Women in Cinema, Visual Media and Screen Culture in Lusophone Africa

Women in Cinema, Visual Media and Screen Culture in Lusophone Africa

Sarah Maldoror, was the first woman to do a film. The first film about Angola was made by a woman, there was no cinema before this. It was against colonialism, it was a very political cinema. It was a cinema that was found in the working-class districts--Pocas Pascoal

Women's presence in cinema, visual media and screen culture in Lusophone Africa dates to 1972 with the work of diasporan Sarah Maldoror. The screen cultural practices of women working in the Lusophone African diasporas, notably Angolan and Cabo Verdean continues into the present.

French Guadeloupian Sarah Maldoror, both on a personal and professional level, has been closely connected to Africa. A politically engaged filmmaker, she directed three films focusing on Africa, notably the internationally acclaimed Sambizanga (1972), the first film about the Angolan liberation struggle. In her personal life: she was married to Mario de Andrade, Angolan writer and one of the leaders of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Both film scholars and cinema professionals attest to her influential contribution to Angolan cinema, African lusophone cinema and African cinema in general. In 2011, Sarah Maldoror received the National Order of Merit from the French government for her contribution to culture. She was honoured in this way:

Dear Sarah Maldoror, you are an outspoken rebel, a fighter of injustices, a resolute humanist. Throughout your career, through the lens of your camera, you have always fought in order to tell and present, realistically and poetically the harshest of realities. For all of us, your perspective of the memory of slavery and colonialism has a distinct value. On behalf of the President of the Republic, we declare you a Knight of the National Order of Merit. Togolese filmmaker and international lawyer, Anne-Laure Folly who was mentored by Sarah Maldoror, made a film that was also set in Angola, Les oubliées (The forgotten women, 1996), which  gives voice to the Angolan women left to deal with the ravages of the civil war. Anne-Laure Folly had this to say about Sarah Maldoror:  Sarah…inspired me to do [Les oubliées]. She made a film called Sambizanga, which in my opinion is one of the masterpieces of African cinema. When I saw it, I had a desire to make a film thirty years later, about Angola. She cleared the way by showing the Angola war interpreted from the perspective of a woman. My approach is not a pioneering one; she has already done that.” Though neither Sarah nor Anne-Laure is Angolan, they share a pan-African vision, and a commitment to the history of Angolan struggle and in particular to women’s experience within it. In the beginning quote, Pocas Pascoal describes Sarah Maldoror as a role model for Angolans. Emerging among the next generation of Angolan cinema, she too is a first, as a pioneering camera operator. She directed the feature film Alda & Maria (2011), continuing the representation of women and war in Angola. Set in 1980, it follows the experiences of two sisters, 16 and 17 years old, as they attempt to reconstruct their lives in Lisbon after fleeing the civil war in Angola. To add to the gallery of pioneering women, Angola-born Maria João Ganga, is the first Angolan woman to make a feature film, Hollow City (2004).

The contribution of the Cabo Verdean diaspora has been invaluable to Cabo Verdean film culture and African cinema in general, notably the scholarship of second generation Cape Verdean American filmmaker and scholar Claire Andrade Watkins. Moreover, women of the Portuguese Cabo Verdean diaspora have collaborated on and directed a few films, and as film activists, are involved in African film festival planning and programming. Portugal-born Isabel Moura Mendes was at the helm of the state-owned Cabo Verdean national television channel, TCV in 2004 and has been involved in the production of a number of African lusophone documentaries. In addition, she is a programmer for various film festivals and film events in Europe.

The diasporic practices of remembering through cinematic journeying, is prevalent among African descendant filmmakers. Such as Belgium-based actress, stage actor and filmmaker Babetida Sadjo, who directed the autobiographical film, Bafata. The film follows Babetida on her journey back to her childhood and her homeland, Guinea-Bissau, related as a personal tale in the form of a travel diary. Her fiction film Hematome (2021), in which she also interprets the protagonist, recounts the experiences of Judith, who twenty five years later, dares to break her silence that shattered her life in order to find justice for the rape that she suffered as a child. Multi-faceted artist and cultural producer Vanessa Fernandes, of Cabo Verdean and Guinea-Bissau parentage, was born in the latter country and has studied, lived and worked in Europe, currently in Portugal, where she engages in afro-descendant discourse regarding both countries. Her first short film, Si Destinu (2016), was awarded Best Short Film at the Cabo Verde International Film Festival in 2016. Her trajectory is indicative of many transnational African women cultural practitioners, informed by their exilic, diasporic subject position.

