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245 00 Mortu Nega (Those Whom Death Refused).
264 1 [San Francisco, California, USA] :|bKanopy Streaming,
|c2015.
300 1 online resource (1 video file, approximately 93 min.) :
|bdigital, .flv file, sound
336 two-dimensional moving image|btdi|2rdacontent
337 computer|bc|2rdamedia
338 online resource|bcr|2rdacarrier
344 digital
347 video file|bMPEG-4|bFlash
500 Title from title frames.
518 Originally produced by California Newsreel in 1988.
520 This fictional account of the closing months of the war
against the Portuguese and the consolidation of the
independent West African nation of Guinea-Bissau both
reflects and critiques the revolutionary process. Mortu
Nega, as its title implies, is a unique kind of elegy -
not so much to the victims of the liberation struggle as
to its survivors. Like the Zimbabwean film Flame (1996)
and Gomes' own more disillusioned second feature Udju Azul
di Yonta (1991), it is a bittersweet eulogy to those
veterans who gave so much yet often benefited so little
from the struggle. The film poses a question facing much
of Africa at the start of the 21st century: with the goal
of independence achieved, what can serve as an equally
unifying and compelling vision around which to construct a
new society? Or as Chris Marker observed in his 1980
documentary San Soleil, coincidentally contemplating the
decay of Guinea-Bissau's revolution: "What every
revolutionary thinks the morning after victory: now the
real problems begin." Mortu Nega covers the period from
January 1973 during the closing months of the war against
the Portuguese until the consolidation of an independent
Guinea-Bissau in 1974 and 1975. This tiny West African
nation's valiant struggle and eventual triumph over 500
years of Portuguese domination attracted international
support and heralded the final anti-colonial wave
culminating in the defeat of apartheid in 1994. The
revolution's charismatic leader, the Cape Verdean
agronomist, Amilcar Cabral, was assassinated on the eve of
victory in January 1973 by Portuguese assisted mainland
nationalists. The fragile union between Guinea-Bissau and
the Cape Verde islands itself was finally dissolved in a
bloodless military coup in 1980 led by an old guerilla
commander, the present president, João Bernardo Vieira.
When the post-revolutionary generation in the military and
the population as a whole began to oppose Vieira's
increasingly kleptocratic regime, he called in troops from
Senegal and Guinea (Conakry) resulting in the carnage of
June, 1998. Mortu Nega can be divided into three
"movements" each with a style reflecting a distinct stage
in the revolutionary process. The film begins mysteriously
someplace in the bush on the supply road from Conakry to
the front. A convoy weaves its way through tall grasses
camouflaging itself like Mao's "fish in the sea." Gomes'
portrayal of guerilla war is one of the most accurate on
film, capturing its tedium, terror and heroism, its rhythm
of fragile silences broken by helicopter fire from above
or exploding landmines from below. In this war of
attrition with the Portuguese, the exhausted militants
press forward along a unclear, even circuitous path,
directed only by their vision of a free Guinea-Bissau.
Throughout this section, the emphasis is on the group over
the individual. Only after five minutes, does a heroine,
Diminga, emerge and the story of her unflagging loyalty to
her husband, Sako, a wounded guerilla commander, serves to
underline the sense of solidarity developed among the
freedom fighters. After demobilization, the veterans
return to a world with very different values, the static
world of village life, where people are divided by
property and self-interest, where commerce takes the place
of camaraderie. It seems ironic that now that the
revolution has reached its destination it has lost its
sense of direction. For example, when soldiers distribute
free rice it immediately passes into corrosive black-
market profiteering. A drought descends on the country,
perhaps symbolizing the drying up of revolutionary fervor.
Sako's old war wound turns gangrenous, just as the body
politic has become diseased. He ruefully observes that
during war his feet carried him across the country but in
peace he can't make his way across his yard. Gomes
dramatizes the two paths the revolution can take when Sako
is taken to Bissau for treatment and asks Diminga to seek
the help of two old comrades. One, a pipe-smoking
bureaucrat, fears he's being asked for money and pretends
not to recognize Sako's name; the other unhesitatingly
puts himself, his car and driver at his old comrade's
disposal. Back in the village, a young literacy teacher
asks, "What does 'luta' mean?" A woman responds that
struggle for her is feeding her child each day. Sako
answers that struggle for him was fighting the Portuguese.
