Ex-colonial Landscape with Different Filters 2019
MiniDV transferred to digital HD file, 4:3, 4minutes and 30 seconds, colour, silent
Manipulated footage of a landscape from my native island of Santo Antao in Cape Verde runs in parallel with phrases composed of quotes from Portuguese pop music and Angolan civil-war leaders.
The text interweaves extracts from lyrics from 1980s and 1990s Portuguese well known pop songs with extracts from speeches made by the presidents of MPLA and UNITA the two opposing factions during the Angolan civil war (1975 to 2002 with interludes). Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome e Principe were Portuguese colonies until 1975. Pop culture and post-colonial war coexist in this piece pointing towards two very different interconnected postcolonial realities. As Portugal moved aways from its problematic colonial past towards a democratic western European identity its former colonies in Africa struggled through political unrest and/or civil war. Growing up, images of these two realities coexisted in Portuguese media. My childhood impressions of Portuguese speaking Africa were formed by these images of war, my parents recollections of Cape Verde, and Portuguese former colonialists's memories of Africa.