Ambivalent transnationality: Luso-African co-productions after independence (1988–2010)

JAC 3 (2) pp. 221–245 Intellect Limited 2011 Journal of African Cinemas Volume 3 Number 2 © 2011 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jac.3.2.221_1 Carolin overhoff ferreira Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) ambivalent transnationality: luso-african co-productions after independence (1988–2010) abstraCt Keywords In the sequence of its adhesion to the European Community in 1986 and in search for a place in an increasingly globalized film market, Portugal established a vast amount of transnational cinematographic partnerships with the Luso-African countries Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau. The partnerships, which have resulted in twenty co-productions so far, have also had a profound meaning for the discussion of colonialism and post-colonialism that cannot be overemphasized. Since the aim of this article is to give a general overview of the Luso-African feature film landscape, it discusses the films in a resumed fashion within the context of the four co-producing PALOP (Países de Língua Oficial Portuguesa – Countries with Portuguese as Official Language). According to my understanding of transnationality as ambivalent, I will try to comprehend how the co-productions negotiate the elements of national and transnational identity. Are they capable of holding the post-colonial tensions? Are new and multilateral perspectives that confront outdated discourses the exception or the rule? Luso-african cinema transnationality colonialismo postcoloniality multilateral perspectives 221 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira 1. In Portuguese there are a number of publications available by the film institute of Angola (Instituto Angolano de Cinema 1982), its archives (Cinemateca Nacional da República Popular de Angola 1985, 1986), the Portuguese film archive (Cinemateca Portuguesa 1987, 1995), by Portuguese researchers MatosCruz and Abrantes (2002), as well as by the Partido Comunista Português (1981). 2. The first Portuguese production company was S.A.R.L. Films Angola, funded by the filmmaker António de Sousa in 1951 for the production of ethnographic documentaries (see Monteiro 1951: 9). While Cinangola was created in the last years of colonialism with the aim of producing propaganda and informational films, it was used for the creation of Promocine, the first Angolan film collective after independence (see Cinemateca Nacional da República Popular de Angola 1986: 6). 3. According to Diawara (1992: 89–91), the Yugoslavian filmmaker Dragutin Popovic and a film crew from the Netherlands were invited by FRELIMO, as well as filmmakers from the People’s Republic of China and the American Robert Van Lierop who also filmed in Mozambique. Filmmakers from France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Cuba, Switzerland and the Netherlands were invited by PAIGC, while French filmmaker Sarah Maldoror, of Caribbean descent, filmed in Angola. 222 introduCtion In the sequence of its adhesion to the European Community in 1986 and in search for a place in an increasingly globalized film market, Portugal established a vast amount of transnational cinematographic partnerships. Next to the economic reasons, the preference to sign agreements with the former colonies prior to treaties with European countries indicates another set of motives. Whereas the interest in collaborating with Brazil was formalized as early as 1981, Portugal set up official regulations for the funding of transnational films with Cape Verde in 1989, with Mozambique in 1990, with Angola in 1992, and with São Tomé and Principe in 1994 (see Matos-Cruz 2002: 17–20). The partnerships have a symbolic meaning and their significance for both sides cannot be overemphasized. In fact, they have offered to Portuguese directors a more expressive engagement with the colonial past in Africa. With regard to the directors from the African countries with Portuguese as the official language (PALOP), after years of stagnation the treaties made a return to film production possible and have allowed for a discussion of their colonial and post-colonial condition. In the case of Cape Verde, they turned the country finally into a filmproducing nation. Genesis of national PaloP Cinemas Like many other sub-Saharan cinemas the national cinemas in the PALOP still suffer from technical and financial deficiencies and face profound problems in terms of distribution and exhibition. Nonetheless, their cinemas’ histories – told by Claire Andrade-Watkins (1995, 2003), Manthia Diawara (1992) and Frank Ukadike (1994), to name but the most relevant1 – had a dissimilar start when compared to the anglophone or francophone African nations. The authors’ accounts underline that in contrast to the British, French or Belgian colonizers, the Portuguese only set up a very restricted infrastructure for documentary production during the colonial period, which was of little help after the overdue independences in 1975.2 But unlike other colonies, the PALOP were already active in filmmaking during the armed fight against Portuguese colonialism between 1961 and 1974. The organizations involved in the liberation struggles – MPLA (Movement for the Liberation of Angola), PAIGC (African Party for the Independence in Guinea and Cape Verde) and FRELIMO (Liberation Front of Mozambique) – invited international filmmakers to accompany their wars of independence.3 These initiatives and the films themselves have been regarded as key factors for opening up a new and important chapter within the history of African and World Cinema. Most of the films were documentaries that informed about the wars’ atrocities and the desire for selfgovernance, and their aim was to raise consciousness in local and international audiences. Besides demonstrating film’s capacity to construct and represent a society, its identity and culture, the productions also offered the benefit of training local technicians and directors in filmmaking. Not by chance, the socialist governments in Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique established film institutes in the first years of independence. Angola and Mozambique were particularly successful in setting off national cinemas in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, and produced a reasonable amount of documentaries and some fiction films. Civil wars, economic crises, corruption, the end of the cold war and the general lack of funding, infrastructure, equipment and qualified technicians, soon brought an end to these promising beginnings. Ambivalent transnationality The 1980s with their internal and external problems were followed by the end of the civil wars and mono party regimes in the 1990s and early 2000s. The countries opened up politically and economically to an ambivalent future. In the wake of this change of paradigm, democratic elections became possible, but also the introduction of neo-liberal economic rules and other shortcomings of globalization. The treaties on cinematographic co-production are part of the ambivalent new situation, since they encourage filmmaking based on technical and financial dependency. 4. In terms of transnational documentary production, one feature film was produced by Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako: Rostov-Luanda (1998, Angola/Mauritania). national and transnational ProduCtions When comparing the number of national films with the number of coproductions in the PALOP, it is more than evident that feature film production relies almost exclusively on transnational alliances. Since independence, 31 fiction features were produced, of which 74 per cent (23 films) with the help of partners from other countries. Portugal clearly leads the list with twenty films, followed by France with seven films. Other European (Belgium, two films; Germany, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Sweden, Spain, one film each) or African countries (Morocco and Tunisia, one film each), or communist and former communist countries (Cuba, one film; Yugoslavia, one film) made only sporadic appearances as co-producers. Brazil (three films) has marked presence as a film partner only recently. The table below shows that only 26 per cent of the total feature film production (eight films) have been produced exclusively with national resources in the PALOP in the last thirty years. Portugal’s cinematographic participation in Cape Verde is with 100 per cent (six films) the highest among the PALOP. The country is completely dependent on the former colonizer. Despite the fact that Angola had a promising start in the 1970s and 1980s, transnational productions now reach 78 per cent of total feature film activity. Portugal was a partner in six of nine films (67 per cent), and Cuba co-produced one film, Caravana/Convoy (Rogélio Pais and Júlio César Rodrigues, 1992). The national films date from the late 1970s and 1980s: Faz la Coragem, Camarada/ Be Brave, Comrade (1977) and Nelisita (1982) by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho.4 In Guinea-Bissau, co-productions represent 67 per cent of total production. Three of six films (50 per cent) were produced with Portugal as partner and one feature, Xime (Sana Na N’Hada, 1994), with the Netherlands. The Country No. of all feature films Co-productions with Portugal/ % of all national feature production No. other. co-prod. No. national prod. Total of co-prod. (%) Angola 9 6/67 1 2 78 Guinea-Bissau 6 3/50 1 2 67 Cape Verde 6 6/100 0 0 100 Mozambique 10 5/50 1 4 60 Total 31 20/66 3 8 74 Table 1: Relation between co-productions and national productions in lusophone African cinemas (1980–2010). 