception, the fictional aspects of the documentary genre and the politics inherent to the production of moving images. Selected exhibitions: 8th Istanbul Biennial, 2003; Serralves Museum, 2005; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010; Haus of the World Cultures, 2011; Jeu de Paume, 2012; Kunstwerke, 2013.
Grada Kilomba is a writer and lecturer. Her literary work is a combination of academic writing and lyrical narrative, approaching Memory, Trauma, Racism and Post-colonialism. Currently, she is a Professor at the Humboldt Universität – Berlin, department of Gender Studies.
http://gradakilomba.com/
Infinite Livez was born in Bethnal Green, East London and is a MC and musician who studied at Chelsea Art College. His wide range of influences comes from such diverse sources as P-Funk, Surrealism and continental philosophy. http://infinitelivez.bandcamp.com/
Diana McCarty lives and works in Berlin. Her work is at the intersection between art, media, politics and gender. She is an editor at the free artists radio, reboot.fm. Her current research is on revolutionary women and political violence. http://reboot.fm
Manuela Sambo was born in Angola, Sambo relocated to the former German Democratic Republic in 1984, when her interest in visual art was piqued and an awareness of her African origins emerged. Her formalist paintings, generally portraying female figures with abstracted faces, take inspiration from her personal background, aspects of Neo-expressionism and recently in old European culture history.
DJ Zhao brings the best contemporary and classic dance music together from wildly different times and places, with focus on Africa. Informed of up-to-the-minute global styles, Dj Zhao fuses ancestral rhythms and urban bass pressure, connecting “East” and “West”, acoustic and electronic, traditional and modern. http://soundcloud.com/djzhao
An event by Filipa César, Grada Kilomba and Diana McCarty, in cooperation with Kultursprünge Ballhaus Naunynstraße GmBH. Luta Ca Caba Inda is made possible through the the collaboration of the National Film and Audio Visual Institute of Guinea-Bissau and the support of the Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art, as part of the Living Archive Project.
Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt.
Der Kurzfilm Conakry ist Teil des Projektes Luta Ca Caba Inda, das das fast vergessene militante Kino in Guinea-Bissau während der Zeit des Unabhängigkeitskrieges reflektiert und an dessen zentrale Figur Amílcar Cabral erinnert. Inszeniert und gedreht im Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin auf der Grundlage von Archivbildern aus den 70er Jahren von Flora Gomes, Sana na N’Hada, Josefina Crato und José Bolama Cobumba, legt der Film fiktionale Medien, Archivmaterial und subjektive Lesarten der Bilder übereinander und hinterfragt ihre Rolle in der Zeit nach der afrikanischen Befreiungsbewegung. Er zeigt, wie der Zugriff auf fast vergessene Aufnahmen des militanten Imaginären ein Instrument zur Wiederherstellung von Erinnerung sein kann. Im Anschluß werden die im Rahmen des Projektes zuvor entstandenen Filme Cuba und O Regresso de Amílcar Cabral gezeigt und in einer Podiumsdiskussion mit der Regisseurin Filipa César, der Schriftstellerin Grada Kilomba, der Radioaktivistin Diana McCarty und Gästen weiter diskutiert. Die Künsterinnen laden anschließend zum Feiern mit DJ Zhao u.a. ein!
Eine Veranstaltung von Filipa César, Grada Kilomba und Diana McCarty in Kooperation mit Kultursprünge im Ballhaus Naunynstraße gemeinnützige GmbH. Mit freundlicher Unterstützung des Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.