Resonance Spiral na Berlinale

Centrifugal movement was an expression once used to describe the tactical, situated beginnings of an anti-colonial armed struggle. In a flow of gestures and recurrences, a building is collectively imagined and constructed by the traditional community of the militant Guinea-Bissauan filmmaker Sana na N’Hada. Future is rejected to make space for what waits ahead. Intertwining local dreams and cine-kin’s visions, Resonance Spiral traverses moments at the newly erected community space in Malafo. Old plans for a videotheque are revisited for the mediateca. The women of the Satna Fai association listen to forgotten voices and rest from millennia of abuse. An informal sewing workshop, an experimental garden, a bibliotera and a pre-school are set up in the space. Adolescents voice a circle and sound self-built instruments. At the well, a discussion is staged about mud medicine. Ciné-kins undermine their own agencies and distrust neo-liberal slogans. With solidary hearts and a desire to flip verticalities into horizon lines, the collective slides through mud. Onshore. Abotcha. Na tchon. Humus, humans, humbled, humiliated by humanity.

74. Berlinale - Forum
mon, 19.02.2024 - 12:30 Safi Faye Saal (World Premiere) - Q&A 

tue, 20.02.2024 - after 21:30 GET-TOGETHER - KUMPELNEST 3000 - Lützowstraße 23, 10785 Berlin

21.02.2024 - 13:00 Kino Arsenal 1 - Q&Athu, 22.02.2024 - 21:00 Kino Betonhalle@silent green - Q&Afri, 23.02.2024 - 13:00 Kino Arsenal 2 (Press Screening) - Q&Asat, 24.02.2024 - 18:45 Kino Arsenal 1  - Q&A
***
MoMA Doc Fortnight

tue, 27.02.2024 - 19:00 - MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2 - Q&A (International Premiere) -The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2fri, 01.03.2024 - 16:30  - MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2 -The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
***
Cinema du Reél
thu, 28.03.2024 - 19:00, Forum des images - Salle 300 (French Premiere)sat, 30.03.2024 - 14:30, Centre Pompidou - Cinéma 1 - Q&A

RESONANCE SPIRAL assembled by Filipa César & Marinho de Pina

92’, 2K, colour, stereo, 2024

Portugal/ Guinea-Bissau/ Germany

languages Spoken: Guinea-Bissau Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, French and Portuguese DCP

with Bedan na Onça, Bidan Quelenque, Cristina Mendes, Mû Mbana, N’sai Ndiba, N’sai na Tchuto, João Polido Gomes, Pereira na Onça, Pedro na Onça, Pedro Maia, Sancho Silva, Sana na N’Hada, Satna Fai, Sónia Vaz Borges, Vanessa Fernandes & community of Malafo logline The Mediateca Onshore in Malafo, a village in Guinea-Bissau, is an archive and a hub for agropoetic practices. As Amílcar Cabral talks feminism on tape, ciné-kins speak from the mangroves about the contradictions of their practice.

17.02.2024 | by martalanca | Abotcha, filipa césar, filme, Malafo, Marinho Pina

The Gulbenkian Foundation Delegation in France and KADIST invite 2018 AFIELD Fellow Filipa César for a residency in Paris

The residency on the theme of social engagement is tailor-made for each invited personality and is conceived as an opportunity to showcase their work and commitment to the largest possible audience. For this first edition, Filipa César and her collaborator Marinho de Pina have been invited to share their cinematographic work in the field, which manifested in the creation of a media library for film and literature that they co-founded with the filmmaker Sana na N’Hada, in the village of Malafo, Guinea Bissau. It is a community run platform for sharing mundializing and traditional knowledges through practices in the fields of performing arts, archival practices, agroecology, moving image and digital media.

