An Angolan vernacular-language fiction film as para-ethnographic film: Nationalism and the evolving politics of film circulation and reception

ABSTRACT

This article examines Nelisita (Carvalho, 1982), an Olunyaneka-language feature fiction film made in the early years of Angolan cinema, and draws a historiography of its marginal production and ensuing scattered reception. Combining a historical approach to the film’s production and circulation, with an ethnographically-driven analysis of its recent screenings at a village sharing an Olunyaneka background, I discuss insights gained from its reception by an audience familiar with the cultural context portrayed on screen. Along with the history of the film’s production and circulation, the villagers’ engagement with the film sheds light on the evolving politics of cinema in Africa, particularly the complex relationships between popular and film festival audiences, film studies and visual anthropology. I examine shifting continuities and ruptures with regards to the film’s intricate social history, and analyse the production and reception of Nelisita as an experiment that highlights differing ways in which films can work as a contact zone.

KEYWORDS:

• Film
• African cinema
• audiences
• reflexivity
• vernacular language film
• visual anthropology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Apa (2012) for an overview of Carvalho’s intellectual and multidisciplinary trajectory. The digital platform Buala (www.buala.org) hosts a dedicated archive with some of his writings and scholarly essays about his work. Credited as Rui Duarte, Carvalho’s film productions date from 1975 to 1989; since 2016 a digital repository (E. Carvalho, L. Carvalho, and Ponte 2016), provides access to some of his filmography.

2 I have discussed some of Carvalho’s films in relation to my own use of film as a research method (Ponte 2017) and related to the inventory of Carvalho’s archive (Ponte 2019), a process that mingled with the collective curatorship of a posthumous exhibition (Balona, Ponte, and Lança 2015) and motivated an archival-based remake of Nelisita (Ponte 2016a). For a better grasp of the original film, Portuguese and English-speaking readers may watch this 14-min version; Portuguese-speakers may also opt for the original 63-min film, subtitled in that language (Carvalho 1982a).

3 Overall, I held about 17 screening sessions, often letting the audience pick the programme from a catalogue of about 8 h of film.

4 Abrantes (1986, 2002, 2008, 2015) has provided several updates about the convoluted history of Angolan cinema production; in which publishing place and year reveal unique relationships or events that provided the chance of such updates.

5 Three military factions, the MPLA [Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola], UNITA [União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola] and FNLA [Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola], carried out the liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonial government. On the date set for formal independence, 11 November 1975, the factions had broken the tripartite deal established for the transitional government, and MPLA, which was already responsible for the department of information, took over. For a historiographical overview of the liberation struggle and independence, see Chabal (2002).

6 The Southern region configures a multi-ethnic puzzle that Carvalho will anthropologically address later, particularly from the viewpoint of the pastoralist Ovakuvale. Carvalho (2008 (2003)) is a wider and lucid discussion about how scholars have approached the ‘ethnic configuration’ in Angola, where he argues that in the research done up to then, ethnicity implies certain features (such as a fixed correspondence with territory) that often make it an unsuitable analytical tool to describe the social formations addressed. Significantly, Melo (2004) discusses the colonial construction of ‘nyaneka-nkhumbi’ as an ethno-linguistic category that merges together various ethnicities and languages. Cautiously then, I use ‘Ovanyaneka’ here to refer to a broad regional agro-pastoralist cultural trend.

7 For a complete and annotated filmography, see Ponte (2020).

8 Appearing in different sections, the two tales are no. 42, ‘A Man and His Wife in a Year of Hunger’ (tales with magical elements) and no. 48, ‘The Monster and the Pregnant Woman’ (tales with mythical elements) (Estermann and Silva 1971; my translation), and were collected from separate storytellers, António Tchikwa and Valentim, respectively, both of whom had a Mungambwe background, at the same Catholic mission in the early 1960s. Soon after the film’s release, Carvalho published its script (Duarte 1985), which shows its importance to the director, and is often overlooked in the historiography of Angolan cinema.

9 Though regional politics and the Cold War drew a much more complex panorama of the conflict and of the different players involved, the South African aggressions were related to the MPLA’s support for SWAPO’s struggle for the liberation of current-day Namibia and to MPLA’s open anti-apartheid policy (cf. Birmingham 2002, 156, 166).

10 To my knowledge, there is also a print copy of Nelisita deposited at the Portuguese national film archive, resulting from a protocol established with the currently extinct Angolan one. Arsenal, in Berlin also possesses film copies linked to its screening at the Berlin Forum in 1984.

11 It became the subtitle in the Portuguese version (1984).

12 The film in question was Werner Herzog’s (1987) Cobra Verde.

13 For instance, recently anthropologists have asked if Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012) should be considered an ethnographic film (cf. Hoskins and Lasmana 2015). To give a less controversial example, João Salaviza and René Messora’s The Dead and the Others (2018) has also appeared both in major film festivals and specialized ethnographic ones. Similarly to Nelisita, these two examples resonate extensively with the so-called ethno-fiction genre, in its current broadest definition (Ferrarini 2018).

14 Although 2004saw the release of two Angolan films that were widely accepted on the international festival circuit, The Hero, by Zezé Gamboa (2004), and The Hollow City, by Maria João Ganga (2004).

15 The other well-received film by the audience was Wend Kunni (1983, colour), by Burkinabé Gaston Kaboré, which Diawara (1987) extensively analyses. Since the 1950s, novels became a source for a great number of African fiction films.

16 Kieffer’s (1984) review of Nelisita links it to the ‘aesthetics of hunger’ put forward by Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha (1939–1981).

17 In 1983 Cissé presented Finyé, his 3rd feature film, at FESPACO.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia: [grant number SFRH/BPD/115706/2016]; H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions: [grant number 747508].