Sharing Stories
A Shifting Lens of Mozambique
Felicia Appenteng and Mahen Bonetti, Founder of the African Film Festival and AAI Alumna
Taking place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) for the month of May, the 32nd New York African Film Festival featured over 50 contemporary and classic films from Africa and its diaspora. Under this year’s festival theme, Fluid Horizons: A Shifting Lens of a Hopeful World, NYAFF honored the resilience of African youth and the forbearers that paved the way.
Together with New York African Film Festival and Third World Newsreel, AAI was proud to co-present two powerful films, Kuxa Kanema: The Birth of Cinema and Mueda, Memory and Massacre, that spotlight Mozambique’s rich cultural and political history.
The NYAFF is a cherished cultural institution and we were honored to present its Founder and Executive Director, Mahen Bonetti, with the Ambassador for African Cinema Award at our 38th Awards Gala. We’re proud to continue building our relationship with African cinema through meaningful partnerships such as this.
Kuxa Kanema: The Birth of Cinema
Directed by Margarida Cardoso | 2003 | 52 mins
After 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule, Mozambique was one of the last African countries to gain independence. President Samora Machel’s first cultural act was to establish the National Institute of Cinema, which produced weekly newsreels—Kuxa Kanema—for and about the people. Mobile cinema units reminiscent of Aleksandr Medvedkin’s cine-trains traveled around the country to engage people with what it means to be free in an independent nation. When filmmaker Margarida Cardoso visited the institute, it was already in ruins, but she discovered newsreel footage in an abandoned building. Interviews with filmmakers who were involved with the institute—including Licínio Azevedo, Jose Cardoso, and Ruy Guerra—and sequences from the newsreels bear witness to the birth of Mozambique’s cinema in concert with the birth of the nation.
Mueda, Memory and Massacre
Directed by Ruy Guerra | 1979 | 80 mins
Mueda, Memória e Massacre (Mueda, Memory and Massacre) depicts an anti-colonial work on memory: an annual theatrical re-enactment of the Mueda Massacre of June 16, 1960, which left over 600 peaceful demonstrators dead after Portuguese soldiers opened fire. Made by Ruy Guerra, a Portuguese-Brazilian director and screenwriter born in colonial Mozambique, the film is widely considered the nation’s first feature.