Public Events:

28 October 2022 : Cinema Saint André des Arts, Paris
Screening of ‘Mangrove School (2022)’ and ‘Navigating the Pilot School (2016)’

03 November 2022 : Centre Pompidou, Paris
Public conference «Planetarium»

Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the porous relationship between the moving image and its reception by the public, the fictional aspects of documentary, and the politics and poetics inherent in the production of moving images. A large part of her films focus on the specters of resistance within the geopolitical history of Portugal. Through the creation of performative spaces, she proposes a subjective approach to knowledge and questions the mechanisms of production of the great national narratives as well as the erasure of events and gestures of minorities. 

Since 2011, she has made several films that take as their matrix the first hours of the cinema of struggle and liberation in Guinea-Bissau, like fragments of a lost heritage whose potential she seeks to reanimate through a collective research, Luta ca caba inda (The struggle is not yet over). In 2017, Spell Reel, her first feature film that traces this adventure, had its world premiere at the Berlinale (Forum) and then showed in festivals and museums around the world, where it received numerous awards.

César has also shown her work regularly in contemporary art venues such as SAAVY (Berlin), Khiasma (Paris), Tensta konsthall, e-flux, Mumok, MoMA, Harvard Museum of Cinema. She was granted the AFIELD fellowship for art and social engagement in support of the project Mediateca Onshore

Marinho Pina is currently pursuing a PhD at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), focusing on city planning in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau. He researches Guinea-Bissauan architecture and has a masterʼs degree in vernacular architecture and clay building. He is also a performing artist and a writer. Since 2016 he has been working in the public management of AJASS, a social organization in Sonaco, which aims to improve the quality of local education, to fight against female genital mutilation and HIV/AIDS, and against ecological destruction such as deforestation. Marinho de Pina is part of the collective developing the space Abotcha – Mediateca Onshore in Guinea Bissau, and has been collaborating in the New Alphabet research project at HKW, Berlin. 

The Delegation in France is the European branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a Portuguese foundation for all mankind, dedicated to promote human knowledge and improving the quality of life of people through arts, science and education. Established by the will of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, the Foundation has a perpetual character and develops its activities from its headquarters in Lisbon and its delegations in Paris and London. In France, its activities include the co-production of exhibitions, an annual project call for French art institutions to present Portuguese visual artists in their programming, a call for artists engaged in collaborative practices, the organisation of meetings and debates throughout the year, partnerships with civil society organisations, and the provision of an important Portuguese language library.

KADIST believes contemporary artists make an important contribution to a progressive society, their work often addressing key issues of our time. KADIST, a non-profit organization dedicated to exhibiting the work of artists represented in its collection, encourages this engagement and affirms contemporary art’s relevance within social discourse. KADIST’s local hubs in Paris and San Francisco present exhibitions and events, and organize residencies and educational initiatives, as well as producing projects online and via social media. Concurrently, KADIST is actively establishing networks across five areas—North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia and Latin America—inviting new artists into the collection and initiating collaborative programs, especially exhibitions with museums of each region. Together, they aim at facilitating new connections across cultures and creating vibrant conversations about contemporary art and ideas.

26.10.2022 | by martalanca | filipa césar, KADIST, marinho de pina, Mediateca Abotcha

Filipa César. Crioulo Quântico

Filipa César propõe uma instalação e um filme de ensaio que abordam a crioulização para lá da linguagem e como modo de pensar o mundo.

31 mai – 02 set 10:00 – 18:00 Encerra à Terça-feira Coleção Moderna – Espaço Projeto, R. Dr. Nicolau Bettencourt, Lisboa I Entrada livre

Filipa César «Chico Indi», tecelão papel (imagem de pesquisa para «Crioulo Quântico»), 2018Filipa César «Chico Indi», tecelão papel (imagem de pesquisa para «Crioulo Quântico»), 2018

A artista apresenta uma instalação e um filme de ensaio que resultou de um processo de pesquisa coletivo e que introduz vários formatos de imagem em movimento como o vídeo, o 16 mm e a animação 3D, numa abordagem sobre dinâmicas de crioulização, no seu contexto histórico e biológico – entre elas, a dimensão subversiva de códigos linguísticos e noções de tecedura.

