Presentation

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese’s Motus Sodalis Presents:

Cinema UrGENTE:
Urgency and Alter-mundialization in Mozambican Cinema



A Presentation by Cassandra Tesch

The vision of this talk is to provide an overview of the history of Mozambican Cinema from Revolution to Neo-Liberalism. We will discuss the major periods of cinematic expression in Mozambique, beginning with the Cinema-Novo inspired Kuxa-Kanema documentary newsreels of the 1970’s to the privatization of national film in the post-civil war era. We will pay considerable attention to the recent works by both young and senior cineastes whose films are informed by a sense of local and international political urgency. We will discuss how some of the new films coming out of Mozambique return to their revolutionary roots in a way that lends to an alter-mundialist cinema, while at the same time forging a presence for Mozambique in Global cinema.

Friday, March 5th, 2010
3pm
Rolfe Hall 4302 – Nourishments provided ☺

Cassandra Tesch is a Masters Candidate in African Studies at UCLA. This discussion is rooted in her thesis project entitled From Kuxa-Kanema to Dockanema: 35 years of Mozambican Cinema. Cassandra’s research is concentrated in the cultures of the Lusophone world, with a focus on art as a tool of non-violent social change. She is a graduate student instructor of Portuguese in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Speak sasa or forever hold your peace

Speak now or forever hold your peace

The minds of many who knew me in this homeland
Scream Marriage, say what?

I met Ahmed on a Tuesday Morning
day after I took a ferry from Dar es Salaam to Stonetown
I meandered through the maze of narrow streets
Past the woman who sells cardamom bread and spiced coffee
Beyond the men who play bao and sell pealed oranges
I entered Darejani Market
he stood amongst sellers snatching at my attention
smiled and said
Habari yako? What’s your name?

I-him-spoke
Jina langu ni Ashura kwa Kiswahili
Je, unaitwa nani? Habari gani?

He said,
Ahmedi…

Three syllables dangled over right palm to right hand
Shake and say
Nimefurahi sana kukuona
Translation
I think I’m gonna love you

In California the ones who knew me say
He’s Muslim, you’re Christian, say what?

That day he helped me bargain
reduce shillings exchanged for avocados, onions, tomatoes, garlic and cilantro
He laughed when I said I was making something called Guacamole
I explained
Ni kama mchuzi wa maparachici ni chakula cha kimeksiko

Later he showed me spices
Coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, fresh vanilla beans

He cut open a package of sweet pink baobab seeds
Let me taste fuchsia hibiscus
Sweet stained labium

Cycles later we swapped stories on the shores of the Indian ocean
we discovered our identical ages
our de-ringed freedom
as we sucked the juice from Rambutan fruit.

In the kitchen of his family home
we crushed ginger, cucumber and Mabungo
we mixed fruit fleshes, sugars and tongues
He said
Ashura, sema tena
Ma-bun-go
was a year before I learned that was Rubber Tree Fruit
not all of me is native to English

In my homeland the ones who knew me said
You don’t seem like the type to settle down

Haraka haraka haina baraka

I settled up out and
A year later he made my vocabulary four languages wide
When we honey sunned
Pre-nuptual voyage to Mombasa
Outside the city
He sang
Mapenzi yetu matamu ya salaam ya salaam

Later on his home island of Pemba
final flickers of night lantern gave us darkness
last burst of energy
made us focus on the only lights
that emanated from Sky and Tanga

at the docks
boys sold sea fruit
on the first day after Ramadan
under the sign
Karibu Mkoani

In my homeland my foreign familiars utter confusions passionate and passportless

They don’t breath there where
Mohamed sells June plums and Rose Apples
where the Forodhani oceanfront is illuminated with the early evening spectacle of a hundred tiny candles
night market smells of plantains, grilled earth and sea meats, sugar cane juice and plumaria

Where breeze tickles collarbone
All I hear is Ahmed whisper
Inshallah
Mungu atatubariki
Inshallah

R.I.Poetry

Each time I smell Lime and Verbena
I remember Wheeler hall
flyers outside the door
To Chicano Studies
[Protest Sweat Shops]
[Work for the Environment]
[18 and Over at Bancroft on Tuesdays]

