Zé Interpretador is a multifaceted artist, musician, dancer, and weaver of papel lineage. He has collaborated in several projects with Mediateca, particularly with his art as a fisial (weaver) of panu-di-pinti. In his heddle, he computes simpler or more complex wefts, launching the practice of weaving into an experimental field crossed by multiple contemporary influences beyond the traditional use made by the Guinean community. Zé Interpretador catches with unique ability the physical and imaginary worlds in the threads of his loom, inscribing them in his panu-di-pinti compositions.

Cadjigue is an association of multi-generational inhabitants of the Bijagós islands who form a social and cultural association. It was established in 2014 following the joint production of the film ‘Kadjike’ by Sana Na N’Hada. The association aims to value the material and immaterial culture of Bijagó and thereby protect and reproduce the oral traditions and the transmission of rites. Moreover, the collective strives to develop creative methods for collective, performative and audiovisual productions in order to address the current threats to the archipelago and its residents as well as its unique fauna and flora. Cadjigue wants to contribute to the promotion of the social and cultural significance of the Bijagós by creating an open accessible virtual museum, which can archive documents of the geographic, social, cultural and spiritual heritage in a meaningful way. Cadjigue consists of young Bijagó some of who are also related to the Atingo Iacanto agriculture women’s group.

Essentially Cabralist, but with an interest in Trotskyist-Marxist theories, Cassacá-64 is a young political organization with the utopian dream of stopping the evils of capitalism. The collective descends from the group ‘Netos de Cabral’ or Cabral’s grandchildren which aimed to re-establish the foundations Cabral proclaimed during the historic Cassacá Congress in 1964, following the start of the revolution that would grant the country its independence. Cassacá-64 iadvocates the continuation of these ideals in order to establish also the economic independence of the people, from Guinea-Bissau, to the world. They perform volunteer work on behalf of the population and organize events that promote readings and discussions of great Pan-Africanist and communist thinkers.

Criado durante a pandemia da COVID 19 como um grupo no Whatsapp por alguns jovens que queriam contrariar as limitações impostas pelo confinamento, e mitigar a necessidade de se encontrarem para discutir literatura e partilhar livros, tornou-se surpreendentemente maior do que o esperado, tendo em conta a resultante adesão do amigo que traz o amigo que também gosta de escrever. Ao realizar eventos semanais sobre literatura e ao convidar escritores estabelecidos a falar com aqueles que estão apenas a começar o percurso, o grupo tornou-se um importante espaço de partilha, estruturando pensamentos e discussões, encorajando cada vez mais a leitura e abrindo o leque de autores uns aos outros.

elsehere is a transnational feminist art collective armed with an inbuilt grain of indestructibility. We are committed to a policy of empowerment and an economy of care that shares approaches to knowledge, technology and influence. elsehere operates in and out of the real and imagined systemic fractures that exist within structural patriarchy, extractivism, capitalism and their looming obsolescence programmed by the sisters that came before.

Geba Films is a non-profit cooperative that was conceived with the intention of promoting sustainable cultural activities with the moving image, video, cinema and performing arts in Guinea-Bissau. The Geba Films program aims to stimulate the development of social, educational and environmental potential for artistic and audiovisual productions in the area and to support projects to promote artistic and audiovisual literacy. Two of the founding members of Geba, the filmmakers Sana na N’Hada and Flora Gomes, are pioneers of moving image in Guinea-Bissau and also founded INCA – The National Institute for Film and Audiovisual Media in 1978. Since its formation in 2007, Geba Filmes has co-produced dozens of moving image projects. Between 2011 and 2013 Geba Films was the main partner of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin, in a project to digitize the Guinean cinema archive that documents the historical process of the struggle of liberation against Portuguese colonial occupation.

Working in Guinea-Bissau with the Fórum da Paz (Peace Forum) organization, GTO-Bissau is a group of actors that use the theater method created by Brazilian Augusto Boal, staging plays that directly address the populations, forcing them out of their comfort zones in order to articulate conflicts and find strategies to address them. GTO-Bissau acts in distinct areas of social problems, promoting warning dialogues with the population in order to heal the many prejudices still existing in society. Composed of people with several artistic backgrounds, besides acting, it is a versatile and prolific group. GTO delivers training in Theater of the Oppressed, popular mediation, and education for peace and pro-active citizenship, involving activists trained within the national network of Kumpuduris di Paz (peace promoters network).

Due to sexual orientation and gender identity prejudices, and the violence that afflicts the body and mind of homosexual people in Guinea-Bissau, this group was born as a response to fear and discrimination these community face. People who have suffered, suffer, but survive affirming their sexuality and identity, have organized themselves to help the very society that violates them, to heal and also to help younger generations and others feel less alone and afraid. Having encountered many problems and objections to legalize the organization, their perseverance has, in the end, prevailed. The group has engaged in various activist actions, raising awareness about sexually transmitted diseases and forms of prevention. They also carry out several cultural activities to show society how open and manifest their existence is. MSM stands for Men Who Have Sex with Men, and PDH stands for Promoters of Human Rights.

Luta ca caba inda is both an ongoing project and a loose knit collective. It takes its name from a never accomplished film conceived as a post-independence documentary in Guinea-Bissau and translates as the struggle is not over yet. The film was abandoned in 1980 during the Coup D’Etat that interrupted the revolutionary project of nation building imagined by Amílcar Cabral. The collaborative project began in 2011 when Sana N’Hada and Filipa César among others worked closely to research and reactivate the imaginary of the Guinean liberation movement. Departing from the digitalisation of the film remains of these national militant cinema productions, it developed into a collective, experimental archival project. Luta ca caba inda became a magnetic field, gathering transnational cinephiles and other militants together through various events, screenings, mobile cinemas, publications and seminars. It is a testimony to the present and to a decade of collective and internationally connected cinema praxis in the country that started in 1963, when four young militants, Sana na N’Hada, Flora Gomes, Josefina Crato and José Bolama were sent to Cuba to learn cinema and returned to produce national militant cinema in Guinea-Bissau. Luta ca caba inda is also an environment for decolonization with forces that connect people and causes from then and an unknown when, and nurtures ecologies of relation that started many centuries ago and have no finitude on the horizon.

The joint forces of the Parent association of Malafo Elementary School and the village’s agricultural workers. The parent association was formed to address the need of providing children with a formal education and ensuring they have continuous access to regular schooling. In the meantime, as “saku limpu ka ta firma” (an empty bag cannot stand upright), it was also necessary to feed the children, otherwise the initial project would be pointless. No Ria Bolanha, from the kriol “let’s go to the rice field”, aims at growing and monetizing the fields from which sustenance derives.

Satna Fai is the agricultural association of the women of Malafo. Individually working the fields and gardens to secure part of their daily sustenance, these women saw the need to organize themselves to make their production more profitable, not only to individually support their families and children, but also the school. Educating is not easy; it is an arduous task with no breaks. Satna Fai derives from Balanta and means “let’s do our best,” which is, in reality, a daily practice.

Demba Djabaté and Fili Djabate are musicians and artisans of Mandinka musical instruments from a long lineage of griots from Tabató, Guinea-Bissau, who are committed to the preservation, dissemination and deepening of knowledge of Mandinka music and griot culture. Multi-instrumentalists, specialists in balafon, kora, ngoni, bolonbata, gongomá, dundumbá, djimbé, and guitar, interweave Mandinka sounds and rhythms with contemporary language. Members of the group Super Kamarimba and managers of the Tabató Museum, they recorded two original albums (Silá Djanhara and União).