Ecology and Feminism I 

Black Gaze – Showcase of Black Cinema in Portugal

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In this screening, which looks into the links between ecology and feminism, we present films by Mónica de Miranda and Lolo Arziki that challenge ideas of patriarchal leadership and control and their impact on our relationship with the natural world.

Produced at the heart of a transnational public counter-sphere, the Black Gaze in Portuguese cinema is frequently shaped by women and queer people. The intersectional difference (gender-race-class) that marks their life experiences is conveyed in the lenses through which they choose to film. Between the moral imperative to imagine alternative worlds and the daily need to survive, these directors make cinema a space of resistance and creation. 

The inhabitants of ‘The Island’ (2022), Mónica de Miranda’s ecofeminist island – a space situated between reality and imagination – move towards an ‘enchanted science,’ evoking African epistemologies in order to find themselves again. In this gesture, they forge paths to free themselves from the yoke of colonialism and embark on other modes of life.  

The narrative follows two women, two men and various children who learn to challenge the patriarchal logic of the Human as universal and superior, perceiving themselves as Other-Humankind, situated between water, stone, tree, horse, fire, and more-than-human and ghostly presences. 

‘Homestay’ (2017), by Lolo Arziki, also takes place on an island – Maio, in Cape Verde. The documentary follows the community tourism programme in which women, heads of family, welcome visitors into their homes, finding in the project a vital source of income and economic empowerment.


Biographies


Programme

17:00 / ‘The Island’, by Mónica de Miranda

United Kingdom, Portugal, 2022, 37’35”FictionIn Portuguese, with English subtitlesM/12
After 500 years of African presence in Portugal, Black people find refuge in the Utopian creation of The Island, a place rooted in African history, a space in which to rest and create futures. A place where the possibilities for rewriting stories and imagining futures intersect through the characters and their daily lives. From a female biographical perspective, this work interlinks various stories that challenge patriarchal narrative conventions, questioning the standard notions of identity based on categories of race and gender.

17:40 / ‘Homestay’, by Lolo Arziki

Cape Verde, 2017, 15’31” DocumentaryIn Cape Verde Creole, with subtitles in Portuguese and EnglishM/12
Documentary on community tourism starring women on the island of Maio, Cape Verde. Homestay is a sustainable tourism project organised by the Fundação Maio Biodiversidade. The film was shot in 2016, over a period of 24 hours, produced independently and on a low budget during the director’s stay in Cape Verde. The beating of drums guides us around the daily life of these women, who are also heads of family, as well as to the rural landscapes on the island.

18:00 / Conversation with Kitty Furtado and Lolo Arziki

18:40 / Closing

Duration: 100 min.

Credits

'The Island', by Mónica de Miranda

Directing and Original Story

Mónica de Miranda

Script and Text

Mónica de Miranda
Yara Nakhanda Monteiro 

Art direction

Mónica de Miranda 

Director of Photography

Rui Sérgio Afonso

Production

Studio Mónica de Miranda

Cast

Anilson Eugénio 
Isabél Zuua 
Mauro Hermínio 
Nádia Yracema 
Yara Milengo 
L.G.C. Maseko 
Copper Ray

Boom Operator

Vicente Booth

Sound Design, Music and Mixing

Filipe Ridolfi

Assistant Director and Assistant Producer 

Anna Jarosz

Editing

Miguel Tavares

Editing Assistant

Andrea Ghisu

Post-production and Colourist

Xavier Franganito

Post-production Assistant

Bianca Corsini

Support

Arts Council of England 
Autograph 
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia 
Fundação Obras 
Hangar – Centro de Investigação Artística 
A Outra Face da Lua

Acknowledgements

António Vicente 
Arlindo 
Almerindo Pico Lino 
Ana Almeida 
Caroline Van Der Laan 
Carla Ferreira 
Carla Belchior 
Daniel Dias 
Helena Inverno 
Jabulani Maseko 
Joana Rosa 
Luís Passarinho 
Luís Pintassilgo 
Ludger Van Der Eerden 
Renee Mussai 
Mark Sealy 
Café Restaurante “O Emigrante” (Évora Monte) 
Rio a Dentro (Escaroupim) 
Zaratran – Arte Contemporânea

Commissioned by

Autograph, Londres

'Homestay', by Lolo Arziki

Director 

Lolo Arziki 

Cinematography

Ricardo F. Mendes 

Editing and Post-Production

Rafael Vieira

Editing Assistant

Lolo Arziki 

Sound

Djoy Faustino 

Graphic design

Tais rodrigues da Silva

Production

Janet Agues
Djoy Faustino
Arnau Teixidor  

Production assistant

Mafalda Nadas
Lolo Arziki  

Support

Ministério do Ambiente de Cabo Verde, Darwin Initiative, Fundação Maio Biodiversidade, Fauna & Flora International, Município de Maio, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Department of the Interior  

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.

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