GAR

GAR “Geo-archaeological research(GAR)” is a research, held initially in Weimar (Germany), which has indicated several phases of work and diverse areas as fieldwork. This research aims to understand specific intercontinental geological phenomena, proposing the hypothesis of a geological fault, which took place in Europe and had other repercussions.

To read

28.05.2010 | by Tânia da Fonte

Human Condition - José Cabral

Human Condition - José Cabral José Cabral came to this collective history in a unique way, having trained with his father amateur photographer and filmmaker — he also had a homonymous grandfather, on his father’s side, who was a governor (1910-1938) and who had a park named after him in the old capital Lourenço Marques (Continuadores Park, today). He started in cinematography and he joined his experience as a news photographer to documental programmes of a less urgent nature. Later, he was probably the first to distance himself from the routines of journalism, and he made that challenge very clear with the choice of works in display in the Iluminando Vidas exhibit: instead of war, misery, victims, ruins and promises of reconstruction, that can still be seen yet another face for exoticism, he showed feminine nudes without any ethnographical pretext.

Face to face

28.05.2010 | by Alexandre Pomar

Gilberto Freyre in Africa 1- Cape Verde

Gilberto Freyre in Africa 1- Cape Verde Recent critical readings of Cape Verdean identity and intellectual history highlight the fact that Gilberto Freyre unknowingly destabilized the metanarrative of Euro-centered mestiçagem, by emphasizing instead Cape Verde’s cultural links to Africa (even if those links were impressionistically perceived by him).

To read

26.05.2010 | by Fernando Arenas

The sincretism of Gregory Maqoma

The sincretism of Gregory Maqoma Gregory Maqoma, South-African dancer and choreographer, uses his origins to build his identity as an artist. The performer came to Luanda to present 'Beautiful Me', a show in which he is the only participant, and that reflects some of his concerns about south-african society and the political power as a whole, around the world

Face to face

24.05.2010 | by Joana Simões Piedade

I went there to visit artists - artistic contexts in the cameroon

I went there to visit artists - artistic contexts in the cameroon Africa is portrayed as an over-determined image. In other words, a place capable of shaping the abundance of circulating discourses, the terms and labels for the continent and the situations of traumatic nature. The widespread geography that characterises Africa both internal and externally, the continent remains a space of ambivalence that still polarizes fundamental issues as human rights, racial equality, apartheid, subordination, hybridization, mixing, the displacement of people and cultures.

I'll visit

23.05.2010 | by Marta Mestre

Tarifa African Film Festival

Tarifa African Film Festival One part of the programm of the 7th Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa, is called: "Utopia and Reality: 50 years of African Independencies?" Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Independence of 17 African countries, FCAT’10 offers a selection of African and non-African productions that explores, illustrates, questions and analyses this independence. There are films which talk about the life and ideas of figures like Aimé Césaire, Patrice Lumumba or Amilcar Cabral, or about the hope and dignity found after so many years of colonialism.

I'll visit

23.05.2010 | by Tarifa African Film Festival

Body and Soul - Ingrid Mwangi

Body and Soul - Ingrid Mwangi Subjects like discrimination – by skin color, social position or gender- all found an important place in Ingrid’s work. Gradually she has been focusing on conflict issues and the reasons why we live in violence. In addition to her interest in subjects like the war and the media she is also very interested in the role of women, their strength and their projection in the world. Regarding that she stats “we can’t run away from our body. At the beginning it was not an easy thing to do but I acquired consciousness that my black woman’s body is, by itself, a statement. Then I started to work on this matter”.

Face to face

22.05.2010 | by Joana Simões Piedade

Sunless - Return to Guinea-Bissau

Sunless - Return to Guinea-Bissau The Portuguese presentation at the 2009 São Paulo Architecture Biennial, “Five Africas/Five Schools”, reflects the different realities of the African countries whose official language is our own: for each of them a school prototype developed by a like number of architecture teams. For Guinea-Bissau, Pedro Maurício Borges has designed a Basic School in the city of Cacheu. In a context of extreme poverty , the possibility of building a school should suffice to suspend any other kind of critical judgment. Nevertheless, beyond the initiative’s eventual humanitarian value, there is still architecture. In a place where like everything else it is limited by what exists, one has to make do with very little. But with many other things as well: with memories of a country that interested the world.

