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Transmission from the Liberated Zones

Filipa César

2015 00:30:00 Germany, Guinea, Guinea-BissauEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Experimental Film, Film or Videomaking, History, Post-colonialism

Description

Transmission from the Liberated Zones is an experiment which brings together Swedish statements and documents, accessed and presented by a boy through a low-fidelity feedback channel — an optical dimension created to move through time, and between tepid and tropic encounters. This laboratory departs from the concept of “Liberated Zones”, a designation used to describe areas freed from colonial domination, organized and managed by the guerrilla militants of the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) in Guinea during the 11-year liberation war between 1963-74. The Swedish protagonists are the diplomat Folke Löfgren, filmmaker Lennart Malmer, filmmaker and psychologist Ingela Romare, and politician Birgitta Dahl, all of whom shared experiences in the Liberated Zones that they visited in the early 1970s. The boy (Luís Guilherme Dias) states that recalling instances of liberation prepares the ground for further recurrences.

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