Postcolonial Nation and Narrative III: Literature & Cinema

Ana Mafalda Leite, Hilary Owen, Ellen
W. Sapega and Carmen Tindó Secco
(eds)

Postcolonial Nation
and Narrative III:
Literature & Cinema

Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and
São Tomé e Príncipe. Essays

Peter Lang

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cover image: Cloth of Guinea-Bissau I. Photo by José Eduardo Leite.

Cover design: Peter Lang Ltd.

ISSN 2235-0144

ISBN 978-1-78707-581-8 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78707-586-3 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-78707-587-0 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78707-588-7 (mobi)

DOI:

© Peter Lang AG 2019

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

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Ana Mafalda Leite, Hilary Owen, Ellen W. Sapega and Carmen Tindó Secco asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this Work.

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About the editors

ANA MAFALDA LEITE is Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon. Her areas of research include Mozambican literature, African cultures and literatures in the Portuguese language, oral literature and postcolonial studies. Her publications include Oralidades & Escritas Pós-Coloniais (2012).

HILARY OWEN is Professor Emerita of Portuguese and African Studies at the University of Manchester. Her most recent publication, with Claudia Pazos Alonso, is Antigone's Daughters?: Gender, Genealogy, and the Politics of Authorship in Twentieth-Century Portuguese Women's Writing (2011).

ELLEN W. SAPEGA is Professor of Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her publications include Consensus and Debate in Salazar’s Portugal: Visual and Literary Negotiations of the National Text (2008).

CARMEN TINDÓ SECCO is Professor of African Literatures in the Portuguese Language at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her publications include A magia das letras africanas (2003), Brasil/África: como se o mar fosse mentira (2003) and África & Brasil – letras em laços (2010).

About the book

This volume investigates literary and cinematographic narratives from Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, analysing the different ways in which social and cultural experience is represented in postcolonial contexts. It continues and completes the exploration of the postcolonial imaginary and identity of Portuguese-speaking Africa presented in the earlier volume Narrating the Postcolonial Nation: Mapping Angola and Mozambique (2014).

Memory, history, migration and diaspora are core notions in the recreation and reconceptualization of the nation and its identities in Cape Verdean, Guinean and São Tomean literary and cinematographic culture. Acknowledging that the idea of the postcolonial nation intersects with other social, political, cultural and historical categories, this book scrutinizes written and visual representations of the nation from a wide range of inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives, including literary and film studies, gender studies, sociology, and post-colonial and cultural studies. It makes a valuable contribution to current debates on postcolonialism, nation and identity in these former Portuguese colonies.

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Contents

List of Figures

Ana Mafalda Leite

Introduction: Postcolonial Nation and Narrative, Cinema and Literature

part i African Cinema, National, Transnational, Decolonial and Lusophone?

Paulo de Medeiros

Lusophone Cinemas in Transnational Perspective

Ute Fendler

African Cinema: A Transnational Cinema? The Decolonial Cinema of Flora Gomes

Ellen W. Sapega

The ‘Sounds’ of Lusophony: The Question of Language in Two Films with Cape Verdean Themes

part ii Visual Narratives and Poetics

Sheila Khan

Between Realities and Scenarios: Duty and Authority to Narrate the Nation between Images←v | vi→

Carmen Lúcia Tindó Secco

José Carlos Schwarz’s Poetics and the Guinean Nation: Relations between Cinema, Literature, Music, Memory and History

Elena Brugioni

The Prayers of Mansata by Abdulai Sila: Performing the Postcolony

part iii The Films of Flora Gomes

Joana Passos

Flora Gomes: Resilient Hope on Scant Chances

Jusciele Conceição Almeida de Oliveira and Mirian Tavares

Authorial Features in African Cinema: The Case of the Guinean Flora Gomes

Mark Sabine

Where Is Cabral? Postnational Culture and Liberation in Nha fala

part iv Leão Lopes’s and Pedro Costa’s Cape Verdean Cinema

Jane Tutikian

When the Chess Board Had Only White Pieces: A Study of Ilhéu de Contenda, the Book and the Film

Hilary Owen

In Search of the White Father: Filming the Island of Fogo in the Cinema of Pedro Costa and Leão Lopes←vi | vii→

Doris Wieser

Wreckage, Fragments and Non-Places: The Life of Cape Verdean Immigrants in Cavalo Dinheiro by Pedro Costa

part v Documentary Narratives on Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe

Jessica Falconi

Intertwining Histories: Documentary Narratives on São Tomé and Cape Verde

Kamila Krakowska

Zooming in on the Edges: Narratives of the Santomean Nation in the Documentaries of Ângelo Torres

part vi Postcolonial and Postnational Literature

Emanuelle Santos

After Nationalism: Literary Configurations of Contemporary Postcolonialities in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé e Príncipe

Luís Madureira

‘Eva das Mil Pessoas’: Politics and Hyper-sexuality in Germano Almeida’s Eva

Notes on Contributors

Index←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→

Figures

Figure 6.1. Act II, Djapuf Power, Scene 1. The meeting of the Supreme Leader Mwankeh with all the advisors who will be charged with seeking Mansata and her Prayers. Photograph by Eduardo Pinto, As Orações de Mansata – Ensaios <https://pstage.wordpress.com/as-oracoes-de-mansata/galerias-odm/odm-ensaios-eduardo-pinto/#jp-carousel-1401>

Figure 6.2. Act IV, Power à La Carte, Scene 2. The meeting between all the Advisors who will be charged with seeking Mansata and her Prayers, led by Amamabarka. Photograph by Augusto Baptista, As Orações de Mansata – Ensaios <https://pstage.wordpress.com/as-oracoes-de-mansata/galerias-odm/ensaios-odm-augusto-baptista/#jp-carousel-1246>

Figure 6.3. Opening and Closing Scene. Photograph by Augusto Baptista As Orações de Mansata – Ensaios <https://pstage.wordpress.com/as-oracoes-de-mansata/galerias-odm/ensaios-
odm-augusto-baptista/#jp-carousel-1265>

Figure 6.4. Act II, Scene 3. Meeting of the Supreme Leader with the three seers, Kamala Djonko, Djinna Hara and Yewta Yawta. Photograph by Augusto Baptista As Orações de Mansata – Ensaios <https://pstage.wordpress.com/as-oracoes-de-mansata/galerias-odm/ensaios-odm-augusto-baptista/#jp-carousel-1249>←ix | x→