(Don’t be mad this poetry has Italics, punctuation and weird symbols, I know you hated that. You said poetry should just be the words and not all that other grammar crap}

I tried to tell myself
UC Berkeley wasn’t a monster
Kept reading over the words stapled and thumb tacked
Trying to distract myself from the inconsistencies in my
‘What if people know I’m a transfer student?’
‘What if this was a mistake’

first day
You walked in and said,
Hey class
I’m a poet
You can call me Profe Or Alfred
We’re going to have literature in here
a.k.a. a blast
We’re gonna read
Bless me Ultima
And The Last Generation
An Intro to Chicano Poetics

Deep into semester
Anaya’s narrative sparked interest
You said
Write your own story
About what Ultima would do
In response to a current event
Take the character out of the book
Talk to her
Continue the parks…

You gave us Lorna Cervantes’ Poem
4 page genius entitled, Coffee
Made us protest through pens
Six years later
I’ve never found a piece so moving
So urgent

Later after I studied abroad in Brazil
Back at CAL when I felt I owned it
I returned to your course
The one you held in your office
The poet’s society
Ever Monday from 1-5
9 of us hung out on your headquarters couches
Read-aloud our written progressions
Workshop scribbles and the excitement in knowing
That these written babies would grow

That was the year when my sister was four
I wrote to her
And you said
The world needs poetry like this
Poets like you

Later I wondered
Why there weren’t more Profe’s giving classes on couches
In deconstruct spaces
You invited us to write in Paris
Always spoke of Mexico
La madre tierra
I pictured you in your favorite stories
About drinking Carona’s on the beaches of Cancun

This November
When I arrived in Cancun
I thought of your tales
It had already been two years after your passing
And it looked just the way
Your words had given life to me
On those sofa’s at CAL
Behind Wheeler hall
Where I became a poetist
And I couldn’t help but wonder
If I’d ever get the chance to
Write you again

To breath poetry into chalk boards
Bend rules of esoteric knowledge
A classroom on cushions
Poetry on high
And I wondered if I’d ever get to write you again
To say thank you
For making Cal worth it
For realing my dreams

May you rest in Poetry

Lesson learning

She rolled her eyes when I said I preferred not to use the word “Prostitute”, but “transactional sex worker”, instead. Granted it was in Portuguese, and while this might not reflect the cultural trends of the Lusophone world, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be critical thinkers as we enter the speech of new cultures.

It’s funny how when learning another language we can wear words like veils, pretend we don’t know ourselves in terms we would never use in native tongue. It is like putting your linguistic feet on the coffee table of a foreign language house, knowing merda well you wouldn’t pull that at your own domicile.

This week in my course on service-learning I read of Critical Whiteness, this theory that postulates that “white” people, particularly “white” men are often uncomfortable with facing their own inherent privilege when discussing the marginalization of other ethnic groups as it forces them to question their own identity. This idea dropped me off on the side of a thought: Is there such a thing as a Critical Womanness? If so, then this might proffer a possible reason as to why many of the female population find it so difficult to consider the problematics of words like “Prostitute” or “Bitch” as it causes them to rearrange their own self-perception. No matter how dictionaryized a speaker might be, definitions get lost in the culture of fast speech – quick words that feed thought at the cost of our progression. What self-loving woman wants to really question the words she uses that perpetuate a vicious cycle of misogyny? It’s so much easier to chalk it up to over- analyzation, but truth always translates to verdade.

It’s curious, too, because in African Studies when we talk about the quasi-racist word “tribe” most people with half a head accept that, say “ethnic community” and call it a day. Even in Portuguese, I teach that the word “tribo” is used to denote groups of people, but it’s better to say “comunidade étnica”, even though the bulk of Lusophones probably wouldn’t agree, but we are the owners of our speech and we select the words we use, freely. We are not chained to terms that we appear to have such affinity for.

Some people toss forth any given word to formulate a sentence. I arrange poetry to sing meaning through ever dialogue I breathe.