June 25, 1975. After years of armed struggle, this day saw the independence of Mozambique, ending almost 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule in the East African region and installing a new socialist government. That same day, the Portuguese flag was taken down, and a new Mozambican one was raised in a symbolic act of decolonisation. This act was significantly captured on film, underscoring the moving image's critical role in creating and documenting the new nation. Indeed, one of the first acts of the nascent Mozambique Government was to develop the National Institute of Cinema (INC). The new president, Samora Machel, had a strong awareness of the power of the image and understood he needed to use this power to build a socialist nation. 

 

This awareness keyed into a wider adoption of the cinematic medium by filmmakers from the 1950s onwards in the process of decolonisation, as well as a medium to be decolonised itself. Dreams of independence and self-determination made cinema more radical, turning it away from Hollywood and its perpetual dreamscape. It also helped to forge a world socialist cinema based on an international network of cinematic exchanges that included the former Soviet bloc.  

 

Reflecting Mozambique’s participation in this network and its commitment to independence and socialism, the history of the INC and the films it produced cannot be disassociated from the political movement embodied by Samora Machel and FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front). Footage from the INC films – found by director Margarida Cardoso in an abandoned, burnt-out building – shows Mozambique's trajectory from great hope to great disillusionment. Weaving these images together with interviews of the people who produced them, her film Kuxa Kanema constructs a history of the birth and death of Mozambican cinema and the birth and death of an ideology and its supporting network. What form did this new cinema take, and what were the cultural and political dynamics within Mozambique and internationally that allowed it to take shape and ultimately led to its demise?

 

Join Professor Maite Conde in a screening of Cardoso’s film Kuxa Kanema and a discussion of how it allows us to consider the relationship between decolonisation and cinema through this Mozambican case study and how it will enable us to see a different geography of film.