223 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira 5. There are two feature documentaries to be mentioned: Frontières Sanglantes/Borders of Blood (1987, Mozambique) and Música, Moçambique! (Mozambique/ Portugal, 1980), both directed by Mário Hernique Borgueth. two national productions are from the 1980s: Mortu Nega/Those whom Death Refused (Flora Gomes, 1988) and N’tturudu/The Mask (Umban U’kset, 1986). Mozambique’s numbers are more balanced, but more than half of all features produced in the country (60 per cent of films) are co-productions. Three out of seven (43 per cent) were produced with Portugal and one, Vreme Leoparda/Time Leopard (Zdravko Velimirovi, 1985) with Yugoslavia. The list of national films is longer than that of any other country from the PALOP, but most of them are from the 1980s: Mueda Memoria e Massacre/ Mueda, Memory and Massacre (Ruy Guerra, 1980), Canta meu Irmão, Ajuda-me a Cantar (José Cardoso, 1982), O Vento Sopra do Norte/The Wind Blows from the North (José Cardoso, 1987) and Desobediência (2003), a television feature by Licínio de Azevedo, a Brazilian filmmaker.5 transnationality Cinema has always been a transnational art or industry, but the lack of balance between national and transnational productions in the PALOP, and the former colonizer Portugal as dominant partner, raise questions on the influence that the co-producing companies might exercise on the films under analysis. There has been much interest in post-colonial co-productions in African and film studies and scholars have inquired the possible ideological input on narratives and identity construction in transnational films. More often than not they have been discontent with the control exercised by previous European colonizers, especially by France. While transnational anglophone or francophone film productions have been critically assessed (Diawara 1992; Gugler 2003; Russel 1998; Ukadike 1994; Diop 2004; Gardies 1989; Niang 1996; Sherzer 1996; Thackway 2003), lusophone films, apart from important articles (AndradeWatkins 1995, 2003), mostly in the context of general accounts of African film history (Diawara 1992; Ukadike 1994), have not been subject to closer analysis. The concept of transnationality offers itself as an important tool for this endeavour. By proposing answers to questions on past and present of the globalized film market, it has taken centre stage in film criticism in recent years. Benedict Anderson (1983) famously started the academic discussion by suggesting that nations are nothing more than imaginary communities. When film studies realized that films and their study also participate in the construction of cultural boarders by establishing a restricted community of communication (see Schlesinger 2000: 29), transnationality seemed to offer an alternative. Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim (2010: 8) specify three different definitions or ways that transnationality is now being employed. The first is more strongly related to the European and North American academic world and tries to challenge the concept of national cinema; the second has a more historical outlook, acknowledging the presence of transnationality and cultural hybridization in film history; the third consists in a critical assessment of post-colonial or diasporic film productions. Any new theoretical tool not only brings the chance of new insights. Transnationality’s inflationary use and its often celebratory and Eurocentric tone point towards challenges and dangers of the concept. Higbee and Lim (2010: 10) identify a set of problems: it also tends, for the most part, to be taken as a given – as shorthand for an international or supranational mode of film production whose impact and reach lies beyond the bounds of the national. The danger here is 224 Ambivalent transnationality that the national simply becomes displaced or negated in such analysis, as if it ceases to exist, when in fact the national continues to exert the force of its presence even within transnational filmmaking practices. Moreover, the term ‘transnational’ is, on occasion, used simply to indicate international co-production or collaboration between technical and artistic personnel from across the world, without any real consideration of what the aesthetic, political or economic implications of such transnational collaboration might mean – employing a difference that, we might say, makes no difference at all. It is precisely this proliferation of the term ‘transnational’ as a potentially empty, floating signifier that has led some scholars to question whether we can profitably use, or indeed need, the term at all. Due to the colonial history and the complex identity discourses, the LusoAfrican productions are not just another kind of international production. And even though it would seem that I am working within the framework of the third definition suggested by the authors, I would rather not engage with their definitions but look at the concept by remembering the discussion of Portugal’s transnationality. I believe that this will make the question of the concept’s rhetorical employment – with an either positive or negative connotation – less relevant and foreground its inherent ambivalence. This goes in line with Higbee and Lim’s (2010: 18) proposal of a critical and discursive posture towards the concept: The concept of ‘transnational cinema’ cannot be merely descriptive because all border-crossing activities are necessarily fraught with issues of power; neither can it be purely prescriptive as this often amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking. Rather, we propose a critical, discursive stance towards the question of the transnational in film studies so that we are alert to the challenges and potentialities that greet each transnational trajectory: whether it takes place within a film’s narrative and production process, across film industries, or indeed in academia. For this article transnationality’s ambivalence is relevant for two reasons: first, because of the construction of hybrid identities within the films and second, because of the transnational production mode. Let me remember that Portugal established its late colonial and post-colonial relationships based on the idea that it was more identical than different from the colonized, using two key concepts: luso-tropicalism and lusophony. Luso-tropicalism propagates Portugal’s outstanding accomplishments – the discoveries of sea routes, islands and ‘continents’ – as a consequence of the country’s desire to convert the world to Christianity in a peaceful manner. In contrast to the Spanish conquerors, Portugal’s colonialization process is interpreted as having been guided by religious instead of material interests and was conducted in a non-violent way, by engaging, living and mixing with the most diverse cultures and ethnicities from the southern hemisphere. The concept is based on the idea that the Portuguese people, due to their own cultural miscegenation that suffered influences from Europe and Africa, are transnational in their essence. It is not surprising that Luso-tropicalism regained importance in the 1950s when the empire was coming under threat and the decolonization processes in the anglophone and francophone colonies began to abolish colonial rule around the globe. 225 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira Its main theoretician was Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre (n.d.: 10) who celebrated the Portuguese as a ‘transnational’ people, because of their European and Moorish roots: ‘The Portuguese is great because of his magnificent singularity: he is a lusotropical people. [...] his vocation is to be a transnational civilisation: a lusotropical of which Brazil is part.’ Margarida Calafate Ribeiro (2004: 152), on the other hand, cites Caeiro da Mata to demonstrate that luso-tropicalism consists, in reality, of euphemisms: it turned five centuries of colonialism into five centuries of relationships between different cultures and people, the colonial society into a multi-racial society, the imperial nation into a multi-continental nation, and the civilizational religious mission into Portugal’s integration into the tropics. Boaventura Sousa Santos (2001: 54) calls luso-tropicalism a comforting discourse for the colonizer by an underdeveloped and incompetent Prospero (deemed benevolent by Freyre). The discourse co-exists with more critical perspectives, such as Amilcar Cabral’s (1979) or Charles Boxer’s (1963), which make Portugal responsible for creating the underdevelopment of the colonized. Lusophony only entered the stage after Portugal finally let go of its ‘ultramarine provinces’ in the early 1970s, which brought a feeling of loss to the core. Its defenders believe that the utopia of constructing a harmonious transnational community in the colonies became a reality and survived the end of the empire. It is identified mainly by its common language, which is used as a metaphor for culture. By ignoring regional and national linguistic, cultural and historical differences, the Portuguese language is taken for the unifying principle and corner stone of a cultural identity, which – due to its transnational dimension – is considered superior to any national identity. Both concepts are powerful tools to convert the colonial history into a shared cultural history. The philosopher Agostinho da Silva, a distinguished scholar and Portuguese emigrant to Brazil, used Fernando Pessoa’s metaphor of ‘My country is the Portuguese language’ to reshape the notion of Portugal’s identity in the Portuguese-speaking world in 1956 (see Domingues 1998). The concept of lusophony turns Portugal’s territory into that of all the countries that speak its language, bestowing on it again the ‘magic dimension of empire‘ (FeldmanBianco 2002: 408–9), much in tune with Father António Vieira’s idea of a Fifth Empire. Within the context of literary studies, Eduardo Lourenço (1999) was the first to identify the misuse of Fernando Pessoa’s (1931) famous phrase from which the concept takes its symbolic and political power. It is invoked when Portugal needs to tighten the bonds with its ancient colonies, but any political instrumentalization of Pessoa’s phrase in a neocolonialist and nationalistic fashion has to be considered absurd, since the poet’s expression was personal and unpatriotic. For Lourenço (1999: 126), Pessoa’s writing was a linguistic adventure and the Portuguese language offered the possibility to invent ones identity beyond national restraints: This does not offer a basis for tribal nationalisms or patriotisms that exclude universalism. Our relationship with language is of a different kind, as is our fatherland that we inhabit and from which we come. The famous phrase only wants to say that the Portuguese language, the language that speaks me before I learn to speak, and, more importantly, that becomes not only a living reality through me but the only reality – in other words: the language that I use to invent myself, Fernando Pessoa, this language is my country. 226 Ambivalent transnationality The debates surrounding luso-tropicalism and lusophony confirm that they are understatements at the expense of the identity of the other – colonized, immigrants, African freedom fighters, Arabs, etc. There are, however, films that feature characters searching for inter-subjectivity and that demonstrate that transnationality is neither good nor bad, but simply an encounter. And any encounter, as Jessica Benjamin (1996) suggests with her concept of intersubjectivity, involves ambivalent, that is, simultaneous and conflicting experiences. It is a question of holding the tension between self-affirmation and recognition of the other. The studies on anglophone and francophone co-productions mentioned above have explored the question of the transnational production mode and suggested that – in Benjamin’s framework – self-affirmation by the European producers is the rule in transnational cinematographic enterprises. Nobody is on a philanthropic mission. Transnational productions are job opportunities for European production companies, laboratories, technicians and directors, and offer profit. And they present a chance to polish up the ex-colonizer’s image stained by colonialism, or to get credit for ‘fostering’ the talent of African filmmakers. What can we expect from Luso-African productions? In a situation where treaties guarantee continuous film production between Portugal and its ex-colonies, there is probably room for neocolonial self-affirmations; but given the growing awareness and critical debate of traditional discourses on colonialism, there should also be space for post-colonial inter-subjectivity and challenging perspectives. Since two of the twenty co-produced films are still in post-production and another two have not been launched on DVD, I will concentrate my following analysis on sixteen films and make only brief comments on the others. According to the necessity to give a general overview of the transnational feature film landscape, instead of presenting in-depth analysis, the films will be discussed individually in a resumed fashion within the context of the four co-producing PALOP. According to my understanding of transnationality as ambivalent, I will try to comprehend how the co-productions negotiate the elements of national and transnational identity. Are they capable of holding the post-colonial tensions? Are new and multilateral perspectives that confront out-dated discourses the exception or the rule? 6. As can be noted, many films were financed not only by Portugal and the PALOP, but also with the assistance of financial bodies or co-producers from other nations. However, the films are only considered national productions by Portugal and the respective African nations in the official publications (ICAM, ICA). There are two more productions that received funding from an African country, namely Mozambique. But both films by José Carlos de Oliveira, Preto e Branco (2003) and Um Rio (2005), were produced exclusively by Portuguese production companies. the lusoPhone Co-ProduCtions The table below lists all twenty Luso-African feature films produced between 1988 and 2010.6 Country Year Filmmaker Title Co-Production Angola 1988 Ruy Duarte de Carvalho Angola/France/ Portugal 1993 José António Moía ou O Recado das Ilhas/The Message From the Islands O Miradouro da Lua/ The Watchtower of The Moon Angola/Portugal (Continued) 227 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira 2004 Zezé Gambôa O Herói/The Hero 2004 2010 Maria João Ganga O. Fortunato de Oliveira Zezé Gambôa 1988 António Faria 1996 Leão Lopes 1997 Francisco Manso 1998 Fernando Vendrell Ana Ramos Lisboa Na Cidade Vazia/ Hollow City O Comboio da Canhoca/ Canhoca Train O Grande Kilapy/ The Great Kilapy Os Flagelados do Vento Leste/The Victims of the East Wind Ilhéu da Contenda/ Isle of Contempt O Testamento do Senhor Napumoceno/ Napumoceno’s Will Fintar o Destino/ Dribbling Fate Cabo Verde – nha Cretcheu/Cape Verde my Beloved A Ilha dos Escravos/ Slaves’ Island Udji Azui de Yonta/ The Blue Eyes of Yonta Po di Sangui/ Tree of Blood 2004 Cape Verde 2007 GuineaBissau Mozambique 2008 Francisco Manso 1992 Flora Gomes 1996 Flora Gomes 2002 Flora Gomes Nha Fala/My Voice 1998 2007 Solveig Nordlund Fernando Vendrell Teresa Prata Comédia Infantil/ Nelio’s Story O Gotejar da Luz/ Light Drops Terra Sonambula/ Sleepwalking Land 2009 João Ribeiro 2010 José Carlos de Oliveira O Último Vôo do Flamingo/The Last Flight of the Flamingo Quero Ser uma Estrela/I Want To Be a Star 2002 Table 2: Luso-African co-productions (1988–2010). 228 Angola/France/ Portugal Angola/Portugal Angola/Morocco Portugal/Tunisia Angola/Brazil/ Portugal Cape Verde/Portugal Belgium/Cape-Verde/ France/ Portugal Belgium/Brazil/ Cape Verde/ France/Portugal Cape Verde/ Portugal Cape Verde/ Portugal Brazil/Cape Verde/ Portugal/Spain Guinea-Bissau/ Portugal France/GuineaBissau/Portugal Tunisia France/Luxemburg/ Portugal Mozambique/ Portugal/Sweden Mozambique/ Portugal Germany/ Mozambique/ Portugal Mozambique/ Portugal Mozambique/ Portugal Ambivalent transnationality When looking at the involvement of filmmakers in the co-productions, a balance between the number of directors from Portugal and from the PALOP can be observed. This implies, at least statistically, equal opportunities of expression. Eight directors from the PALOP (four from Angola, two from Cape Verde, one from Guinea-Bissau and one from Mozambique) were responsible for ten films, while the remaining ten productions were directed by six filmmakers from Portugal, one of them being a Swede who has been a Portuguese resident for more than three decades and one a Portuguese who spent her childhood and youth in Mozambique and Brazil. Two other interesting points can be singled out. First, all films engage with African reality. Their main characters make only sporadic trips to Europe, in most cases to Portugal. Second, there is a great variety of issues related to the historical and cultural specificities of the country where the film is set or in relation to the origin of the filmmaker. Four major topics can be identified: Portugal’s colonial history, the civil wars in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, migration to Europe (Portugal and France), and the encounter of African and European traditions, values and customs. anGola A small film renaissance took place in Angola when after the end of 27 years of civil war (1985–2002) three co-productions directed by Angolan directors were distributed in 2004. Zezé Gambôa directed his first fiction feature O Herói/The Hero in 2004. The film engages with Angola’s difficult post-war reality through a multi-narrative in realist style. It tells the story of the war hero Vitório (Oumar Makena Diop) who lost a leg in combat and is now trying to reintegrate into Angolan society. His story crosses with those of the adolescent Manu (Milton Santo Coelho) and the prostitute Maria Bárbara (Maria Ceiça) who desire to reunite with their families separated during the war. The troubled identities of the characters and the touching narrative on the splitting up of families represents the reality of a population that is facing more than half a million deadly war victims and tens of thousands of injured or dislocated people. The happy ending in which the characters reaffirm their identity and live the bliss of a non-biological family with a secure professional future reflects, on the other hand, rather the yearning for a recomposed national identity than the hard comings of most parts of the population. This genuine desire underscores the need of solidarity and respect for the former soldiers of the civil war, whose fight is compared to the anti-colonial resistance in the 1960s and 1970s. The film thus suggests that the anti-colonial values are still shared by all Angolans and could help to construct a stable post-war identity, as well as conduct the country towards reconciliation. This hope for national unity is apparent in the surrogate family and the reintegration of the hero. His missing leg ends up mobilizing different parts of the society and enables him to transgress due to an act of solidarity the common social obstacles pointed out in the film: corruption (among politicians) and neocolonialism (among Portuguese firms). Throughout the films the diverse tensions of Angola’s post-war situation are explored as being strongly related to colonialism. The new identity is only possible through recognition by the fellow Angolans and should be inspired by a common cause like the war for independence. 