Mortu nega

Description

California Newsreel has released Flora Gomes' now classic, Mortu Nega, to commemorate three starkly dissimilar events. 1998 marked both the 25th anniversary of the independence of Guinea-Bissau and the assassination of its leader Amilcar Cabral but it was also the year that country virtually annihilated itself in a brutal civil war. Produced in 1988 near the midpoint of these dates, Mortu Nega, as its title implies, is a unique kind of elegy - not so much to the victims of the liberation struggle as to its survivors. Like the Zimbabwean film Flame (1996) and Gomes' own more disillusioned second feature Udju Azul di Yonta (1991), it is a bittersweet eulogy to those veterans who gave so much yet often benefited so little from the struggle. The film poses a question facing much of Africa at the start of the 21st century: with the goal of independence achieved, what can serve as an equally unifying and compelling vision around which to construct a new society? Or as Chris Marker observed in his 1980 documentary San Soleil, coincidentally contemplating the decay of Guinea-Bissau's revolution: "What every revolutionary thinks the morning after victory: now the real problems begin."

Runtime

92 minutes

Subjects

Geography

Genre

Database

Alexander Street

Direct Link