1

Memoirs in Super 8 mm: The History of a Format or a Historical Format

An account and critical reading of an educational workshop in Mozambique

Nadine Wanono

Article translated from French and originally published in

Le Temps des médias. Revue d’histoire (ISSN : 1764-2507, ISSN électronique : 2104-3671)

This contribution aims to provide answers to the question of the political stakes of the training
course in Super 8 mm techniques, which took place in Mozambique in 1978-1979. The aim of
this training course in cinematographic techniques was to encourage the writing of the history
of this young republic and, through its artistic, cultural and ideological conflicts, reveals the
newly created party's desire for the unification, legitimacy and credibility of its policy.

This first experience of training in cinema techniques played a decisive role in the direction my
research has taken. I found myself faced with singular registers of legitimacy and the
affirmation of theoretical and epistemological postures derived from the use of a scientific tool
like the camera and was therefore naturally led to study the production of the discourses which
interspersed this first usage of the techniques, their role, the power which may be conferred
upon them and their involvement in the actual constitution of forms of representation of data
gathered in the field. This article is part of research carried out at the HASTEC Laboratory of
Excellence (History and Anthropology of Sciences and Techniques) which aims to accurately
determine both the links between techniques of seeing and believing and the development and
communication modalities for knowledge and beliefs. Mine is a reflexive approach in which
my work as an anthropologist filmmaker and my discipline of visual anthropology became my
field of study. The work carried out in Mozambique is one of these fields where the use of
audiovisual techniques revealed the implicit links between ideological convictions, aesthetic
discourse and political power.

The aim of my research work is to accurately determine and enrich the little-known portrait of
this period in which the Mozambican republic was emerging. There have been several articles
relating Godard's experience (Baecque, Diawara, Mattelart) or the work carried out in the
framework of National Institute of Cinema, or INC, (Andrade, Mattelart, Guerra) but there
have been few well-founded accounts of the importance of the introduction of Super 8mm in
the Mozambican revolutionary process. The country's political and economic evolution and its
movement towards a market economy probably helped the expression of critical thought
develop (Borges Coelho, Israel, Fernandes, Bragança and Depelchin) which confirms the
importance of a comparative reading of these experiences and the discourse they produced
within the system directed by the Frelimo and presented as "a codified script 1".

Analysis of reports, accounts and stories from the different protagonists of this cooperation
initiative along with recent analyses by historians have enabled me to make a critical reading of
the first two years of the government's existence and of the party's creation. During this period,

Nadine Wanono was educated in visual anthropology and is tenure researcher at the Institut des Mondes africains, CNRS


UMR 8171 and the HASTEC Laboratory of Excellence.

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the media and formats used were revealing of the era's political choices and tensions.
Furthermore, from a historical standpoint, we shall also underline how these oppositions also
testify to conflicting memories. A meticulous cross-comparison of sources' accounts and
analysis of their political context brings out the important issues at stake in the process of
creation with the foundation of a popular republic.

The historical and political conditions in which these workshops were set up will first be
discussed before moving onto a discussion of the different arguments, which accompanied the
training course.

Historical background

Samora Machel, the charismatic leader of Frelimo 2 led the country to independence in June
1975 after over eleven years of guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese army. As Armand
Mattelart points out, "the organization of the communications effort in the war of independence
could not avoid the dynamic of a mass war 3" and indeed Machel and his collaborators were
aware of the importance of cinema and its effectiveness in helping to construct a socialist
nation and thus created the National Institute of Cinema (INC, Institut National du Cinema) in
1975. The struggle for decolonization was therefore played out on both the military and cultural
levels with cinema being one of the prime means used for the latter. One of the specific
features in Mozambique was the drive to create a cinematographic partnership, which would
break with the codes inherited from colonial cinema to instead favour revolutionary forms of
expression and aesthetics. Amilcar Cabral declared "the war for national liberation inevitably
has to be a cultural act4". The interest in the subject and will of Samora Machel as displayed in
the creation of the INC can also be seen through two cooperation projects which were set up
with Jean-Luc Godard and Jean Rouch respectively.

