mediateca
For nearly thirty years, an archive of film and audio material was stored at the Guinean Film Institute in Bissau. Institutionally neglected and on the verge of complete ruination, the material in it is a testimony of a decade of collective and internationally connected cinema praxis in Guinea Bissau, as part of the people’s struggle for independence from Portuguese colonialism (1963-1974) and subsequent nation building. In 2012, in collaboration with the authors of these images, the Guinean filmmakers Sana na N’Hada and Flora Gomes, and with institutional support from Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin), artist Filipa César, curator Tobias Hering, filmmaker Suleimane Biai and many others embarked on a long term project aimed at re-accessing this archive. Its peculiar state, suspended between ruination and work-in-progress, activates questions about past promises and their contemporary potencies.
