Concordia University

An archive of film and audio material in Bissau. On the verge of complete ruin, the footage testifies to the birth of Guinean cinema as part of the decolonising vision of Amílcar Cabral, the liberation leader who was assassinated in 1973. In collaboration with the Guinean filmmakers Sana na N’Hada and Flora Gomes, as well as many allies, Filipa César imagines a journey wherein this fragile matter from the past operates as a visionary prism of shrapnel, with which to look through. Digitised in Berlin and screened at various locations – in what would come to resemble a transnational itinerant cinema – the archive convokes debates, storytelling and forecasts. From their screening in isolated villages in Guinea-Bissau to European capitals, the silent reels are now a place from which people may search for antidotes to a world in crisis.

Starting with Filipa’s account of the archives of militant cinema in Guinea-Bissau, the workshop aims to continue the debates, embodied in Spell Reel itself, about the significance of historical decolonial projects for imagining alternatives to the world in crisis. This workshop will take place at the GEM Lab.