Between 21 and 29 March, members of the FILMASPORA project team were in Praia, Cape Verde, for the Project’s First Workshop on Radical Creative Writing. Ana Rita Alves, Corsino Furtado, Inês Sapeta Dias, Fernando Moreira, Maíra Zenun, Max Rubem and Mário Vaz Almeida explored living archives and marginalised memories through critical methodologies of listening, analysis and creative writing. The initiative aimed to contribute to the formulation of a new cine-geography of the African diaspora in Europe, revisiting and activating practices of memory that re-establish connections between the outskirts of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and specific areas of Praia, such as Sucupira, Achada Limpo and the Plateau, where the accumulation of colonial archives has become particularly evident.

This “residency” was conceived by Maíra Zenun, a research fellow on the project, who proposes a “sensory shift” in academic research by prioritising multimodal and situated experiences, collective authorship and the critical use of technologies, treating the Cape Verdean context as an active participant in the process. In line with the principles of Black Emancipatory Action Research (BEAR), and in partnership with the (UN)PROTECT project (State (Un)Protection and Racialization in Portugal, CES — University of Coimbra) and the Garah Foundation, the programme included five days of collective experimentation and collaborative knowledge production, culminating, on the sixth day, with a public session to present and share the processes, experiments and reflections developed throughout the residency — Escritas radicais e cine‑geografias: da Cidade da Praia à diáspora na Área Metropolitana de Lisboa [Radical Writings and Cine-geographies: from Praia to the diaspora in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area] —, opening up to the public the practices of listening, writing and research that structured the workshop.

The team was also welcomed by the Fidjuz di Cabral Socio-Cultural and Sports Association, which organised a walk for them through the Fundo Kobom neighbourhood, “a neighbourhood that was once very run-down, but which has been revitalised by the residents themselves and now welcomes artists from all over the world to record in local studios, such as Mayou’s, and take part in residencies and cultural activities,” Maíra Zenun tells us. Maíra also had the opportunity to lead a masterclass at the “Audiovisual Arts Laboratory” in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at the University of Cape Verde, on women in the audiovisual sector, Black cinema and the challenges of editing in the audiovisual field by African and Afro-diasporic people.

Photos: Team FILMASPORA