My work was carried out in the framework of cooperation projects financed by the French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was part of the training programme designed and implemented
by Jean Rouch and Jacques d’Arthuys 5. The team of teachers was made up of Miguel Arraes de
Alencar6 and Philippe Constantini7. This partnership enabled me to carry out several missions
in Mozambique between 1978 and 1979 during which I taught workers from different
ministries the cinematographic language and techniques specific to Super 8mm. The idea was
that, once these young Mozambican civil servants were trained in these light cinematographic
techniques, they would relay the government's political messages to the population and report
on the internal struggles and conflicts within their professional environments.

In parallel to our training work which evolved according to the requirements expressed by the
Centre for Studies and Communication (CEC, Centre d’Etudes et de Communication) at
Eduardo Mondlane University, the Mozambican government asked Jean-Luc Godard and
Anne-Marie Miéville to devise a television channel and make a film about the advent of the
People's Republic of Mozambique. In 1979 Godard published an article about the whole
experience entitled "Nord contre Sud ou Naissance de (l’image) d’une nation 8" (North against
South or the Birth of (the image) of a nation). On several occasions they accompanied us in the
field and explained their singular viewpoints during cordial exchanges. For Godard, the idea
was to set up a television circuit, which would help establish a direct collaboration between the
 3
government and its production company, Sonimages. Godard wanted to promote a true
research laboratory and introduce a revolutionary form of television, which would be a real
departure from the aesthetic and media conventions of the time. It was an important matter and
fairly quickly President Samora Machel convinced the Information Ministry to give Godard
free rein.

In 1975, Mozambique itself created the Institute of Cinema directed by Ruy Guerra, a
Mozambican filmmaker who had been living in Brazil before independence. This young film
director ran the government policy as defined by the Information Ministry and set up
cooperation agreements with the USSR, Brazil and Cuba. The production format was mainly
35 mm and each week a Kuxa Kanema9 was produced and broadcast throughout the country.

Through these different collaboration projects, Mozambique was writing its official history
with the New Man as its hero. In 1977, Frelimo's programme declared that: "At this stage, the
ideological battle has been amplified in order to devise "the New Man", "the socialist man",
"the man who is free" of all obscurantism, superstition and subversion, the man who masters
science and culture and assumes society's fraternal relations and collective responsibilities. 10"

The objectives of the training workshop, its installation and evolution

In April 1978, a few months before our team left for Mozambique, Louis Marcorelles, a
journalist with Le Monde and a fervent advocate of Direct Cinema, devoted a full page article
to the future workshop to be set up in the new Republic of Mozambique. The article, "Partir
vers des chemins que l’on n’emprunte jamais" (Leaving for paths no-one ever takes), reminded
readers that in 1978 there were over a million and a half Super 8 mm cameras listed 11 in Super
8mm production workshops. During this era the INA encouraged the creation of associative
structures and access to Super 8mm which was seen as a tool for a new social and cultural
practice. The title of Monique Martineau-Hennebelle's article on the workshops in Nanterre left
no possible doubt about the final usage aims for this format - "Quand les exclus parlent d’eux-
mêmes12" (When the socially excluded talk about themselves).