Mozambican Isabel Noronha, at the same time one of the few, is the most visible woman practicing filmmaking in the country, and her contribution has been crucial to Mozambican knowledge production. In an interview by Max Annas and Henriete Gunkel (Gaze Regimes: Film and Feminisms in Africa eds. Jyoti Mistry & Atnje Schuhmann, 2015), she talks about the early history of Mozambican women of the moving images, noting the work of Fátima Albuquerque, who directed some of the first films in the 1980s. She observed that when joining the Instituto Nacional de Cinema (INC) in 1984, there was a cohort of women in diverse functions at the national cinema institute, working as production assistant, specializing in film lab developing, and in film distribution. She also emphasized that at the time, politically, there were strict rules regarding gender parity, hence discrimination was forbidden. Therefore, the politics of the epoch empowered women to participate, which led to the training of a cadre of women practitioners in the decade after the independence of Mozambique.  

Psychologist, intellectual and multi-media artist Grada Kilomba, whose ancestral homelands are both São Tomé-Príncipe and Angola, was born in Portugal and is based in Germany. As many transnational cultural producers, she situates her work within the global African diaspora. In addition to her short films and video installations, she employs the moving image to perform her ideas and discourse on the myriad issues of race, knowledge, power and postcoloniality.

A list of Lusophone African women in cinema, visual media and screen culture, which is not exhaustive, includes:

Angola: Sarah Maldoror, Denise Salazar, Maria João Ganga, Pocas Pascoal, Hariana Verás

Cabo Verde: Isabel Moura Mendes, Claire Andrade Watkins, Ana Rocha Fernandes, Vanessa Fernandes, Ana Lucia Ramos, 

Guinea-Bissau: Babetida Sadjo, Vanessa Fernandes

Mozambique:  Moira Forjaz, Fatima Albuquerque, Isabel Noronha

São Tomé-Príncipe (and Angola): Grada Kilomba

SOURCE: Black Camera, An International Film Journal: African Women in Cinema Dossier: African Women of the Screen as Cultural Producers: An Overview by Country  (Fall 2018)

Additional reading:

Katy Stewart. "Female bodies on Lisbon’s margins : Space, embodiment and (dis)possession in Alda e Maria (Pocas Pascoal, 2011)". Ed. Rebeca Maseda García, María José Gámez Fuentes, Barbara Zecchi. Gender-Based Violence in Latin American and Iberian Cinemas. Routledge: 2020.

REPORT BY BETI ELLERSON (Updated May 2020)

Articles on women in cinema, visual media and screen culture in Lusophone Africa

from the African Women in Cinema Blog

 

Babetida Sadjo: Hematome
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2022/06/babetida-sadjo-hematome.html

Grada Kilomba, psychologist, intellectual, multimedia artist : Talk at the 2019 Verbier Art Summit

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2019/04/grada-kilomba-talk-at-2019-verbier-art.html

International Colloquium and Film Screenings: Women's Struggles in the Cinema of Africa and the Middle East, 12-13 May 2016, CEAUP, Porto, Portugal

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2016/05/international-colloquium-and-film.html

AFRICANA STUDIA 26 : Lutas de Mulheres no Cinema de África e do Médio Oriente | Women's Struggles in the Cinemas of Africa and the Middle East | Les luttes des femmes dans les cinémas de l’Afrique et du Moyen-Orient

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2017/11/africana-studia-26-lutas-de-mulheres-no.html

Claire & Angèle, Nadia, Pocas, Rama, in/en conversation: To be a woman filmmaker in Africa | Être réalisatrice en Afrique

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2016/04/claire-angele-nadia-pocas-rama-inen.html

Pocas Pascoal (Angola) : Alda and Maria | Alda et Maria

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2014/11/pocas-pascoal-angola-alda-and-maria.html

Focus on Isabel Moura Mendes

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2012/02/isabel-moura-mendes-takes-torch-africa.html

Maria João Ganga's Hollow City

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2010/08/maria-joao-gangas-hollow-city.html

Sarah Maldoror: Role Model and Pioneer

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2010/01/profile-of-sarah-maldoror.html

Focus on Isabel Moura Mendes

Focus on Isabel Moura Mendes

The post has been updated to reflect current information. 29 March 2018.

