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Conakry

Filipa César

2013 00:10:43 Germany, Guinea, Guinea-BissauEnglishColorStereo16:916mm film
Tags:
Art History, History, Post-colonialism

Description

Staged at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Conakry is a sequence shot on 16mm film that travels through time, space and media to revisit one film reel from the Guinean archive. This particular reel documents an exhibition curated by Amílcar Cabral at the Palais du Peuple in 1972 in Conakry, Guinea, reporting on the state of the war against Portuguese rule. César invited the Portuguese writer Grada Kilomba and the American radio activist Diana McCarty to reflect on these images and their history.

Directed by Filipa César, texts and performance by Grada Kilomba and Diana McCarty, photography by Matthias Biber, sound by Didio Pestana and Nuno da Luz, produced by Johanna Höhemann and Marta Leite, Assistant Director: Marta Leite, Gaffer: Norio Takasugi, set photography by Diana Artus.

About Filipa César

Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the fictional aspects of the documentary, the porous borders between cinema and its reception, and the politics and poetics inherent to the moving image and imaging technologies. Since 2011, she has been researching the origins of the cinema of the African Liberation Movement in Guinea Bissau as a laboratory of resistance to ruling epistemologies. The resulting body of work comprises 16mm films, digital archives, videos, seminars, screenings, publications, ongoing collaborations with artists, theorists, and activists, and is the basis for her Phd thesis at FCSH-New University of Lisbon. César’s genre-bending film and video work bridges contemporary and historical discourses, also apparent in her writings, such as her essay Meteorizations, published in the Third Text special issue: The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions, edited by Shela Sheik and Ros Gray.

César premiered her first feature-length essay film Spell Reel at the Forum section of the 67th Berlinale, 2017. Selected exhibitions and screenings have taken place at the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010); Manifesta 8, Cartagena (2010); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2011-15); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2012); Khiasma, Paris (2011-2015); Kunstwerke, Berlin (2013); SAAVY Contemporary, Berlin (2014-15); Tensta Konsthall, Spånga (2015); Mumok, Vienna (2016); Contour 8 Biennial, Mechelen, Gasworks, London, MoMA, New York (2017); The Harvard Art Museums, Boston (2018); HKW, Berlin (2019).

See also: Filipa César: An Interview