The format's low cost and ease of handling along with the possibility of filming with
synchronized sound made the format particularly attractive. Jean Rouch had already introduced
the equipment with his students in the new doctoral course in visual anthropology at Nanterre
Paris X University. Rouch was inspired by the work of James Blue 13 who had produced one of
the first films about the Algerian war, 'Les Oliviers de la Justice' (The Olive Trees of Justice,
1962) and continued his personal and political commitment by setting up a training workshop
within the Southwest Area Media Program (SWAMP) at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

The friendship between Jean Rouch and Jacques d’Arthuys, the cultural attaché in
Mozambique, helped a project to develop with a cooperation agreement to be set up between
Eduardo Mondlane University and the cultural affairs department of the Foreign Affairs
Ministry. Jacques's personality, affection for taking risks and desire to put as much as possible
into his role as cultural attaché uncompromisingly and with a real aversion for "indecency and
indignity14" had attracted Rouch and their complicity was founded on two singular personal
goals. Rouch's was to go further with the artistic and revolutionary projects of Flaherty and
 4
Vertov, his two "totemic ancestors". Dziga Vertov was the incarnation of the "cine-eye", the
mechanical eye "directed towards the creation of a new vision of the world 15". Jacques's
motivation was clearly political - through the appropriation of the means of creation, the idea
was to help the underprivileged people to express themselves and thus promote the emergence
of a cultural revolution like the one which had failed in Chile with Allende. As Armand
Mattelart recalls16, their meeting in Chile in 1972 naturally led to an invitation to Mozambique
to prepare our team's arrival.

Several months were given over to preparing the mission but beyond the logistical aspects, the
very concept underpinning the workshop was affected by the region's specific geopolitical
context, particularly the tense situation between Mozambique and neighbouring South Africa.
As it was unthinkable to get films developed by sending them through South Africa, we
imported a Kodak processor to develop the students' films. The machine weighed over two-
and-a-half tons and took up a whole room at the university. Philippe, Miguel and I had been
trained by Kodak with the aim of teaching the Mozambican students how to run the process in
the long term. The chemicals imported were used to develop films for the first three months.

Jacques d’Arthuys and Jean Rouch's prime objective was to pass on technical and film skills
which would facilitate creation, personal accounts and writing history in the first person. This
important issue may seem fairly common in the 1970s and 1980s but actually turned out over
the course of the project to be very ambitious and above all problematic for the Mozambican
authorities given the evolution in the training courses and the films that were made. As the
Medvedkine group used to write on the walls of occupied factories, "la prise de camera est dejà
une prise de pouvoir17" (taking over the camera is already taking power).

Jean Rouch joined us during the first mission from June to September 1978. During these three
first months, around twenty students were initiated in cinema techniques. They were all men
and were officials or employees from different ministries. Certain of our comrades could not
read or write and certain worked for Eduardo Mondlane University. Our teaching techniques
needed to be adapted to this specific situation.

Before discussing technical rules, we needed to introduce the students to the idea of
cinematographic language and how to express ideas through a film. How can a situation be
conveyed through sound and images? Thanks to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we
possessed some copies of cinema classics. Battleship Potemkin was the first film screened
because Eisenstein's masterful style enabled us to explain the notions of shots, sequences and
editing. On the third day of teaching, the first metres of film were recorded and developed. The
rapidity with which the students filmed, developed, edited or put into sequence considerably
facilitated exchanges with protagonists who were eager to watch these films. Rouch and the
whole team shared a deep satisfaction and unbridled joy in seeing the immediate nature of the
process which reminded them to an extent of Medvekine's work with the film-train18.

Behind the scenes of this painstakingly prepared organization however, the first criticisms and
mistrust appeared regarding what might have been "a technique used as an agent for neo-
colonization19". In 1979, when our work had only just finished, Armand Mattelart wrote that "to
escape from the persistent power of the mythology of "light technology guerrilla warfare"
 5
requires greater interest in the daily guerrilla warfare of the struggle to create independence and
a new national life20". The author continues his analysis of the situation by recalling the
reactions of the students when they took the equipment they had just received out of its
packaging - "there's as much packaging as equipment".

It took several days to unpack the equipment and check that it worked. The voluminous
polystyrene, plastic or cardboard packaging was recovered by the TBARN 21 with whom a
cooperation agreement had been set up to make films to support promotional and dissemination
projects for traditional or alternative techniques.

