Don’t miss the opportunity to meet Things Fall Apart artist, Filipa César, who will be offering a unique insight into the “Luta ca caba inda” project featured in the exhibition.
Since 2011, César has been researching the Guinea-Bissau audiovisual archive, a collection and cinema praxis from the period of the country’s liberation struggle against Portuguese colonialism in the 1960s and 70s. The resulting ongoing collective project, “Luta ca caba inda” (The Struggle is Not Over Yet), explores the possibilities of reading, presenting, and performing the materials from the archive. César will focus on a particular iconography she discovered in this kaleidoscopic, eroded archive related to Soviet film production, and will attempt to address this unique—and today quite useful—“imaginary of solidarity” beyond the loaded readings of its intended propaganda.
Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the porous boundaries between the moving image and its public reception, the fictional aspects of the documentary praxis and the economies, politics and poetics inherent to the production of moving images. Between 2008–10, a great part of César’s experimental films have focussed on Portugal’s geo-political past, questioning mechanisms of history production and proposing spaces for performing subjective knowledge.
Since 2011, César has been researching the origins of cinema in Guinea-Bissau, its imaginaries and potencies, developing that research into the collective project “Luta ca caba inda” (The Struggle is Not Over Yet). She was a participant of the research projects Living Archive (2011–13) and Visionary Archive (2013–15), both organised by the Arsenal Institute, Berlin. Selected film festivals include Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2013; Curtas Vila do Conde, 2012-2015; Forum Expanded Berlinale, 2013; IFFR, Rotterdam, 2010, 2013 and 2015; Indie Lisboa, 2010; and DocLisboa, 2011.
Selected exhibitions and screenings include the 8th Istanbul Biennial, 2003; Serralves Museum, Porto, 2005; Tate Modern, London, 2007; SFMOMA, 2009; 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2011-2015; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2012; Kunstwerke, Berlin, 2013; Festival Meeting Points 7, 2013-14; NBK, Berlin, 2014; Hordaland Art Center, Bergen, 2014; SAAVY Contemporary, Berlin 2014-15; Futura, Prague 2015; Khiasma, Paris 2011, 2013 and 2015; and Tensta Konsthall, 2015.
**The highlight of the Red Africa season, Things Fall Apart features artists, filmmakers and groups from across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Drawing on film, photography, propaganda, and public art, the exhibition presents interdisciplinary reflections on African connections to the Soviet Union and related countries.