229 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira Figure 1: Oumar Makena Diop and Maria Ceiça in The Hero (Courtesy of David & Golias). Zezé Gambôa’s next film, O Grande Kilapy/The Great Kilapy (2010), shot in Brazil, Portugal and Angola after an interval of five years without feature film production, will engage with the colonial war. While Gamboa’s film focuses on the post-war period, Maria João Ganga’s Na Cidade Vazia/Hollow City (2004) is set during the civil war. Her project dated from 1991 but, given the political situation, could not be turned into reality until after the end of the war. The story focuses on a little orphan, N’dala (João Roldan), who is brought from a refugee camp into the city in order to be saved from the battles that intensified after the first democratic elections. His flight from a group of children under the guidance of a Portuguese nun (Ana Bustorff) is a rereading of the novel As Aventuras de Ngunga/’Ngunga’s Adventures: A Story from Angola (1972), written during the colonial war by the Angolan writer of Portuguese descent Pepetela. Since the film adapts the original text to the time of the civil war, it inverts almost everything that happens in the book: while Ngunga lost his parents during a massacre by the Portuguese military and becomes a hero fighting them, N’dala’s parents were assassinated by Angolan guerrilla fighters and he himself ends up dying tragically. The inter-textual references are established through a character named Zé (Domingos Fernandes Fonseca), who plays Ngunga in a school theatre production. Zé is also the only person to assist N’dala in the empty city. The emptiness referred to in the title stems from the obligatory retreat at night, but serves at the same time as a metaphor for the complete lack of values in Angola’s society. Most of the adults that N’dala meets are merely interested in money, alcohol and sex. Except for a fisherman 230 Ambivalent transnationality (Francisco Custodio) who represents the traditional cultural identity to which N’dala would like to return. The boy develops no interest what so ever in the urban culture to which he is introduced by Zé and that consists of action movies, dance music and parties with prostitutes. His life in the rural area is remembered in short flashbacks that show a festivity in his village, interrupted by the arrival of guerrilla fighters. A return to his former life is therefore as utopian as his possible salvation by the Catholic nun who is trying to find him in the city. During an assault in which N’dala is being used by adults, he shoots a man just as Ngunga did in Pepetela’s book. But in contrast to Ngunga, who assumes his identity as an African man by killing the head of the PIDE (Portugal’s secrete police), this homicide is stripped bare of any sense or function. In the closure, in which N’dala ends up dying through the same weapon, the film leaves no doubt that the times have changed profoundly since the colonial war. Hollow City shows a young boy’s loss of innocence that stands in for the disillusion of an entire country, just as the original Ngunga stood in for the national hopes thirty years earlier. In contrast to The Hero, the film demonstrates that the values that supported the anti-colonial fight have been corrupted and that it is now impossible to construct a mature adult identity modelled on the past. By staging the civil war instead of looking at the quest for a new identity, her film is rather a testimony of the self-destruction that is coming to an end. The nation will have to contemplate this past and start from scratch. The project for O Comboio da Canhoca/Canhoca Train (2004) by Orlando Fortunato de Oliveira dates from 1986 and suffered the same fate as Hollow City: it was shot after the political stabilization in 2002. The film is set during colonial times and tries to clarify the reasons for the civil war through the story of a group of fifty Angolans who were arrested arbitrarily. This occurred after the revolt of a black cleaning man whose wife had been violated by a Portuguese soldier. The ignorance and aggression of the colonizers is highlighted in the narrative, as well as the divergences between the representatives of the many different Angolan identities. The disagreements are linked to Portugal’s violence and lack of values, making colonialism indirectly responsible for the outbreak of the civil war. A wide range of factors is pointed out persuasively in the discussions that take place while the group of Angolans – consisting of revolutionaries, apolitical farmers and submissive administrators of mixed race – are waiting for rescue inside a boxcar on a deserted rail track. The ethnic and political diversity and the clashes between the various subsequent identities, the influence of theories on assimilation, the revolt against the colonizers, as well as the utopia of a society based on racial mixture are stirred up in this inhuman condition. Although the Portuguese characters – mostly militaries or PIDE agents – are stereotyped, there is one man working at the train station who demonstrates compassion and a humanist attitude. This helps to make the compelling argument that colonial repression and the complex tensions they created exploded in Angola’s civil war even more credible. Much of the film is dedicated to debates between the different positions. They help to assess the colonial past, as well as the civil war. By showing colonialism’s effect on Angola’s identities, the film offers the most complex account of the past. It does not glorify the anti-colonial struggle like The Hero, or dismisses it like Hollow City. Instead, it considers it worthy of a profound examination in order to learn lessons from its violence. 231 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira Before this small film renaissance, two co-productions had been produced at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The first production dates from 1988 and was directed by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, a Portuguese writer who holds an Angolan passport since he decided to stay after the country gained independence. Moía ou O Recado das Ilhas/The Message From the Islands (1988) is set in Cape Verde and tells the story of an Angolan woman of Creole descent, Moía (Edmea Brigham), who makes a first visit to her mother’s home country. Travelling around Cape Verde’s different islands, she tries to understand her mixed cultural and racial identity. The film suggests in a highly inter-textual and self-referential aesthetic that the encounter between Africans and Portuguese created an original identity of rare beauty. Moia demonstrates the complexity of this identity through the participation of the character in manifold popular celebrations, such as carnival or religious festivities of Portuguese origin (the comemoração da bandeira [commemoration of the flag]), as well as through its music (the most famous Cape Verdean singer, Cesária Évora, performs a morna) and traditions. But Moía is also confronted with the colonial past in scenes that incorporate literary references, mainly The Tempest by William Shakespeare, so as to investigate the creation of Cape Verdes cultural hybridity. As a result, the Creole identity is interpreted as a violent and creative fusion of African and European cultures. In the end, the young woman is proud to be part of this culture that managed to find a way to hold the tension between so many different cultural elements with grace. Problems like poverty and mass migration as the other side of Cape Verde’s hybridity are left out in this celebratory film. Though it also suggests luso-tropical hybridity, the discourse in O Miradouro da Lua/The Watchtower of The Moon (1993) by Portuguese filmmaker Jorge António is, in contrast, extremely simplistic and discards problematic aspects of colonialism with great ease. The film narrates incoherently the story of a young Portuguese man, João Araújo (João Cabral), who travels to Angola in search of his father who stayed in Angola after the end of