Armand Mattelart's analysis hints that the team running the project could not have had a clear
political awareness of the importance of this cooperation initiative funded by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. An ideological war was beginning without us knowing. To use the terms
employed in the different reports produced by the Centro de Estudos de Communicacão or
l’Instituto de Investigacão Cientifica de Moçambique, Mozambique was training operators and
technicians while we were training directors22.

This difference in qualifications thus revealed the political and ideological visions of the
programme housed by the university. When I re-read the different reports describing the
workshop organized by the Centre d’Études et de Communication (Centre for Studies and
Communication) at Eduardo Mondlane University (CEC 23) and presented by the Mozambique
Institute of Scientific Research, I rediscovered the political logic underpinning the training
course. The most complete document is made up of a preliminary report produced by the CEC
which involves a summary report entitled "Information on Super 8mm cinema" in four parts -
the characteristics, limits, possibilities and usages of the format. This analysis is accompanied
by an attachment setting out the proceedings of the different stages of the course. The
characteristics reiterate the fact "that this format was created by the capitalist societies of
industrialized countries as a form of democratization for cinema. In these societies the concept
of democratization is linked to the consumerist economy and not to a true desire for the people
to appropriate new means (of communication)24". The report goes on to develop the party's
political line:

"The true rational and creative solution for means of communication [...] requires the class
struggle to be intensified so that all the contradictions are resolved within the dialectic specific
to these social transformations [...] The class struggle is brought into the framework of these
means of communication by the population's active participation at all levels of production. [...]
The second characteristic of Super 8mm is its capacity to be used in a social transformation
project". The conclusion of this report recommends that "the working-class officials who are
already involved on the different political, economic or cultural fronts in the community's
village should use these tools". The last point mentions "the necessity of defining a terrain of
research applied to the cinema - the structure of an original cinematographic language (images,
shots, framing and editing) based on the political, cultural and historical reality of the
Mozambican people and on the multiplicity and heterogeneity of it representations." The report
explains the format's limitations (fragility, sound, lifespan, repairs, development). Regarding
advantages, it mentions that the production cost is ten times less with S.8 than with 16mm film.
This several-page analysis generally advises caution and extremely precisely determines the
 6
framework and conditions for effective use of this format.

The attachment to this report gives the names of the 21 participants who responded to the
CEC's announcement of the course. The historian João Paulo Borges Coelho was part of the
TBARN group. It also states that the classes were reorganized during the first week, that the
CEC was in charge of the overall direction of the course and that a CEC research assistant
controlled the responsibility and coordination of the teaching content. Following a presentation
of the first four films25 made by the students in cooperation with the teachers, the report details
the different phases of the training course and the films produced under the CEC's name. It also
recalls that two students from the group were selected to accompany Ruy Guerra to the Island
of Mozambique to make documentaries for the first national seminar of museums and
antiquities. The films were considered to be of good quality but were not edited for the time
being.

The CEC asked us to give the students marks and suggest evaluation criteria. I remember our
reactions very well - how could we evaluate our comrades? This was not a university course, it
involved the transmission of knowledge. Those classed in groups A and B could continue the
course. Following this evaluation process, we had teams which trainees and trainers were an
integral part of and could work together on a jointly-made film.

On this film shoot, Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville accompanied Françoise
Foucault26 and I to the community villages. The two Mozambican students made A Revolução
La Famba in the Eduardo Mondlane village in the province of Gaza. During our stay, Françoise
and I used to screen films made during the first phase of training.

This report and the attachments give details of the obstacles which were to arise during the
three months of training.

The individual faced with the revolutionary process

Our group mostly remained anonymous in the many articles about it and was presented overall
as the University of Nanterre or as Ethnographic Film Committee team. It was assimilated with
the personality of Rouch, a world-renowned filmmaker who had always clearly and publically
stated his anarchist positions. For Rouch, appropriating means was a necessary practice,
whoever the interlocutors involved. Here the idea was to appropriate the resources made
available to us to enable Mozambicans to write their own history but it was also a way of
giving the students the means to denounce dysfunctional elements within the very institutions
being filmed.