Isabel Moura Mendes has been a programmer for the Royal African Society's Annual Film Festival in London since 2013, following her stint at (AiM) Africa in Motion Edinburgh African Film Festival. 

In addition, with Isabel's support, the IberoDocs Festival was founded in 2013 by Mar Felices and Xosé Ramón Rivas. The first showcase for Ibero-American culture in Scotland, focussed on documentary films by Spanish, Portuguese and Latin-American filmmakers, has objective to create an annual event in Scotland that facilitates the understanding of migration and stimulates cultural and social integration.

Original post (10 February 2012) under the title: Isabel Moura Mendes takes the torch: The Africa in Motion Edinburgh African Film Festival

Isabel Moura Mendes, of Cape Verdean origins, found in (AiM) Africa in Motion Edinburgh African Film Festival, a space to develop her interests in African culture and to hone her skills in arts and cultural management. She talks about the goals and objectives of the Festival and its plans for the 2012 edition and the future.

Isabel, please talk a bit about yourself, your background and your experiences with the cinema while growing up.

I am the daughter of Cape Verdean immigrants in Europe. In 1975, in an act shared by so many African families across the continent, my parents left their homeland and the barren mountains of the island of Santiago, in search for a better life in Portugal, the country that, until the year before, claimed Cape Verde amongst its colonised territories. It was thanks to their sacrifices that I was able to pursue my education and major in Media Studies and Journalism, thus becoming the first in my family to hold a college diploma. My particular focus on the written word clearly sprung from my lifelong interest and relationship with the arts and its multiple manifestations. I have always been drawn to the positive transformative power of arts and this fact, along with my desire to more fully understand my identity and sense of belonging, have shaped both my personal and professional paths. I have worked with different outlets in media both in Portugal and Cape Verde. In 2004, I was appointed co-Director of the arts training exchange program between Cape Verde and US Centre for Creative Youth/CuturArte, and later that same year, took over as the head of the state-owned Cape Verdean national television channel, TCV. My love affair with African film started in 2006, when I collaborated with the documentary training scheme, Africadoc, with which I worked until 2008. Through this connection, I had a chance to be involved in the production of a number of African lusophone documentaries and to meet inspiring filmmakers such as Flora Gomes, from Guinea Bissau.

How do your studies connect to cinema and how did you become involved in the African in Motion Film Festival?

My (very fortunate) encounter with Africa in Motion happened in 2010, when I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to pursue a Masters degree in Arts & Cultural Management. After having worked as an arts manager for almost 3 years in the US, I became certain that enabling artistic events which emphasise multicultural and interdisciplinary understanding, critical thinking and leadership, is what I am most passionate about, and what I am best at. That is why I decided to pursue my studies in this field. At the same time, I also have to admit I had been following AiM's work since 2007, so, almost as soon as I landed in Edinburgh, I sought out a way to become involved with the festival! Lizelle Bisschoff, festival founder and director and Stefanie van de Peer, co-director, were kind enough to bring me on board and utilise my skills to the advantage of AiM. The rest, as they say, is history! I am truly proud of being part of an organisation which has as its core aim the desire to create opportunities for Scottish audiences to see African films while providing a platform for African filmmakers to exhibit their work in Scotland, and in that way change perceptions of Africa. We truly do believe that the best way to learn about Africa is to listen to African voices and to view representations created by African's themselves, as these often counter the stereotypical representations of Africa prevalent in mainstream media. But our main reason for screening the films is because we believe they are great films which should be seen the world over. Professionally and personally I could not be happier in giving my contribution to move this proposition forward.

In 2007 I was invited to speak at a panel organised by the festival and attended many of the film screenings and am very impressed with the evolution of the festival. Please talk a bit about its history.

