Guinea-Bissau: an African nation forged in cinema?

• Autor(a) principal: Cunha, Paulo
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34640/universidademadeira2017cunha
• topic: cinema; revolução; Guiné-Bissau; terceiro cinema; descolonização; cinema; revolution; Guinea-Bissau; third cinema; decolonization; cinéma; révolution; Guinée-Bissau; troisième cinéma; décolonisation; cine; revolución; Guinea-Bissau; tercer cine; descolonización

In the context of the struggle for Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde independence, Amílcar Cabral and PAIGC sent four young Bissau-Guineans to Cuba tostudy cinema. For Cabral, demonstrations of resistance were not only intended to destroy something, but also simultaneously to construct something new and take on four complementary forms: political, economic, cultural and armed. For the leader of the movement for independence, cinema would play an important role in cultural resistance and in the construction of alternatives to the Portuguese colonialist gaze. The young Amílcar Cabral knew that the “decolonized” images would be important in the mobilization of the Guineans in their struggle for independence, in the international dissemination of the pretensions of Guinean and, in the last case, the provision to the “Portuguese people” of another version of history that was different from that linked bythe propaganda apparatus of the colonial gaze. The purpose of this text will be to start from the famous maxim of Cabral (« African nation forged in the struggle »; Cabral, 1974) to reflect on the context of emancipation of a cinematographic gaze in GuineaBissau and his contribution to the process of building a supposed national identity from this dialogue [...].