Whatever the political conscience which drove our group, we did not have a common political
line. I did not represent or convey a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist ideology, I was a young
filmmaker committed to supporting a "technical individuation27" process as Georges Simondon
might have put it. I could not completely adhere to the Frelimo party's directives or identify
with the revolutionary character of "The New Man".

The choice of collective working methods was closely linked to Frelimo's Marxist vision of the
 7
world and of collegial power. Power is like grains of sand which cannot be separated. In this
way, opposition was considered a form of "bourgeois, elitist individualism" as Samora Machel
called it in 1976 in a speech on International Workers' Day - "knowledge and science possess
an eminently and intrinsically collective dimension 28". We had to follow the directives laid
down by our colleagues at the Centre for Studies and Communication which stipulated that we
should "reject the division of labour in the production of knowledge which is characteristic of
the bourgeoisie and also reject the divisions, academic careerism and professional isolation
which this division of labour produces29". The Centre for African Studies belonged to the same
university as the CEC. Many articles refer to the Centre for African Studies' influence on
imposing respect for the party's directives, the collectivization of activities and the Marxist
orientation given to research (Geffray, Coelho, Machava, Israel). As Carlos Fernandes recalls
"The Centre for African Studies was formally set up in January 1976 with as its Director
Aquino de Bragança, the internationally renowned journalist, academic, teacher at the UEM
(Eduardo Mondlane University), personal advisor to President Samora Machel and in the
Mozambican context, "one of the men listened to the most by those in power 30".

Faced with this will to create a collective history where all individuality would be banned, we
represented bourgeois and reactionary forces. Our interlocutors were Mozambican officials, the
children of Portuguese who had stayed after the independence of Mozambique. Without
wishing to question their profound and sincere commitment to the revolutionary struggle, their
inflexibility was symptomatic of their history and past - they owed it to themselves to be
models for the revolution. As João Paulo Borges Coelho recalled - to be Mozambican, you just
needed the red card of the party31.

Aquino de Bragança, a journalist with Afrique-Asie and a friend of Jacques, followed the
progress of our work. He regularly had lunch with us and Jacques explained to him how the
training was going and the important issues coming up in the field. Aquino de Bragança
listened well and explained to us the positions of the government and its progressive
radicalization. Christian Geffray's critical analysis of the CEA makes me think that Aquino
firmly defended certain government positions. "Aquino de Bragança was renowned for being
easy to approach, open and profoundly diplomatic. He was a great lover of conversation
animated by the constant pleasure of convincing people and "a gift for journalists" but was
nonetheless the nuanced, intelligent but unfailing voice of the party line". Obtaining special
permits like those covering leaving Maputo and continuing our training work in the community
villages, schools or regional cooperatives required Aquino's help and Jacques actively worked
on persuading him this was a good cause. At this period, we did not know that as of 1976,
attacks by the Renamo32 were unsettling certain regions in the North of the country. To justify
the caution and slowness involved in us obtaining these celebrated passes, Aquino insisted on
the importance of our safety and of protecting the students by reminding us of the constant
threat represented by South Africa. The aim was to strengthen the dialectic in us which had
been created by the Information Ministry and the party in general around a binary vision of
society - good/evil, the bourgeois/ revolutionaries, reactionary forces. The way in which
thought was structured and the reasoning passed on by Ruth Firth and Aquino de Bragança is
clearly presented in articles by Christian Geffray33 and Carlos Fernandes34.
 8
After several days wait in Maputo, we received our permits and each group including at least
two Mozambican students left for the different structures which had been proposed.