The teacher concludes: "For you the struggle was yesterday,
for her the struggle is today. A luta continua - the
struggle continues." The revolution must evolve. In the
third movement, the film abandons the world of history for
that of myth; the long march of war and the halting steps
of national development are transformed literally into
dance. Diminga has a prophetic dream which is interpreted
to mean that the drought can only be lifted through the
"beckoning of the ancestors." Here Gomes, as the PAIGC
itself frequently did, adapts to political purposes a
traditional religious ritual, the invocation of Djon Cago,
a deity of the Balanta people, Guinea-Bissau's largest
ethnic group inhabiting the rice growing region south of
the Geba estuary. Diminga, appeals to the dead on behalf
of "the generation of sorrows...of those whom death
refused," to reveal who is stirring up ethnic strife,
committing crimes in the name of the party, desiring "the
death of the baobab," that is, the revolution. The film is
too discrete to name names or perhaps this is a ritual
exorcism of all the people of Guinea-Bissau; in any case,
by 1988 everyone knew who was responsible. The ritual
succeeds in breaking the drought and in the final shot the
children dance in a downpour. Gomes' next film, Udju Azul
di Yonta, ends with a similar scene; the by-now thoroughly
disillusioned and enervated revolutionary generation dream,
hung-over beside a swimming pool, while the children of
Bissau dance off pursuing their own dreams. By ending both
films with a shift from narrative to symbol, Gomes seems
to be saying that for the nation to rediscover a sense of
direction requires a rupture with the corrupt political
discourse of the present and a reaffirmation of the
primordial values unifying the people. Even if the
Diancongo rite is not a literal deus ex machina but simply
an invocation of some sort of Jungian "collective
unconscious;" Gomes seems here to rely on a mythopoeyic
rather than a political solution. It is no doubt unfair to
point out that atavistic values do not seem to have saved
the country from the tragedy of the past 25 years. Cabral
himself probably imagined some sort of socialist
development path growing out of the collective
institutions he improvised in the liberated zones. But he
also foresaw the dangers of "mountaintopism," a self-
interested, centralized bureaucracy ignoring the daily
needs of grassroot producers. In any case, by 1988
socialism had collapsed and nothing but neo-liberal
structural adjustment policies had taken its place. Thus
the question which Gomes raises and answers only
symbolically, continues to face Africans, indeed anyone,
looking for a path towards a more just society. A luta
does indeed continua. "The movie follows the historical
jugular with an eye to revising closely-held canonical
views....Gomes proves a true scholar with a celluloid
quill... I can't think of a better cinematic introduction
to lusophonic Africa than MORTU NEGA." - Mustafah Dhada,
Clark Atlanta University "The role of women in the
protracted struggle for independence in Guinea-Bissau has
found its film and heroine. It should find a welcome place
in classrooms and art houses." - Africa Today "The true
revelation of FESPACO. It has a personal tone, full of
freshness and emotion. Provides a non-heroic vision of
history that shows the natural participation of women in
the struggle." - Le Monde "A sweeping historical panorama
of a nation's history. Introduces a promising talent to
the African scene. It sidesteps sociology and ethnology
for a human perspective on events." - Variety.
538 Mode of access: World Wide Web.
650 0 Revolution|vHistory|y1963-1974|zAfrica|zGuinea-Bissau.
650 0 Social conditions|xDroughts|xFamines |zAfrica|zGuinea-
Bissau.
655 7 Feature films.|2lcgft
700 1 Gomes, Flora |d1949-.|efilm director.
700 1 Gomes, Bia |eactor.
710 2 Kanopy (Firm)
856 40 |uhttps://rider.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://
rider.kanopy.com/node/139716|zStreaming video via Kanopy.
Access restricted to current Rider University students,
faculty, and staff.
856 42 |zCover Image|uhttps://www.kanopy.com/node/139716/external
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