Big Bang Henda is a documentary-poetry-manifesto showcasing Angolan artist Kiluanji Kia Henda’s impactful work. Exploring anti-colonial themes, it delves into toppling symbols and constructing new memories, challenging us to rethink history through the lens of generations shaped by war.
Fernanda Polacow
Fernanda is a screenwriter and director living between Brazil and Portugal. She has been working in the intersections between Brazil, Portugal, and the African Portuguese speaking countries. Her first feature as a writer, Mosquito (2020), was the opening film at the 2020 IFFR.
Bruno Moraes Cabral
Bruno Moraes Cabral (1980) is a film producer and director. He dedicated the early years of his career to documentary filmmaking, aiming to address significant questions about history, contemporary society, and its transformations. In 2011, he founded Garden Films, where he produced and directed his award-winning documentary Praxis (2011) widely showcased in dozens of festivals, RTP1, and Canal+.
Cinema as Memorial
Reminiscence? What is reminiscence? What is the difference between them and memories? What can constitute a reminiscence and memory? How does reminiscence work? Whose reminiscence? What reminiscence? What memory? Whose memory? When should we reminisce and when should we remember? How do we remember and how do we reminisce?
The films in this year’s Spektrum explore these questions through a variety of approaches, both experimental and traditional in documentary film production.
Instead of contestation, this year’s Spektrum tries to present a range of diverse scores on memory and how we remember. From the very personal to/or at the same time the collective, as well as from the hegemonic to the alternative. Memories and ways of remembering coexist; they can be equally important for us to know or learn. It’s not about finding answers in an instant, but rather as a reminder that we can retain as a critical aid to navigate life now and then.
–Wimo Ambala Bayang
Programmer
Have you ever visited or witnessed a solo performance of contemporary art? Big Bang Henda (Fernanda Polacow, 2023) offers a similar experience in the form of a documentary film. Director Polacow packages this documentary-poem-manifesto to document the work of Kiluanji Kia Henda, an Angolan artist whose work symbolizes resistance to colonialism and historical oppression. The…