The field faced with revolutionary discourse

Several shoots took place at the hospital 35 and Rouch was present at one of the meetings of the
ward council at which patients, doctors and nurses shared their experiences of their day. At the
end of this assembly, Rouch quickly understood the trap which lay ahead of us and told us:
"When the students film these meetings, they highlight the dysfunctional side of the
assemblies." The students' films strengthened the weaknesses of the political systems which
had been set up. Quickly, long discussions took place between the students and the team which
supervised them because it was out of the question for these films to create a distance between
party directives and the reality in the field. One of the most complicated obstacles was the use
of vernacular languages.

Training in the techniques and values of cinema which was qualified as live at the time, being
ready to listen to the words of the people filmed were the basic rules or minimum commitment.
As the headlines of the era's newspapers showed, the aim was to enable the socially excluded to
express themselves. In all his speeches, Samora Machel continually referred to the necessity of
creating and using a common language which, paradoxically, was the language of the
colonizers.

This question of dialects and the ban on any other language than Portuguese brought us face-to-
face with a highly thorny problem. M. Cahen summed the problem up thus - "the
underestimation, devaluation and permanent delegitimization of ethnic identities involved a
certain educational policy (exclusively Portuguese) and clear mutual disregard between the
administration and the population. It prevented the necessary attention being paid to ethnic
balance in the State apparatus and did not enable balanced development of all the country's
regions [...]; in fact conversely the new identity was created as antagonistic to previous
identities. The New Man had to be produced. Obscurantism, feudalism and tribalism were
regularly disputed and criticized in Samora Machel's speeches36".

When a film was made in the Eduardo Mondlane community village, the students were very
embarrassed to have to speak in Tsonga. The learning we were transmitting was based on a
good level of integration into the community being filmed and indeed this was the very
foundation of our method. We needed to double in skill and persuasion to incite the students to
speak to farmers in their language. During the editing phase, all the parts were meticulously cut
and the students only screened films in Portuguese. We tried to use the two sound tracks
available with the S.8 format to keep both the Portuguese track and one in the local language.
This technique would have enabled feedback from the villages concerned and promoted fruitful
dialogues between the population filmed and the ministry supervisors who were following the
training course.

We were all comrades whose personalities had to take second place to national cohesion and
collective work. To reinforce this policy, we found a particularly popular comic strip character
in the daily papers who represented a capitalist with all the stereotypical vices normally
 9
associated with such a figure - consumption of alcohol or cigarettes, money, lying, laziness...
He was called Xiconhoca37, a compound name which means traitor, enemy or bandit 38. In the
same spirit of invisibility of individuals, there were no names on the credits of the films which
were all credited to the Centre for Studies and Communication (CEC) of the University.

Jacques d’Arthuys, Jean Rouch or I could not help but have a certain distance regarding this
policy the aim of which was to instil the values of the New Man in us. Our comrades from the
university began to mistrust and question the value of our commitment to the Popular Republic
and the revolution to some extent.

The tension became discernable between the university authorities and our group. Actually,
during the first three months, we had benefited from the support and advice of Aquino de
Bragança who had informed us of the rigidity of the measures taken, the will of party officials
to control the dynamic of these creative workshops and the political mistrust engendered by the
group's behaviour. The party directives formally indicated that enemies inside and outside the
country were to be treated in the same way. Mozambicans knew that there were re-education
camps and poster campaigns denouncing traitors who were going to repent. On the walls at the
university, entire billboards were covered with photographs along with subjects' names,
positions and acts of treason committed against the country. The punishments and the dates of
reconversion were also indicated. Each week, there was a new set of comrades who were to be
reconverted to the values of the New Man39.

In time, our group also began to hear stories told by people who tended more towards being
dissidents regarding how this revolution was being orchestrated and synchronized at speed by
the party intelligentsia and comrades from Cuba, the Soviet Union and Brazil. Our team was
associated with French policy in general, and more specifically French colonial policy, led by
an anarchist and used neo-colonial equipment. All of this meant we therefore had little chance
of measuring up.

