Animated Archive
The National Film Institute of Guinea-Bissau (INCA – Instituto Nacional de Cinema e Audiovisual) is home to important documentary material from the period of the country’s struggle for liberation (1963–1974) and first years of independence. There are also foreign film productions there which reflect the geopolitical relationships of solidarity with other countries in the 1970s.
The historical film material from the period of militant cinema in Guinea-Bissau was almost completely destroyed in the civil war of 1998/99. Only a small part of this material survived this destruction. As part of the "Animated Archive" project, the film holdings were able to be digitized with the support of the German Foreign Office’s Cultural Preservation program.
Historical Background
The history of Guinean cinema starts during the 11-year-long war for independence with Portugal when Amílcar Cabral, the leader of PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), sent four young Guineans – Flora Gomes, Sana na N’Hada, Josefina Crato and José Bolama Cobumba – to the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) to learn how to make cinema. Cabral’s propaganda strategy was to make his people and the world aware of the ongoing struggle, utilising the power of the image of the individual in order to visually create a new national identity. Cinema was a political tool, a way to establish the pillar of a collective memory, to promote the raising up of the newly-liberated Guinea.
Cinema in Guinea-Bissau thrived for some years after independence but after the coup d’état in 1980 it stopped being a governmental priority (with the exception of one of the most important Guinean productions, MORTU NEGA (1988), by Flora Gomes) and with outbreak of the Civil War in 1998 it was completely abandoned.
Today, all that is known to have remained from this period of production is an archive of films and unedited footage made between 1972 and 1980 and stored in Bissau at INCA (Instituto Nacional de Cinema e Audiovisual). Assembled with this material are other films and news reels originating from countries which supported the Guinean struggle (Cuba, Sweden, the GDR, Senegal, the USSR, Holland, France, India and Algeria) and by Portuguese filmmakers struggling against colonial politics as well as copies of several films left by Chris Marker during his visits to Guinea-Bissau in 1979.