Africa in Motion has proved very successful over the past six years. From the first edition of the festival in 2006 to 2011 we have screened over 200 African films - a significant portion of them being UK premieres - to audiences totalling around 15,000 people. These numbers are indicative of our ability to reach wider audiences by including new events, reaching out more widely in press and marketing and also succeeding in making the festival known in niche communities such as the African Diaspora in Glasgow and Edinburgh, as noted every year, by our audience feedback. The consistently exciting and varied film programme and the broad offer of complementary events, such as talks and discussions, workshops, masterclasses, seminars, art exhibits and live performances by African artists/musicians, are what makes AiM an anticipated and popular event in the Edinburgh arts calendar. In response to the demand we received from both our younger public, and also audiences outside of the urban centres, we have devised and expanded specific programmes for children and youth in our festival programme, as well as implemented tours to schools and rural areas in Scotland. These outreach activities have not only expanded our festival's reach, but have enabled us to create new audiences for African film. Similarly, the multiple partnerships AiM has established with other festivals and arts organizations throughout the UK, Europe, US and in Africa itself, have granted long-term benefits for the filmmakers that have been part of our programmes, namely by extending their film’s longevity and increasing the potential that they will be picked up and programmed by other festivals. Finally, the ever-growing number of film submissions we receive every year, and the prestige that our festival has gained, both nationally and internationally, confirm to us the importance of a festival such as ours.

What has been planned for the 2012 edition in terms of theme and events?

This is an especially exciting and crucial time for AiM. We have just launched our calls for submissions for features (documentaries and fiction) as well as for our much-anticipated short film competition, now in its fifth year. We have also just unveiled the theme for the 2012 festival, which, as usual will take place in the Fall - 25 Oct to 2 Nov 2012. This year, Africa in Motion will be looking at 'Modern Africa'. What we mean by this is that we will focus on films and events encapsulating Africa in the 21st century. We will host screenings and events that represent Africa as part and parcel of the modern, globalised world – the urban, the new, the provocative, the innovative and experimental. We regard “modern” not as belonging solely to the “West”, and through the festival we want to emphasise Africa’s important role in the modern world.  We are interested in discovering and exploring how modernity manifests in African cultures, and, once again, counteract the stereotypical view of a continent locked in ancient traditions and superstition. For that reason also, we are bringing back our academic symposium series this year, and have already put out a call for papers on themes related to African popular culture. International researchers are invited to present their research on contemporary African popular culture, which not only includes film, but also other manifestations of popular culture in Africa such as music, dance, street art, sport, theatre and literature. We believe the symposium will further enhance our festival theme.  

In addition to these preparations for the festival in Edinburgh, AiM is taking on board the increase in demand we have received from Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, and its African Diaspora and cinephile communities. As a result, we are developing a plan to expand the festival's impact to Glasgow, and potentially implement a fully-fledged Africa in Motion film festival there in November this year, after the main festival in Edinburgh.

You are the new director of the festival, having taken the torch from co-founder Lizelle Bischoff, what are some of your goals for the festival and future plans?

The expansion of the festival to Glasgow is already part of a larger strategic plan we are currently developing for AiM. After 6 years of excellence in film programming, inspirational guests, discussions, and events, AiM has built a strong track record and enviable reputation, recognised by our partners and competitors alike. This team—in which Lizelle is still very much involved, albeit in a less executive and more advisory role—now has the responsibility to uphold this legacy, and, at the same time, take the festival's proposition forward. This means working on developing a more structured organisational composition for the festival, which will enable us to shift from a mostly volunteer-based to a more professionalised and skills-based formation. Steps such as obtaining charitable status for AiM, establishing a high profile Board of Trustees, are some of the actions we are implementing in order to give us the organisational stability we need to ensure the continuation of the festival. This will support the growth of our festival, not only regarding its geographic scope, but also in terms of expanding our current activities, to include creating African film distribution and production opportunities in the UK.

Interview with Isabel Moura Mendes by Beti Ellerson, February 2012

Isabel Moura Mendes prend la relève en tant que directrice: Afrique en mouvement festival du film africain d’Edimbourg

Isabel Moura Mendes, diasporienne de Cap-Vert, a trouvé en AiM (Africa in Motion) Afrique en mouvement festival du film africain d’Edimbourg, un espace dans lequel se développent ses intérêts sur la culture africaine ainsi que ses compétences gestionnaires dans l’art et la culture. Dans l’entretien avec Beti Ellerson, elle parle des objectives du festival et des activités pour la prochaine édition en octobre 2012, ainsi pour ceux du futur.

Entretien dans son intégralité en anglais: http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2012/02/isabel-moura-mendes-takes-torch-africa.html