Os cartões perfurados, originalmente desenhados para a produção têxtil, foram fundamentais para o desenvolvimento da tecnologia informática. O seu código binário está mais próximo do princípio da tecelagem do que do ato da escrita. A tecedura de mensagens cifradas de resistência social e política nos têxteis ou as apropriações da língua do colonizador pelo crioulo são apenas dois aspetos do passado recente que nos ajudam a pensar, no presente, as novas economias digitais e os seus procedimentos e códigos. A visualização digital do projeto de uma zona franca ultraliberal planeada por empresas multinacionais nas ilhas Bijagós atualiza, com uma nova face, a violência que existiu, há alguns séculos, com a criação de entrepostos de escravos na então região dos Rios da Guiné do Cabo Verde.

O filme é uma das três «estações» ou momentos expositivos previstos pela artista numa trajetória internacional de longa duração, que inclui três instituições: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, em Berlim, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, em Lisboa, e Tabakalera, em San Sebastián.

Filipa César (Porto, 1975) tem apresentado o seu trabalho nacional e internacionalmente em contextos de cinema e arte contemporânea, tais como Berlinale, Doc’s Kingdom, Flaherty Seminar, MoMA, Mumok, Manifesta 8, SAVVY, Jeu de Paume, Tensta konsthall, Harvard Art Museums e Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Curadoria: Leonor Nazaré
Cenografia: «Architextile n. 2» de Lorenzo Sandoval

25.07.2019 | by martalanca | filipa césar

Op-Film: Uma Arqueologia da Ótica

no HANGAR de 23 de Janeiro | 18h até 20 de Abril | Quarta-feira a Sábado, 15:00 – 19:00 (ou por marcação através do geral@hangar.com.pt) I Entrada Livre I Op-Film: An Archaeology of Optics é uma exposição colaborativa dos artistas e cineastas Filipa César e Louis Henderson.

A exposição é composta por um filme e uma instalação baseados num processo de investigação em curso que explora de que forma as tecnologias óticas de design militar e colonial – das lentes de Fresnel aos sistemas globais de navegação por satélite – informam e são informadas pelos modelos de conhecimento ocidentais. Através de uma abordagem crítica às ideologias por trás do desenvolvimento destes instrumentos de orientação e vigilância, os artistas consideram que os gestos imperiais de descoberta, revelação e posse estão embutidos em associações entre o ver e entender, a projeção de luz e iluminação.

O filme Sunstone (2017) acompanha as lentes de Fresnel desde o local de produção até à sua exposição num museu de faróis e dispositivos de navegação. Simultaneamente, examina os diversos contextos sociais nos quais a ótica está implicada, contrastando o sistema de comércio triangular que se seguiu às primeiras chegadas europeias ao ‘Novo Mundo’ com o potencial político visto na Op art na Cuba pós-revolucionária. Incorporando imagens de celuloide de 16mm, capturas digitais de ambientes de trabalho e CGI 3D, o filme mapeia igualmente uma trajetória tecnológica: dos métodos históricos de navegação ótica aos novos algoritmos de localização, da projeção singular às visões satélites de múltiplas perspetivas. Registando estes avanços técnicos progressivamente através dos materiais e meios de produção dos seus filmes, os artistas desenvolvem o que eles descrevem como “um cinema de afeto, um cinema de experiência – um Op-Film”.

Juntamente com este trabalho, a instalação Refracted Spaces (2017) reúne materiais documentais importantes que sustentam suas pesquisas até o momento, incluindo imagens arquivísticas, mapas oceânicos, plantas de faróis, luzes e fragmentos de lentes de Fresnel. Após a Bienal de Contour em Março de 2017, a instalação viajou para a Gasworks (Londres), para a Temporary Gallery (Colónia) e Khiasma (Paris). A exposição é pensada como uma plataforma de investigação contínua pelos dois artistas e cria, em cada contexto, eventos públicos, projeções e conversas que estendem a exposição.

