Mortu Nega (1988)
Australian Premiere - 4K Restoration
‘Gomes often says that cinema is rhythm, music, and above all, light. His enormous sensitivity to social nuance and his tempered optimism fill in the chiaroscuros of the everyday.’ – Ela Bittencourt, Metrograph Journal
The year is 1973 – the tail end of Guinea-Bissau’s 11-year war against Portuguese colonial rule. A woman, Diminga (Bia Gomes), searches for her wounded partner, Sako (Tunu Eugenio Almada), among the rebel forces at a military camp. When the story seamlessly skips ahead to the mid 1970s, guerilla warfare has given way to the couple’s life together as celebrations in their fledgling nation are dampened by straitened conditions.
The first fictional feature film produced in independent Guinea-Bissau, Mortu Nega dwells – as its title loosely translates – on ‘those whom death refused’. Flora Gomes’s representation of the struggle of everyday life as just another kind of war, and of how challenges are dealt with through tools and processes embedded in the native culture, echoes and fulfils the desire expressed by the revered anti-colonial leader, pan-Africanist and poet Amílcar Cabral: for Bissau-Guineans to film their own people, country and liberation.
Introduced by Lucia Sorbera at Ritz Cinemas and Guido Melo at Lido Cinemas.
Rating
Unclassified 18+
Duration
96 min
Country
Guinea-Bissau
Language
Creole and Portuguese (English subtitles)
Cast
Bia Gomes, Mamadu Uri Balde, Tunu Eugenio Almada, Pedro da Silva, Homna Nalete, M’Male Nhasse
Director
Flora Gomes