colonialism. It is his father’s death, discovered by João at the end of the narrative, that serves as a metaphor for the end of colonial identity. It is aimed to set the main character (as well as his generation) free from any feelings of guilt or association with Portugal’s colonial history. The film is eager to suggest that there are no cultural differences whatsoever between the young Portuguese and the Angolan youth that integrates him with delight. Both share a preference for urban globalized culture such as commercial cinema, fashion shows and discotheques. Not only is João a welcome newcomer to the urban crowd (the women constantly dispute his attention), he even becomes a part of Angola when he discovers his halfbrother. The blood bond substitutes the earlier colonial relationship and is pointed out as a clear sign for the still existing linage between Portugal and Angola. Possible tensions or unpleasant legacies are wiped out and replaced by the right to remain in the country on the basis of brotherhood. CaPe verde The first Cape Verdean feature film ever to be produced was a co-production directed by Portuguese television director António Faria in 1988. The film, spoken entirely in Portuguese, is a superficial adaptation of one of Cape 232 Ambivalent transnationality Verdes most famous novels, Os Flagelados do Vento Leste/The Victims of the East Wind (Manuel Lopes, 1960). While the novel depicts the struggle for survival of a Creole family during one of the terrible but common droughts on the Island Santo Antão in 1943, the homonymous film reduces the conflict between the population and the merciless nature to an enumeration of events without paying any attention to the characters’ threat of losing first their identity and then their lives. The hopelessness to cultivate the land, the impossibility to go to school because of hunger and desperation, the adults’ loss of religious faith due to the tragic events of the drought, as well as the cultural impoverishment, especially with regard to music, one of the last remedies against the devastation, are only glanced at. In addition, the subtle references to the exploitation of the population by the Portuguese colonizers in the original text vanish altogether in this fuzzy and poorly narrated adaptation. The country’s second feature was directed by Cape Verdean director Leão Lopes in 1996 and used another famous novel as its source: IIha de Contenda/ Isle of Contempt (Teixeira de Sousa, 1972). The book is set in the 1960s and describes with restrained irony the decadence of one of the dominant Portuguese families on the Fire Island, the only island with renowned racial separatism. The family’s fall is accompanied by the ascension of a new class of Creole upstarts – returned immigrants, landowners and professionals with higher education like the local doctor. The ambivalent character of Eusébio (João Lourenço) and his desire to maintain some of the former glory of his family serves as the story’s motor. But while the novel reveals his egoistic and opportunistic personality, the homonymous film offers only a shy critique of the racist attitudes of the ridiculous Felisberto (Camacho Costa), a cousin of Eusébio. In the tradition of luso-tropicalist discourse, it closes with the harmonious coexistence between the two social classes. In contrast to its title, the film about this island of contempt underscores mainly the hybrid identity of the island’s inhabitants. Eusébio’s son, Chiquinho (Mano Preto), who is of mixed race and has a romantic affair with a girl visiting from Portugal, is a key figure in this undertaking. By advocating that the younger generation of Portuguese and Cape Verdeans does not share the previous racial prejudices, the film evades touching on the historical conflicts apparent in the novel’s title and its narrative. O Testamento de Senhor Napumoceno/Napumoceno’s Will (1997) is another adaptation, but the first film to include Brazil as co-producer. In contrast to Isle of Contempt, the novel by Germano Almeida from 1989 is told from the point of view of a Creole upstart. In the hands of Portuguese television director Francisco Manso it turns into an amusing but re-mythifying farce on the idiosyncrasies and fetishes of this new class. In both book and film the main character Napumoceno (Nelson Xavier) constructs a prosperous life through petty crimes in commerce. He admires American consumer culture and technology, loves Portuguese cooking and is a hypocrite with a double moral. Even though the adaptation demonstrates some of the character’s contradictions, it is not interested in his emotional dilemmas explored in the novel that reveals the reasons for his ridiculous conduct, as well as his regrets at the end of his life. Not only did he imitate European and American behaviour patterns in order to become rich and socially recognized; he had to negate his own identity, humble origin and emotional life. 233 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira 7. The film resembles European co-productions that are considered Europuddings because of their fuzzy identity politics. 8. See for example Ossos/ Bones (1997), O Quarto da Vanda/Vanda’s Room (2000) and Juventude em Marcha/ Colossal Youth (2006). 234 His illegitimate daughter is only recognized after his death and becomes the heir to his fortune. This human side is neglected in a film that prefers to suggest that his attitudes are common features of Creole identity. With a commercial success in the lusophone world in mind, Manso cast television stars from Brazil’s famous soap operas who speak with their natural Brazilian accents. What is more, due to the Brazilian casting, the stereotyped Creole identity becomes valid for all former colonies. Historical references to tensions between colonizers and the Cape Verdean population present in the novel are also extinguished in this Luso-African ‘pudding’.7 The desire to negate one’s self in favour of a European identity is even more evident in the bilingual Fintar o Destino/Dribbling Fate (1998) by Portuguese director Fernando Vendrell. Based on a true story and produced in realist style, the film centres on Mané (Carlos Germano), a bar tender who is unsatisfied with his life. He despises his culture for laziness, leisure and alcohol abuse. When a young man, he was invited by one of Portugal’s most important soccer clubs, Benfica, but declined in order to marry and stay in his country. The first scenes of the film demonstrate that his life and marriage are poisoned by feelings of regret and failure. To compensate for his error he has become an obsessive soccer fan. But not even this fulfils him anymore and he decides to give his life some meaning. Parting from the principle that Portugal is the promised land of soccer, he travels to Lisbon where he wants to suggest a young player whom he coaches to Benfica. During his journey he re-encounters Américo (Horácio Santos), the friend who took his place at Benfica. He now conducts a poor life since he did not take advantage of his opportunity. This gives Mané the possibility to reassess the past and free himself from the idea that he lost the chance of a lifetime. According to the film, it was Américo’s Cape Verdean bohemian lifestyle and not difficulties in adapting to Portuguese society that made him fail to conquer fame and fortune. There are in fact many scenes in which the receptivity of the Portuguese and the possibility of assimilating with ease into its society are underlined. Mané’s son Alberto (Daniel Martinho), for example, is happily married to a white woman and perfectly at home in Lisbon; a condition not quite the rule, as many films by Pedro Costa8 suggest. But the trip makes the main character realize that he misses and values his life in Cape Verde, mainly its sociability and happiness. He returns from the trip in peace with himself and certain of his strong bond with Portugal. Since his idea that Portugal is the better place for soccer is not shattered, he insists that his young athlete leave the country and play at Benfica. Soccer serves as an identity bridge and makes it possible to fully ignore the fact that at the time when Mané was invited to play in Portugal, Cape Verde was still a colony and the PAIGC was trying to liberate the country from colonial rule. In his adaptation A Ilha dos Escravos/Slaves’Island (2008), based on the nineteenth century novel O Escravo/The Slave (1856) by Portuguese author José Evaristo de Almeida considered to be the first considered the first novel with Cape Verde as a topic, Francisco Manso employed again a cast of well-known television actors from Portugal, Brazil and PALOP and turned the historic account of an organized upheaval against slavery into a flashy melodrama. The original text that exalts the qualities of a young creole, Maria, the daughter of a rich farmer, is only an inspiration. The most important feature of the novel, her falling in love with a slave, is eliminated so as to give space to the political conspiracy and a different romance. The film centres on a Portuguese villain, Albano Lopes (Diogo Infante), who is the grandson of Ambivalent transnationality Figure 2: Carlos Germano in Dribbling Fate (Courtesy of David & Golias). a much-feared landowner. He comes to the Island of Santo Antão with the prospect of re-establishing the rule of the Miguelistas, the