Filipa César é uma artista e cineasta interessada nos aspetos ficcionais do documentário, nas fronteiras porosas entre o cinema e sua receção, e nas políticas e poéticas inerentes à imagem em movimento. O seu trabalho toma os media para expandir ou expor contra narrativas de resistência ao historicismo. Desde 2011, César tem estudado as origens do cinema na Guiné-Bissau como parte do Movimento de Libertação Africano. Uma seleção de exposições e projeções foram realizadas em: 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2011–15; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2012; Kunstwerke, Berlin, 2013; SAAVY Contemporary, Berlin 2014–15; Futura, Prague 2015; Tensta konsthall, Spånga, 2015; Mumok, Vienna, 2016, Contour 8 Biennial; Mechelen and Gasworks, London; MoMA, New York, 2017.

Louis Henderson é um artista e cineasta cujas obras investigam conexões entre colonialismo, tecnologia, capitalismo e história. A sua pesquisa procura formular um método arqueológico dentro da prática cinematográfica, refletindo sobre o materialismo animista. Henderson mostrou o seu trabalho em espaços tais como: Rotterdam International Film Festival, Doc Lisboa, CPH:DOX, New York Film Festival, The Contour Biennial, The Kiev Biennial, The Centre Pompidou, SAVVY Contemporary, The Gene Siskell Film Centre e Tate Britain. Em 2015, recebeu o Prémio Barbara Aronofsky Latham como Artista Vídeo Emergente no 53º Ann Arbor Film Festival, EUA, e o Prémio European Short Film – Festival Internacional de Cinema New Horizons, Wroclaw, Polónia. O seu trabalho é distribuído pela LUX (UK) e pelo Video Data Bank (EUA).

22.01.2019 | by martalanca | filipa césar, filme, HANGAR, Louis Henderson

Spell Reel de Filipa César I Nova Iorque

Short films screening & Conversation    26 June | 7 pm
Weeklong Moma Run: ‘Spell Reel’           27 June - 2 July

Moma, New York, USA


“The Portuguese-born, Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Filipa César presents an evening of short films in advance of a weeklong Moma run of her first feature, Spell Reel. César’s work exists at the intersection of fiction and documentary, exploring history, place, and identity through intertwined personal and national narratives. Characterised by rigorous structural and lyrical elements, her multiform meditations often focus on Portuguese colonialism and the liberation of Guinea-Bissau in the 1960s and 1970s. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Nuno Lisboa, 2017 Flaherty Seminar Programmer, and Sophie Cavoulacos, Assistant Curator, Department of Film. This event is presented in conjunction with the 2017 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar.”.

 

14.06.2017 | by martalanca | filipa césar

Irrelevancies - an introduction to Luta ca caba inda by Filipa César

Friday 30 October 19h at Casa dos Amigos do Minho

This contribution introduces the human, material and economic background of Luta ca caba inda, a collective research project that addresses the possibilities of accessing and performing images and sounds from an eroded Guinean audio visual archive – a collection resulting from the liberation struggle against Portuguese colonialism in the 60’s and 70’s and its alliances to international solidarity movements. The creole title Luta ca caba inda, derives from an unfinished film that is part of this assemblage. This sentence, that translates into English as ‘the struggle is not over yet’ cursed the accomplishing potency of that film, of the struggle and of this project.

This the first of a series of lectures by Filipa César about her research and practice, to be continued in spring.

Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the porous relationship between the moving image and its public reception, the fictional aspects of the documentary genre and the politics and poetics inherent to the production of moving images. Between 2008-10, great part of César’s experimental films have focused on Portugal’s crecent past, questioning mechanisms of history production and proposing spaces for performing subjective knowledge. Since 2011, César has been researching the origins of film in Guinea-Bissau and its related geo-political radiance, developing that research into the project Luta ca caba inda. She is was a participant of the research projects “Living Archive, 2011-13” and “Visionary Archive, 2013-15” organised by the Arsenal Institute, Berlin. Selected Film Festivals include Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2013; Forum Expanded - Berlinale, 2013; IFFR, Rotterdam, 2010 and 2013; Indie Lisboa, 2010; DocLisboa, 2011. Selected exhibitions and screenings include: 8th IstanbulBiennial, 2003; Serralves Museum, Porto, 2005; Tate Modern, London, 2007; SFMOMA, 2009; 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2011; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2012; Kunstwerke, Berlin, 2013; Festival Meeting Points 7, 2013-14; NBK, Berlin, 2014; Hordaland Art Center, Bergen, 2014; SAAVY contemporary, 2014; Futura, Prague, 2015; Tensta Konsthall, 2015; Khiasma, 2015.

