Camilo De Sousa

Mueda was a massacre. The name is that of the village in Northern Mozambique where in 1960 it took place. The Portuguese colonial regime did the killing. In independent Mozambique, those inhabitants of Mueda who survived regularly re-enact the massacre in situ. They themselves play the roles of victims, assassins, and spectators. Ruy Guerra, now a Brazilian but born in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo, the capital of Mozambique), filmed this extraordinary creation of liberated popular culture, intercutting it with first-hand interviews on the massacre. The mix is compelling, and the grave yet joyous spectacle unique.

In the midst of Mozambique's devastating civil war, Muidinga, an orphaned refugee, wanders the countryside in search of his mother. His only companion is an elderly storyteller, and the only guide to finding his mother is a dead man's diary. This transporting drama underscores the power of imagination in surviving, and ultimately overcoming, the catastrophe of war.

Two boys with different experiences and goals meet up in a sprawling African market. One is looking for a job, to get back what was stolen from him and return home. The other will do anything to avoid having to go back with his family. They become friends and together they reinvent the world.

This documentary presents video footages from President Samora Machel's discourses and from his interactions with Mozambican people; includes narration in Portuguese that discuss Mozambique social conditions and developments after independence from Portuguese colonial administration was obtained.

Each Malangatana's brushstroke is a new line of a long life story. Odd black and white sketching, full of little people in the middle of animals, or with such an explosive African color, that describes the painter memories. Starring at the drawings he says "one day I will explain all this". Throughout is living memories and these promises we are taken on a journey into the African world. We see the relation between the present and the past along with the spirits, how they are connected in an emotional way, how they integrate themselves, having to assimilate another culture in colonial time. Malangatana is one of the most important painters of the African Continent.

In the early 70s, Camilo de Sousa left Lourenço Marques, Mozambique, travelled Europe, joined the Frelimo guerrilla and became a filmmaker. Now living in Portugal, he returns to Mozambique to be reunited with two former comrades in arms. With Aleixo Caindi and Julião Papalo, he recalls ancient times, when the joy of liberation made way for dark times and the quest for a ‘new man’ destroyed a country’s dreams and illusions.

The Mesa da Unidade Popular (People's Unity Table) was part of the furniture that, in the post-independence period, the Mozambican state intended to give to all families. It brought together the socialist idea of equality and social justice with the concept of national unity, a basic assumption of Frelimo for the harmonious development of the country. Today, we sit down at that table once again to revisit the process of nation building and the utopia of a more just society.

Through testimonials from Mozambican women, the filmmakers explore the symbolism and social, cultural, and economic implications of the capulana in the female universe, in different eras, linked together by the features, colors, patterns, designs, sayings, and names of each capulana, in whose folds a unique, singular story is hidden.