How did the interest in Guinea Bissaugh emerge?

In my house I have heard the stories and accounts of Guinea-Bissau from a very young age, which in times of colonial war forced my father to go there as a soldier. What for the Portuguese was a colonial war was a liberation war for the Guineans who fought for almost two decades. Over the years, I realized that my father and other close friends of our family had been engaged political activists who tried to escape from the front line; and that they also helped the Guineans to escape. So that war has been part of the history of our family, and Guinea-Bissau, the land where my father lived for three long years. In addition, my father had at home a beautiful library of books and materials about the anti-colonial war, and it can be said that interest in this country woke me up in my own house.

Years later you would see for the first time in the images to Guinea-Bissau…

I think it wasn't until 2003: for the first time I saw Chris Marker's Sans Soleil film and it became one of the most important films of my life, both in content and in form. There are a lot of magical elements from the point of view of assembly, I like how poetics connects with politics, and that question about life that's above all. In addition, the film was developed in Japan and Guinea-Bissau, combining science fiction and politics in a very special way. I was completely run over, and I clearly saw that I had to meet Chris Marker.

Did you know him?

Yes, through some friends I had the opportunity to approach him and we were a couple of times. I asked him questions about Guinea-Bissau and he clearly told me that if I really had an interest, I had to go there and meet the filmmaker Sana Na N’Hada. He also told me that before I left I had to read the book The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. In 2011 I managed to go to Guinea-Bissau and there I contacted Sana Na N’Hada and other local filmmakers.

It was then that you first met the Guinea-Bissau film archive.

That's right, in January 2011, I met the filmmakers in Guinea-Bissau and started interviewing them for a little post I would post later. At the time, they took me to the Bissau Film Institute and they were in a room there, stacked, tens and tens of thousands of 16-millimeter tin films. The films were in a very poor state, and I was losing a lot of material because of the poor state of conservation. For them it was very important to recover this file, since there were many films recorded during the liberation war. It was a shame to see how the images and voices that witnessed the history of a people were lost, and I asked them if they wanted my help in trying to do something with that file.

What was your answer?

Yes. The film history of his country was there, among those movie cans that were deteriorating. The filmmakers Sana Na N’Hada and Flora Gómez tried to contact numerous institutions to save the file, such as the Portuguese Filmoteca, but unfortunately they did not succeed. It seems that this file at the time was not important to the world, so there was no way to start it. The system of art was the only way left for us. So, to put it in some way, I took advantage of the artistic system, of the possibilities and privileges that this fully structured system offers, along with the filmmakers of Guinea-Bissau to launch the project.

Tell us, what material was in that movie file?

There were many unedited materials, raw images, especially from the time of the liberation war, but also three finished films: Fanado, The days of Anconor and O back of Amílcar Cabral. There were also copies of films from various communist countries of the time, such as China, Russia or Cuba. It is important to see what was in this file, which served as a mirror of the illusions and projections of this people. In this sense, I like to use the concept of cinematographic geography, as the archive witnessed the dreams of a developing country.

How did they start working with this material?

We saw that it would be very difficult to get aid for Portugal, because at that time there was neither money nor any special interest. So I went back to Berlin and I got in touch with some of the local filmmakers, including Harun Farocki and Avi Mogravi, and I told them the file. I was told that I had to get in touch with the Arsenal Institute, which is who can help us recover the file. At that time, Farocki was also working with an engineer on developing a 16-millimeter long film scanning device. So we set up a group in Berlin with the objective of recovering this file, and with the help of the Arsenal Institute, we launched the project. The work process was very interesting. The filmmakers in Guinea-Bissau were also in this group, and it was the beginnings of the project that we collectively launched. A year later, we received a grant, and we started the process of digitizing the file.

In this context, the inda Luta ca caba project emerges. What does it consist of?

Luta ca caba inda means in Creole “the struggle is not yet over”. This title was handwritten in a can that was kept in the file and was the title of a film in the process of editing. In it were images of the war of liberation, cut and assembled later with images of the country's construction. We liked the proposal, because it was an unfinished project that united past and promise of the future, and we took it as the motto of our project. The idea that the struggle was never concluded was attractive, since, although the war was over, the new phase of building the independent country should also continue in the struggle, this time without weapons. So, as far as our project is concerned, it is a long-term project with no start or end. A line of work in which you moved by the cinema, we worked collectively to bring to light this archivo.Dentro of this project we produced the film Spell Reel, which was presented, among others, in the framework of the San Sebastian Film Festival.

We just wanted to ask you how you did the movie Spell Reel…

For us it was important to open a file, to make it public, the idea was not to keep it and keep it, but to bring it to light, to return to the Guineans the images and voices that were part of their country’s history. For a month we were in Guinea-Bissau with a mobile film, showing archival images to the people there and collecting their testimonies. In view of the images, the micro would open up, and the Guineans would tell their memories and their stories about the images they had seen. We received reactions of all kinds, such as those of the soldiers who participated in the guerrillas or who fought for Portugal. These actions were led by Sana Na N’Hada, who had shot in the guerrillas the liberation war with the camera. As the material was not edited, the images were raw, there were no reports or manipulations with the assembly. The images spoke for themselves. The film gathers this experience.

In this story that you tell us, Amílcar Cabral is a very important figure.

Yes, of course. Cabral Guinea was the leader of the liberation movement in Bissau and I think it used a very smart strategy to carry out the war. Cabral, political leader and agronomist, extrapolates to culture the research, experimentation and knowledge without hierarchy that were fundamental in the field of agronomy. In 1966, Fidel Castro offered him his help for soldiers and weapons to fight the Portuguese, but Cabral refused, did not want any international intervention in the war in Guinea-Bissau. Instead, he asked him to help educate the young people of his country. So he took a group of young people to Cuba to study medicine, pharmacy, lab and film. Among those who went to study film the Sana Na N’Hada that we have already mentioned, a young woman who had not seen any film before ir.Cabral knew that without international help the war would be slower, but in that process she opted for the possibility of educating and developing young people about socialist ideas.

Finally, in Tabakalera you have presented the Looming Creole project, a project that focuses on weaving techniques and the relationship between the Creole language.

Odete Samedo, a Guinean anthropologist, told me that the Guineans, at the time of the colony, woven in the back of the fabrics messages coded for the revolts against the Portuguese. This idea has led me to develop this last project, and hence also the title, so that the Portuguese who wrote those messages in creol did not decipher them. The Creole was the language of the liberation war, which involved more than 32 ethnic groups in Guinea-Bissau. In addition, there is an interesting relationship, since Guinea-Bissau ' s weaving system began to be manufactured with perforated cards, which were used by the first computers. So you can say that knitting is closer than writing from your computer. The film also reflects on this thesis.