followers of the deposed King, dom Miguel. But Lopes is like his grandfather, a man without ethics, and betrays first the Portuguese soldiers and then the slaves who he involves in the revolt. The film was first televised as a series. This is perceptible in its melodramatic structure, stereotyped characters and lack of cinematographic interest. Even though in terms of narrative a minor film, it puts forward an uncommon discourse with regard to the hybridity of Cape Verdean identity that goes beyond the affirmation of luso-tropicalism. The main character has blood relations with almost all the other important characters because of his grandfather’s sexual relationships with slave women. This includes Maria (Vanessa Giácomo), whom he falls in love with, as well as her slave (Ângelo Torres), who falls in love with her. While the blood linage is acknowledged, it is shown to be repressed: it has no meaning whatsoever for the characters, since the interest in the abolition of slavery remains political. The factual abolition would, in effect, come more than a decade later, in 1869. Instead of resolving social tensions, luso-tropicalism – the supposed harmonious mixture of different races and cultures – has no effect, and the film ends, on the contrary, with a deep divide between the Portuguese and the Cape Verdeans. Conscious of their oppression, Slaves’ Island tries to give space to the colonial others: the closure applauds the cry for freedom uttered by Mestre Tesoura (Milton Gonçalves) and shows the successful flight from slavery of a group of Africans. But the African characters are, however, little more than 235 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira caricatures and the scenes that depict religious rituals or the fight for liberation are indebted to the most stereotyped representations of voodoo practicing ‘negroes’ from Hollywood B movies. As a result, the subversion of the Luso-tropicalist discourse is overshadowed by this anachronistic and involuntary racist portrayal. mozambique Given the predominance of Portuguese directors in the Luso-Mozambican co-productions, European perspectives dominate there as well. Vendrell’s second feature, O Gotejar da Luz/Light Drops (2002), is based on a short story with the same title, written by Leite de Vasconcelos who also signed responsible for the screenplay. The film takes a more critical stance towards the relationship between former colonizer and ex-colony than in his earlier Dribbling Fate. Set in Mozambique in the 1950s, the sophisticatedly photographed film tells the coming of age of an adolescent boy, Rui Pedro (Filipe Carvalho). His rite of passage to an adult-self is marked by a twofold disillusionment: on the one hand, with regard to his father (João Lagarto), who exploits the country as administrator of a cotton plantation, and, on the other hand, by his surrogate father Jacopo (Amaral Matos), a wise African who uses the tribal right to kill his own daughter Ana (Alexandra Antunes) after she brought shame over the village. Ana, who works for the boy’s mother (Teresa Madruga), is married to another great friend of his, Guinda (Alberto Magassela), an assimilated African, but falls in love with his initially racist Portuguese cousin (Marco D’Almeida). Consequently, the film compares the exploitation practiced by Portuguese colonialism with an archaic African custom. This cultural relativism insinuates that both cultures are in fact cruel and liberates Portugal by means of one African homicide from 500 years of oppression, genocide, slave trade and abuse. The film concludes with the suggestion that the boy should construct his own identity by parting from a synthesis of both cultures, given that each of them has become obsolete on its own. Comédia Infantil/Nelio’s Story, a film made in 1998 by Solveig Nordlung, a Swede who has been living in Portugal for more than thirty years, parts from the same principle: the necessity of a new identity based on both African and European cultures. The adaptation of Henning Mankell’s novel, a Swedish author of best-selling crime stories who lives part of the year in Mozambique, depicts the country’s civil war by flirting with magical realism and by ignoring the colonial past and its legacy. Nélio (Evaristo Abreu), a little boy from a village, flees to the city after a guerrilla fighter savagely killed his entire family. During his trip to the capital African spirits guide him, but, once he arrives there, he finds refuge inside the statue of a Portuguese general, as if the leftovers from colonialism could protect him. When trying to survive with a gang of street kids, Nelio discovers his supernatural healing powers, which are highly appreciated by the poor and turn him into a much-required heeler. Even though true to the plot, Nordlund makes some major changes with regard to Nélio’s characterization as a boy with exceptional powers and de-contextualizes the references to animistic African culture. In the novel the poor consider him a healer, but Mankell is very clear about him being only a charismatic little boy. In the book here is only one supernatural character, while the film turns another two into representatives of animistic culture. Nelio’s now exceptional powers come to a sudden end when he is mortally 236 Ambivalent transnationality Figure 3: Filipe Carvalho in Light Drops (Courtesy of Cinemate). wounded by the guerrilla fighter who killed his family, while in the book he is shot by a security personnel of the theatre. After this incident, the references to Africa’s animist culture are in fact substituted with the idea of Christian salvation, and Nélio assumes the model identity of Christ, when the baker who found him in agony burns his dead body to bake bread. This bread is shared among the street children in a Eucharist feast, so as to make them aware that they possess the same powers as Nélio. Once more, a co-production puts forward the naive idea that cultural fusion could lead to a new identity capable of overcoming the difficulties of post-colonial African countries in crisis. Its refuge in magical realism, which distinguishes it from the much more sober and instructive original romance, to solve the burning social problems actually proves that the European filmmaker does not believe in real solutions. While the first two co-productions were made by Portuguese filmmakers, two recent features were directed by filmmakers with a closer relationship to African reality. Portuguese director Teresa Prata, who spent her childhood in Mozambique and Brazil and now lives in Germany, as well as Mozambican director João Ribeiro, both adapted novels on the civil war by Mia Couto (Terra Sonambula/Sleepwalking Land, published in 1992, and O Último do Flamingo/The Last Flight of the Flamingo, published in 2000), renowned Mozambican writer of Portuguese descent. I Want to Be a Star, directed by Portuguese José Carlos de Oliveira is the third film he shot in Mozambique, but his first co-production. A melodramatic thriller, it engages with the exploitation of young African women to become models. The trafficking of adolescents is shown to be a business run together by Africans and Portuguese. 237 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira 9. See Murphy and Williams (2007) for biographical details of the filmmaker and a discussion of his entire filmography. Sleepwalking Land (Teresa Prata, 2007) is subtler in its identity discourse, but, in accordance with its literary source, also suggests that Mozambique’s future identity is (or should be) Euro-African. Muidinga (Nick Lauro Teresa), the hero of the film, is of mixed race, a ‘mulatto’ who has lost any memory of his parents due to a disease. He was saved from near death in a refugee camp and adopted by Tuahir (Aladino Jasse), an elderly man who worked during colonial times for the Portuguese railway company. The recovery of the boy’s identity is told, in line with Couto’s book, in two intertwined stories. When Tuahir and Muidinga take shelter in a plundered bus on the deserted road, they find the notebooks of one of the dead, Kindzu (Hélio Fumo), and read his story. After leaving his war torn village, Kindzu met Farida (Ilda Gonzalez) who had been raped by a Portuguese landowner, even though his wife had raised her like her own child. Since the two fall in love, Kindzu promises Farida to find the child, which she gave away out of despair and shame. The circular closure reveals what Muidinga had already guessed from the notebooks: that he is in fact Gaspar, the mixed-race son who Kindzu envisions just before dying. African cosmology features strongly in the book, setting up a background for the understanding of the cultural and racial implications of the civil war. Concentrating on Muidinga’s adventures while he lives in or tries to depart from the bus, the film cuts most of the complex cultural references – the belief in the importance and presence of the ancestors – as well as allusions to culturally and politically relevant characters and events. The civil war turns into a circumstantial reference that remains in the background, as does the discussion and search for a future post-colonial and post-war identity. Although Mia Couto’s original idea that both Africa and Portugal are responsible for the civil war because they are both characterized by violence is open to