In the first years after independence, under the leadership of Samora Machel, Mozambique was born with the hope of developing a true national cinema project – a cinema with an educational and artistic vocation, capable of reaching even the most remote rural areas. Kuxa Kanema, which means The Birth of Cinema, was a way of taking the latest events to the villages, produced by the National Cinema Institute (INC).
The People’s Republic of Mozambique became the Republic of Mozambique and the INC was reduced to abandoned rooms and corridors, where employees waited patiently for reform. The building was destroyed by fire in 1991, and the visual documents that testify to the first eleven years of independence – the years of the socialist revolution – were rotting in an annex, about to be forgotten.
Based on these films and other living testimonies, director Margarida Cardoso, through the documentary ‘Kuxa Kanema – O Nascimento do Cinema’, reconstructs the stages of this now defunct project, recovering the path of the ideal of a nation, which crumbled, day after day, along with ‘a cinema for the people’ and the dreams of those who believed that Mozambique could one day become a different country.
Through screenings and interviews, the documentary highlights – with a certain irony of history – the didactic power of cinema. The screening of the film will take place on 19 August at 6pm in the auditorium of the Franco-Mozambican Cultural Centre (CCFM) and will include a talk with the director.
By Eduardo Quive