29.10.2015 | by martalanca | Amílcar Cabral, arquivo, filipa césar

Workshop Theorizing the Portuguese Colonial Experience. Images, History, Power - 16-17.Junho.2013 - Local: Companhia das Culturas, Castro Marim (actualizado)

This closed workshop is designed as an informal brainstorming meeting in dialogue with the work of Professor Ann Laura Stoler, under the following common, general, issues: What are the mutual interferences, tensions, productivities, silences, ignorances, gaps, influences between the empirical and conceptual specificities of studying the Portuguese empire, and the wider international literature on the colonial and post-colonial? How, in short, does the study of the Portuguese colonial experience interfere with old and emerging theories of colonialism and post-colonialism? 

OR

Este Workshop fechado está desenhado para promover o diálogo em torno ao trabalho de Ann Laura Stoler, em relação com as interferências, tensões, fissuras e influências existentes entre o trabalho empírico e as especificidades conceptuais do estudo do Império Português, e a bibliografia internacional sobre o colonial e o pós-colonial.

Entrada Livre sujeita a inscrição. Infos: Ricardo Roque <ricardo.roque@ics.ul.pt>

 

PROGRAMME

SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2013

AFTERNOON

13h45 – Welcome

Eglantina Monteiro / Cristiana Bastos, Ricardo Roque, Manuela Ribeiro Sanches

14h00 - 14h45

The uses of the archive: some thoughts on colonial images and postcolonial melancholia.

Manuela Ribeiro Sanches (CEC-FLUL)

14h45 - 15h30

Empire cinema: disruptive colonial representations through Estado Novo films.

Carmo Piçarra (ICS-UL/ISCTE)

15h30 - 15h45 – Coffee Break

15h45 - 16h30

Beauty pageants and imperial power: intimacy and sexuality in the late Portuguese Empire.

Marcos Cardão (CEHC-IUL)

16h30 - 17h15

Art History, Postcolonial Theory and ‘Lusophone’ Contemporary Art.

Ana Balona de Oliveira (CEC-FLUL/IHA-FCSH-UNL)

20h00 – Dinner at Companhia das Culturas

AFTER DINNER EVENT:

Contemporary films by Filipa César and Daniel Barroca, O importante é ligar a cabeça à mão /’The important is to link the head to the hand´, vídeo e desenho

2008-2011

Filipa César, Cacheu, vídeo 10’

Selected and presented by Eglantina Monteiro and Nuno Faria

DAY 2: MONDAY, JUNE 17

MORNING

11h00 - 11h45

Were Portuguese citizens all those who were born in Portuguese territory? Fluid narratives on imperial citizenship.

Cristina Nogueira da Silva (FD-UNL)

11h45 - 12h30

Luso-tropical horrors: vulnerability, savagery, and the Portuguese in Timor.

Ricardo Roque (ICS-UL/University of Sydney)

12h30 -14h00 - Lunch

14h00 - 14h45

Bringing them in while keeping them out: colonial medicine, indigenous subjects and local agents.

Cristiana Bastos (ICS-UL)

Final comments & discussion: Ann Laura Stoler (New School for Social Research)

END OF WORKSHOP

companhia das culturas - uma casa rural de charme

12.06.2013 | by raul f. curvelo | africa.cont, ann laura stoler, centro de estudos comparativistas, companhia das culturas, cristina nogueira da silva, eglantina monteiro, filipa césar, FLUL, ics, manuela ribeiro sanches, maria do carmo piçarra, nuno faria, ricardo roque, the university of sidney