The Indian ocean, a mirror of affection and memories in Lara Sousa’s filmography: reflections on cinema and literature in Mozambique

Abstract

The objective of this article is, based on the documentaries Fim and Kalunga, by the young Mozambican filmmaker Lara Sousa, to reflect on some directions of the current Mozambican filmography, which, from the perspectives of Pasolini’s “poetry cinema” and of the “post-modern documentary” defined by Bill Nichols, moves away from the militant cinegraphy practised by the Mozambican filmmakers of the previous generation, producing subjective films, deconstructors of utopias dreamt in the past. In Fim, the threat of paternal death, the famous filmmaker Camilo de Sousa, causes Lara to reevaluate the utopias and action cinema that characterized her father’s cinematic performance in the process of decolonization of Mozambique. In Kalunga, the memory of the poems of his great-aunt, Noémia de Sousa, offers a critical rereading of an “Indian ocean of despair and revolts”.