Evolution, stakes and omission

At the end of the first period of training, the question of copies became crucial. The original
copies had been screened in markets, villages and hospitals and began to be damaged by the
climate conditions, dust and maintenance problems. At the end of screenings, we used to put
away the equipment, projectors and films by torch light because the power generator was
switched off to save petrol.

Armand Mattelart referred to this episode in the following terms: "the Beaulieu company
developed a synchronization system especially for the Mozambican project which enabled us to
film the film being projected onto the screen by hooking up the S.8 camera and the projector
using little drive belts... The haste displayed by the cooperation project and industry is no
mystery as industry was attempting to find a usage value and an outlet for audiovisual
equipment40".

The team's objective was to design equipment in a spirit of research and sharing. Jean Rouch
and Philippe Constantini had devised the following arrangements. Jean directly contacted the
 10
team of engineers at Beaulieu for them to modify the form of the projector's shutter blade so
that it would turn in synchronization with the camera. This invention and technical adjustment
enabled the process of creation to be maintained in full autonomy in Mozambique. It took
Philippe Constantini and Jean Rouch some days to accurately define the usage of this technique
and get support from Beaulieu. Several days were then spent filming the originals and
developing copies with the processor.

Once these copies had been put into circulation, the CEC accepted that an evaluation mission
should take place in which I would take part. The idea was to use a questionnaire devised
around the films screened to find out how the cinematographic language involved was
perceived by potential spectators. We went to the hospital and to certain community villages to
run these questionnaires. Then, as a second stage, I went on a mission to Nampula and the
Island of Mozambique to train future officials involved in the decentralization process.
Alongside technical training, the dual aim of this mission was to set up autonomous teams at
the Nampula Museum or production hubs within cultural institutions.

The images shot at Island of Mozambique leave no possible doubt about the instability and
poverty in provinces of Northern Mozambique. Fishermen there complained about the absence
of building materials, the conditions of their boats and the State's total inability to respond to
their requirements. I took the liberty of filming images which were outside our normal scope
during this two-week trip. It was 1979 and Jacques d’Arthuys was finding it increasingly
difficult to obtain authorization to remain in Mozambique. The cultural attaché asked us to
leave and we were placed on the persona non grata list in Mozambique. So, at the end of July
1979, I left Maputo knowing I would never go back there in the context of this project.

Paradoxically, despite the equipment all functioning, the government was not to support this
initiative. The reports I have in my archives show that the Mozambican Institute of Cinema was
supposed to buy the chemicals so we could carry on running the processor. Despite our highly
amicable relations with Ruy Guerra, the Institute considered that this was not a true cinema
project because of the S. 8mm format which was seen as a secondary format. Production
formats like the 16mm or 35mm enabled true control of messages, those conveying them, the
revolutionary aesthetic and officials from countries involved in the socialist construction of
Mozambique. The most significant point in this context was to be the process of omission
implemented by the local authorities and researchers involved in the revolutionary process.

Given our specific characteristics which we did not want to give up (individualism,
emphasizing personal creativity, taking initiatives, the critical spirit, etc.) and the specific
features of our equipment (mobility, lightness, quickness of use, absence of control), the team
was outside the scope of the revolutionary script.

The films made following Ruy Guerra's request for the Nampula Museum are not mentioned in
any public reports and the history of Mozambique either does not mention this educational
episode or simplifies it as we have pointed out on several occasions. Similarly, the Institute of
Cinema does not mention the training course and on our last mission to Maputo, the heads of
the anthropology department at Eduardo Mondlane University told me that they didn't "really
know what happened to these documentaries" filmed in Mozambique by Mozambicans.
 11
Omissions in history suppress disruptive elements. It was not until the end of the 1980s and the
publications by Michel Cahen, presented as a revisionist41, and Geffray that criticism was
accepted for the history of Mozambique as told to Mozambicans. Subsequently, Paulo Coelho
and Machava were to analyze the "codified script" proposed to the country.