City

17.05.2010 | by Diogo Seixas Lopes

Contemporary dance from Africa as creative opposition to stereotypical images of Africanity

Contemporary dance from Africa as creative opposition to stereotypical images of Africanity On the one hand I try to understand how African dance and as African considered corporalities are used as an aesthetic medium in common European cultural practices. How does European discourse create which images of African dance and performances? On the other hand and crucially, I focus on the African side of the coin: how do African dancers and choreographers (re)act and which are their individual choices in the scope of various challenges and do European discourse have any significance on African dancers’ and choreographers’ decisions?

Stages

16.05.2010 | by Nadine Siegert

“Catembe” or complaint from the young censored soul

“Catembe” or complaint from the young censored soul 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.

Afroscreen

16.05.2010 | by Maria do Carmo Piçarra

Creative Capacities of Developing Countries

Creative Capacities of Developing Countries 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.

Afroscreen

15.05.2010 | by Alessandra Meleiro

Trees have routes, we have feet

Trees have routes, we have feet What Mónica de Miranda intends is “to create space so that the migratory and trans–national flows are seen by themselves as a diversified and multifaceted reality as a platform for creative opportunities and a place of transit for personal, social and cultural changes. "At the heart of its strategy is the principle of interculturality, which should involve a gradual and systematic promotion of spaces and processes of positive interaction, a possible generalization of relations of trust, mutual recognition, for discussion, learning and exchange.

Face to face

15.05.2010 | by José António Fernandes Dias

Between black movement and marxism: intellectual genealogy of an epoch

Between black movement and marxism: intellectual genealogy of an epoch It seems useful to delineate a genealogy of black internationalism as way to understand it's formation. Africa's independencies, beyond the action of africans and africans among the diaspora, take place due to a number of structural shifts. If we place the emergence of african internationalism in a broader perspective it will allow for a understanding of the paradigm changes that took place at the turn of the century.

To read

15.05.2010 | by António Tomás

We, the ones from the Grande Hotel da Beira

We, the ones from the Grande Hotel da Beira As in any occupied house it has it’s living and organizational rules. There, the following representatives rule: the unity secretary and the secretary of the hallway, block and floor who meet up to solve the residents’ problems, and to conduct the residents’ court in one of the hotel’s former suites. There, discussions concerning who is more entitled to housing (a woman with children has the upper hand), or about who is throwing dirty water onto someone else’s balcony, take place. There are two fundamental rules: “keep the cleanliness and the respect.”

City

14.05.2010 | by Marta Lança

Drawing the lines, postcolonial Lisboa and other modern fortresses Europe

Drawing the lines, postcolonial Lisboa and other modern fortresses Europe How is cosmopolitanism to be practiced, if the city persists in creating barriers between insiders and outsiders? If traditional boroughs of Lisbon are inhabited by recent immigrants, they are easily fixed into specific territories, such as Martim Moniz, Praça de S. Domingo or Restauradores, some parts of Alfama, former Jewish and Moorish ‘ghettos’, a testimony to the ever permanent ‘multicultural’ character of the city, as well as its more tolerant and racist moments.

City

13.05.2010 | by Manuela Ribeiro Sanches

Niemeyer's Dream and the parallel universe

Niemeyer's Dream and the parallel universe November 1975, quick as lightening thousands of persons flee the city. The colony is over, the counting begins from zero. Luanda is now an empty space and waits, anxious, for its new tenants. New habitants, new freedom. Like “squatters” now inside buildings marked by old moments, memories, scents from another time, Luanda anticipates and receives the new occupants with open doors.

City

13.05.2010 | by Kiluanji Kia Henda