discussion, the film distorts his arguments and presents Muidinga uncritically as the representative of a promising Euro-African identity whose relation with the civil war is obscured. Guinea-bissau In contrast to the Mozambican co-productions, one national filmmaker, Florentino ‘Flora’ Gomes, directed the films produced with Guinea-Bissau9 which are all spoken in Creole. His first transnational film, Os Olhos Azuis de Yonta/The Blue Eyes of Yonta (1992), is a low budget multi-narrative about the difficulties of constructing a post-colonial identity in Guinea-Bissau. The war hero Vicente (António Simão Mendes), his comrade (Pedro Dias), and children Yonta (Maysa Marta) and Amílcar (Mohamed Seidi), engage with the conflict between remaining faithful to the ideals of the anti-colonial struggle and the pressures of market economy. The film is far from being nostalgic and recognizes the necessity to reevaluate and renegotiate the countries’ identity by pinpointing the conflicts that stem from the influences of western consumer culture, the desire to migrate and the traditional African values and costumes. The existing paradoxes are discussed through the relationships between the characters and craftily resumed in the last dreamlike scene. This scene turns evident that it is neither desirable nor possible to fully assume a western lifestyle, because the young people who are keen on its commodities and status symbols already constructed a proper identity, in which traditional African values, respect for their own society and the memory of the anti-colonial past are integrated. In contrast to the synthesis suggested 238 Ambivalent transnationality in other Luso-African films, Guinean society is the basis into which elements from other cultures can be incorporated without them being able to distort its cultural self-understanding. Flora Gomes’ following film, Pau di Sangui/Tree of Blood (1996), abandons the anti-colonial context and focuses on the negative effects of western technology on African identity. This parabolic film develops a poetic imaginary, which results from its references to visual and oral African symbolism, traditions and beliefs.10 The harmonious cultural life of a village – expressed at the beginning of the film in its paintings, carpentry and stories – is being threatened. First, because of the death of the twin brother of the main character N’te (Djuco Bodjan), who disrespected his antecedents and traditional costumes; and second, because he attracted men from the capital who want to exploit the village by setting up a lucrative wood trade. The threat on the collective identity of the villagers makes them leave their home and embark on a symbolic voyage that takes them through a desert. They only return when the son of the main character is born – as had been foreseen by N’te’s mother (Bia Gomes) – and after encountering other villagers, also on the quest for a new life. The return to the village leads to an open end that avoids easy answers about the future of their traditional identity and how to resolve the conflict between tradition and modernity, modern western technology and ancestral knowledge. Gomes’ last fiction feature, Nha Fala/My Voice (2002), which has also been the countries’ last fiction film, takes a completely different approach. The colourful and stylized musical returns to Yonta’s optimism, but adds a rather commercial perspective on identity, comparable to other Luso-African productions on cultural synthesis. Shot without subsidies from Guinea-Bissau,11 the film encounters in western culture and technology the chance to overcome obsolete African ideas and to construct a new identity. Using one of commercial cinema’s most popular genres, the musical, My Voice is visibly directed towards a globalized audience. The beautiful main character, Vita (Fatou N’Diaye), leaves Guinea-Bissau to study in France. Before her departure she says farewell to her family and friends. Musical numbers – composed by famous Cameroon musician Manu Dibango – present the wide range of contemporary social problems that Guinea-Bissau is facing: the difficulty in dealing with the memory of the heroic fight for independence, corruption, the coexistence of Animism and Catholicism, and the unemployment among young people with university degrees. Just like in Yonta the society seems incapable of keeping track with the ideals of the anti-colonial fight. These are remembered with a light-hearted running gag in which two characters try to find a place for the statue of the political leader of the PAIGC, Amílcar Cabral, that grows each time it is moved around.12 In this post-colonial constellation, Vita’s route of migration seems to be the only escape. Once in Paris she falls in love with a young music producer (JeanChristophe Dollé) and by singing one of his compositions leaves behind an old family superstition that says that women of her family died when they sang. With the purpose of dealing with the offence and after having become a European music star, she returns with her boyfriend and band to her hometown. By staging her own funeral, she simultaneously respects and transgresses her mother’s (Bia Gomes) belief and conception of identity. In tune with the genre, the film presents a vibrant and utopian Africa that embraces western culture and technology without hesitations. The resulting hybrid identity has the key failure that it is restricted to stardom. 10. As David Murphy and Patrick William (2007: 142) note, ‘Po di Sangui is simultaneously more modern (in terms, particularly, of higher cinematic production values) and more traditional (the film is set in a deliberately allegorically stylised African village, whose name means “tomorrow is far away”)’. 11. Due to the political and military conflict on 7 June 1998, the film was entirely shot in Cape Verde and did not receive any funding from Guinea-Bissau. But since the film is dedicated to the city of Guinea-Bissau and was shot by Flora Gomes, My Voice will here be considered a LusoGuinean co-production. 12. In 2007 Flora Gomes returned to the issue of the colonial war and directed together with Diana Andringa the documentary As Duas Faces da Guerra/ The Two Faces of War, which was entirely financed by Portugal. 239 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira 13. Even though Cape Verde was not a theatre of war during the colonial war between 1961 and 1974, many of PAIGC leaders were Cape Verdeans. Thus, it is surprising that Isle of Contempt does not engage more openly with the conflicts that were responsible for the war and are analysed in depth in the novel that gave origin to the film. 240 ConClusion The sixteen Luso-African co-productions under analysis vary strongly in their discourses on identity. The case of Guinean Flora Gomes demonstrates most evidently that one director can accomplish the whole spectrum, ranging from a discussion of anti-colonialism as an important but also harmful element for post-colonial identity, a concern with the threat to traditional African identity, to the celebration of a new Euro-African hybrid identity. His last film might please European and African audiences alike, and the fact that it was made after an interval of six years, even though Gomes had earned worldwide praise for his earlier films, is suggestive about the possible pressures and concessions he had to make in order to find funding. Due to a set of reasons that include its history, dimension and geographic situation, but mainly because they were made by a national filmmaker with an authorial signature, the co-productions with Guinea-Bissau differ strongly from the transnational films with Mozambique. The three directors of the Mozambican features, Fernando Vendrell, Solveig Nordlund and Teresa Prata, are all from Europe and their inter-identity proposals that fuse traditional African with European values are closer to wishful thinking than to reality. When compared with Flora Gomes’ films it becomes obvious that they are unaware of the contradictions and cultural clashes that African countries have been facing since independence. Discourses that make the former colonizer or western culture look better than they deserve are also a common feature in the Cape Verdean co-productions made by Portuguese directors. Given the genuine hybridism of Creole culture and language, the concept serves the need for a less stigmatized Portuguese identity, but obscures the historical conflicts present in the original literary texts, whose compelling stories are simplified by the cinematographic adaptations. The most disappointing example is António Faria’s film, probably the least inspired start ever for a (trans)national film history. Fernando Vendrell’s film exemplifies a market-oriented concept of hybridity and provides one of the few case studies where financial interests (mainly in the Brazilian market) are harmful to the development of a credible discourse on Creole identity. Cape Verdean Leão Lopes is the only director to keep some of the discomfort and historical incompatibilities between Creole and Europeans from the original text, but seems equally convinced that they are easily overcome by the post-colonial generation.13 While the great majority of co-productions with Cape Verde could please a Portuguese audience with their luso-tropicalist discourse on a harmonious cultural