Reimagining African Independence

In 1968, Augusta Conchilia, a journalist and photographer, went to Angola to document the guerrilla warfare conducted by the liberation movement against the Portuguese occupation. Her documentary film A Proposito dell’Angoloa (1971) drew the attention of the international community on the oppression of the Angolan people. How can visual culture challenge oppressive power systems? How does it raise questions of witnessing and responsibility vis-à-vis African independence movements?

This event is part of Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis’ Annual Conference, this year titled “Wayward Visuality: The Question of Violence and Liberation”.

Conchilia’s images of the combatants wretchedly dressed while marching with sticks instead of guns attracted the attention of the international community on the oppression of the Angolan people and the heroism of the rebels. Her journey through Angola resulted in the book Guerra di Popolo in Angola, a photo reportage realised together with the MPLA partisans (1969), and the documentary on the struggle for liberation titled A Proposito dell’Angoloa (1971).

On June 3rd, Augusta’s film will be screened (not in its entirety) to open a discussion to think about visual culture as wayward in its work to refuse systems of oppression. Where the wayward is understood as that which threatens structures of oppression and power, through one’s deviance from oppressive systems and making a commitment to living an emancipated futurity now. A Proposito dell’Angoloa provides an opportunity to untangle questions of witnessing and responsibility.

Speakers

Rodrigo Brum is a film producer, programmer, and scholar. He is Associate Professor of Practice in the Film Program at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and a Ph.D. candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (UvA), where his research focuses on the development of film education in Africa and Latin America during the Third Cinema movement.

Maria do Carmo Piçarra is vice-coordinator of ICNOVA at Nova University of Lisbon, an assistant professor at FSCH- Nova University of Lisbon, and a film curator. She was awarded the Hélio and Amélia Pedroso/Luso-American Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (2023). Her research subjects focus on (post)colonial filmic representations, film propaganda and censorship in Portugal, women in decolonization movements and militant uses of the image.

Eleri Connick (moderator) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam’s School Cultural Analysis. Her doctoral project is titled: “The Material Witness: Practices of Palestinian Refusal in Amman”. Drawing upon curated workshops in Amman and in-depth ethnographic research she explores how objects that interlocuters bring to the workshops become disobedient in their refusal of hegemony and what counts as a Palestinian narrative. She was the Darat al Funun PhD Fellow in February to July 2023 and the Sijal Scholar in Summer 2026.