What is the legacy, the reach and the meaning of African independences – at times gained after particularly violent and difficult struggles – for African descendants, the children of dismantled empires who live in Europe and in Africa and maintain a relationship with both continents? Even when it arises discreetly, the turmoil caused by the wars for African independence has nourished the work of artists born several decades later.

FILMS

Article 15 bis (2000)
Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda / France – DR Congo / 15 min

In an African city, under the scorching afternoon sun and overcome by a pressing need, a man relieves himself against a wall that reads “No urinating”. A few metres away, three soldiers guard a general’s home.

Dansons (2003)
Zoulikha Bouabdellah / Algeria – France / 5 min

The history of colonialism and postcolonialism, presented in a condensed and ironic form through the eyes of a young Algerian woman living in France. A defiant film – it defies La Marseillaise (French national anthem), the “bleu, blanc, rouge” (the French tricolour) – and ventures into a present marked by exoticism and racism.

La Parade de Taos (2010)
Nazim Djemaï / France / 20 min

Taos, a beautiful young woman, frequently meets a man in the Algiers zoo. The lovers are uneasy beneath the hostile gaze of passers-by, finding intimacy only when shielded by the vegetation. Until the day that Taos awaits her lover in vain…

Matongé (2015)
Amadej Peta, Anatole Mandroyan, Elise Ooms, Holly Ash, Luka Cvetko, Nuno Cristino Ribeiro / Belgium / 13 min

At the heart of the Ixelles municipality, in the centre of Brussels, Matongé is a territory of smells, colours and sounds that transport us to Kinshasa. In an extraordinary shopping centre, one character in particular stands out. Her name is Jacqueline Diependaele, but everyone knows her as Madame Chapeau.

Barbés (2019)
Randa Maroufi / France / 6 min

Women “intruders” occupy the streets for a mise en scène. They take on the gestures and postures of the men in this space: playing cards or watching a football match, unconcerned with the passage of time. They occupy terraces, exhibiting themselves in the strangeness of a public space of exclusion: that of gender.

Bab Sebta (2019)
Randa Maroufi / France – Morocco / 19 min

Bab Sebta is a series of reconstructions of situations observed at the border of Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on Moroccan soil where thousands of people are involved in trade. A “ballet” in three acts around the daily life and tension experienced at this crossing point between two continents.

Karingana – Os mortos não contam estórias (2020)
Inadelso Cossa / Mozambique /10 min

After spending 30 years in an exile of death and oblivion, Nkomba Yengo returns to his native village to listen to the fantastic stories of old Yamba. When he finds him deaf and mute, after a Civil War that has left the village amnesiac and traumatized, Nkomba realises that he has no one else left to tell him stories, except for cinema.

Face au silence (2002–2014)
Mounir Fatmi / France – Morocco / 12 min

Created in 2002, Face au silence evokes a dark period in Morocco’s history, mixing archive footage with new film shot by the director at the spot in Paris where Ben Sarka, the charismatic Moroccan politician and opposition figure, was “disappeared” in 1965.

Summer Garden: Film festival

This outdoor film festival is divided in 6 sessions and included in the parallel activities of the exhibition Europa Oxalá, as well as in the program of Summer Garden 2022.