encounter, films by Portuguese directors are rather disappointing. Francisco Manso’s second film subverts luso-tropicalism but its representation of African slaves is such a cliché that the critique of the political manipulation by the Portuguese villain is outweighed. Directed by filmmakers from diverse backgrounds, the Luso-Angolan productions offer a greater variety of approaches towards the question of identity. Only the film by Portuguese director José António forwards a simplistic discourse on equality and brotherhood in its attempt to free Portugal from any kind of post-colonial responsibility. The Luso-African directors develop more cunning views. Not by accident, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho takes refuge from the war torn Angola in Cape Verde’s Creole society, where he can celebrate the existence of a post-colonial Euro-African identity – which had been on the Angolan agenda only until the nineteenth century. Conversely, his film does Ambivalent transnationality not fail to remember that Creole hybridity is as much the product of historical clashes, as a result of the creative symbioses of African and European cultures, races and languages. Fortunato de Oliveira presents the entire landscape of Angolan identities and inter-identities, indicating that they were bound to enter into conflict after colonialism’s end. The two Angolan filmmakers involved in transnational productions are equally concerned with understanding the civil war, but instead of returning to colonial times they either look to the recent past or the present. Their discourses differ greatly: while Zezé Gambôa develops a positive perspective of reconciliation by using the remembrance of anti-colonialism as a bridge to the future, Maria João Ganga points out how deeply the war affected the (in)capacity of (re)constructing identity. The Luso-Angolan films confirm the earlier findings that the directors who live in Africa tend to develop more multilateral views than the only Portuguese filmmaker, who tries to forget the unpleasant colonial past as quickly as possible. Although seven of the twenty co-productions produced between 1980 and 2010 had input from other countries, it is rather difficult to observe influences by these producers. The only film where the impact is perceivable is My Voice, in which Vita migrates to the financial partner France. As mentioned above, within the context of Gomes’ work, concessions to the foreign producer can be sensed. The presence of non-European countries is, on the other hand, too insignificant to offer conclusions. It is, nevertheless, noticeable that while the two co-producers from North-African countries participated in films with complex identity discourses, the participation of Brazil occurred in two productions with strong commercial interests and simplifying discourses. Sophisticated productions targeting box office success or based on commercial television series are, however, rather the exception than the rule. The majority of the films analyzed are low budget films with slow and contemplative narratives. Instead of having stars in their cast, non-professional actors perform. Production quality varies greatly, as do genres and styles that range from realist docudrama to stylized musical. Indeed, few films meet the average technical standards of European cinema. Light Drops, My Voice, Napumoceno’s Will and Slaves’ Island stand out in terms of their elaborate photography and art direction, when compared with the simplicity of Moía, The Hero, Sleepwalking Land and Hallow City. This should not be mistaken for a judgment of the films’ quality. On the contrary, the low-budget films are often more inspired and convincing than the more stylish productions. In terms of language as an important distribution factor in the respective countries or within the lusophone market, seven films represent the complex linguistic set of the PALOP and are not spoken entirely in Portuguese: one Angolan production (Moía) and two Cape Verdean films (Isle of Contempt and Dribbling Fate) are partially spoken in Creole from the islands, as is one Luso-Guinean production (My Voice), whereas the other two (The Blue Eyes of Yonta and Tree of Blood) are entirely spoken in Creole from Guinea-Bissau. Sleepwalking Land uses one of Mozambique’s native languages and Portuguese, spoken by the bilingual main characters. The Creole language was recognized as written language in 1998. More disseminated than Portuguese, initiatives to make it the country’s official language persist. It is noteworthy that the Portuguese language is in actual fact not the first language for many people in the PALOP.14 In Angola it is spoken by 60 per cent of the population, next to 11 linguistic groups and 90 dialects, and an estimated 70 per cent speak a native language as first or 14. There is much controversy on the correct numbers. These and the following can be found on a website hosted by the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte: http://www .linguaportuguesa.ufrn .br/pt_index.php. 241 Carolin Overhoff Ferreira second language. In Guinea-Bissau approximately 15 per cent of the population speak Portuguese, while 44 per cent use Creole; in Mozambique it is the first language of 6.5 per cent of the population and second language of 39.6 per cent, next to a wide range of Bantu languages. The Luso-African productions do not contemplate the restricted demand of Portuguese, with the exception of the Luso-Guinean that are in Creole. In other words, the transnational films from Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique were mainly produced for an audience that understands Portuguese. The most striking characteristic of the co-productions between Portugal and its former African colonies is, nonetheless, the impact of the national or transnational background of their directors, being transnational filmmakers more inclined to develop ambivalent views. In contrast to anglophone or francophone productions, the influence through the mode of production seems to be less direct and is rather noticeable in the films directed by Portuguese filmmakers in the 1980s and 1990s. The importance of hybrid identities is unquestionable, as much for unilateral as for multilateral points of view. Strikingly, inter-identities are seen as either being characteristic of independent cultures such as the Cape Verdean, or offer a desirable new Euro-African identity that might transcend problematic aspects of both cultures. The only case that deserts this view (Slaves’ Island) is unconvincing due to its typecast portrayal of the African characters. The desire to see ones identity valued and freed of historical guilt can be encountered in many films by Portuguese directors, especially in the productions by António and Vendrell. The problem with these films is the absence of contextualization, not only of the colonial history, but especially of its legacy. African and Luso-African filmmakers are more thoughtful in terms of contextualization and often pose questions about how to balance aspects of traditional African identity, the values that led to the anti-colonial armed fight and the attributes and values of (or their absence in) European identity. Actually, only My Voice, Nélio’s Story and The Hero are optimistic and affirmative regarding the possibility of resolving the conflicts that result from the colonial legacy and African post-colonial and post-war reality. In conclusion, the dependence on financial, material and human resources so evident in the number of co-productions between the PALOP and the former colonizer Portugal does not automatically have an effect on their identity discourses. However, few of the Luso-African feature productions explore transnationality’s ambivalence through multilateral perspectives. Unilateral identity discourses are, in fact, almost the rule among European directors. Only a rather small number of films accomplishes fully the potential of the production mode, in the sense that they offer a transnational stage for challenging obsolete discourses on identity, be they European or African. 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(2011), ‘Ambivalent transnationality: Luso-African coproductions after independence (1988–2010)’, Journal of African Cinemas 3: 2, pp. 221–245, doi: 10.1386/jac.3.2.221_1 Contributor details Carolin Overhoff Ferreira is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Cinema in the Department of Art History, at the Federal University of São Paulo, campus Guarulhos. She is the author of New Tendencies in Latinamerican Dramaturgy (Vistas, 1999) and Identity and Difference – Postcoloniality and Transnationality in Lusophone Films (forthcoming), as well as the editor of O Cinema Português através dos Seus Filmes (Campo das Letras, 2007), Dekalog – On Manoel de Oliveira (Wallflower Press, 2008) Africa – um Continente no Cinema (Unifesp, 244 Ambivalent transnationality forthcoming) and Manoel de Oliveira – Novas Perspectivas sobre a Sua Obra (Unifesp, forthcoming). Her articles on Portuguese speaking films and drama have been published in Adaptation, Camera Obscura, Studies in European Cinema, Latin American Theatre Review, Modern Drama, Tempo Brasileiro and Third Text, among others. Contact: Rua Dr. Gabriel dos Santos, 388/64, 01231-010 São Paulo, Brazil. E-mail: carolinoverferr@yahoo.com 245