The page of Mozambique's history which we took part in was written with tools from the
margins of the cinema industry, tools which in Europe enabled the most socially excluded
people to express themselves. In Mozambique, this technique was seen as a tool of neo-liberal
propaganda devised by Kodak. The absence of distance possible between the tools, formats and
discourse made all dialogue obsolete.

This look back at images and a critical view of work carried out nearly forty years ago now
reveals that the prevailing desire was to subvert the means made available to us. I considered it
possible to teach creative and innovative skills linked to this format without necessarily also
importing the neo-colonial values which went with Super 8. Faced with the task of writing
about a society in which the New Man was intended to fulfil himself completely, we invited
our Mozambican comrades to describe and document the dreams and aspirations of the whole
population. The official media took the upper hand to disseminate a large-scale official version
revolution. We had invited our colleagues to join us on the back roads and found ourselves
pushed onto a path which might best be described as a talvera42.
 12
Notes
1
J.P. Borges Coelho, "Politics and contemporary history in Mozambique: A set of epistemological
notes", in Kronos, vol.39, n°1, Cape Town, 2013.
2
Frelimo is the acronym for Frente de Libertação de Moçambique. The movement was set up in 1962
and became a political party in 1977.
3
A. Mattelart, "Mozambique: Communication et transition au Socialisme", in Yvonne Mignot-
Lefebvre (dir.), Revue Tiers Monde, n°79, tome 20, 1979, p.487-502.
4
A. Cabral, "Le rôle de la culture dans la lutte pour l’indépendance", in Unité et lutte I. L’Arme de la
Théorie, Paris, Maspero, 1975, p.336-357.
5

Jacques d’Arthuys (1943-1989) was the director of French Institutes in Chile, Portugal, Mozambique
and Brazil.
6
Filmmaker and producer of programmes for Brazilian television.
7
Director and head cameraman on many documentary films. He co-directed Folie ordinaire d’une fille
de Cham (1986) with Jean Rouch.
8

Cahiers du Cinéma, n°300, May 1979.

9
News series produced by the INC. These short films were broadcast using mobile cinema equipment
by teams who visited the community villages.
10
L. Moita, Os Congressos da Frelimo, do PAIGC et do MPLA, Lisboa, Cidac and Ulmeiro, 1979, 80p.
11
Le Monde, Bilan et perspectives, April 27th 1978.
12
M. Martineau-Hennebelle, "Quand les exclus parlent d’eux-mêmes", Le Monde, April 27th 1978.
13
"He made one of the first films in Algeria, Les Oliviers de la justice (1962) and also set up the first
cinema workshops in Houston, Texas, which Rossellini took part in. And he used the first Kodak
cameras which were very cheap and had a year's guarantee."
("Jean Rouch filmmaker", Interview with Jean Rouch by Laurent Devanne, March 1988,
http://www.arkepix.com/kinok/Jean%20R OUCH/rouch_interview.html).
14
Tribute to Jacques d’Arthuys by his brother Xavier, "letter to my brother for his departure" (12
September 1989).
15
"I am the cine-eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, am showing you a world, the like of which
only I can see" (Manifesto, Dziga Vertov, 1923).
16
A. Mattelart, Pour un regard-monde. Entretiens avec Michel Sénécal, Paris, La Découverte, 2010,
p.152.
17
The Medvedkine groups were militant collectives run between 1967 and 1974 in the French region of
Sochaux and Besançon by filmmakers and technicians along with militant workers as both a social and
audiovisual experiment.
18
Alexandre Medvedkine was the inventor of the Kinopoezd, a real "film-train" fitted out to film and
produce short films. This train crossed the whole Soviet Union in 1932 to film the working population
in towns and in the country.
19
"Interview with Pedro Pimenta by Charles Lemaire", UNIR, revue du cinema Africain, n°6, May-
June1983 (author's archives)
20
A. et M. Mattelart, De l’usage des Medias en temps de crise, Paris, Alain Moreau, 1979, 447p.

Le Centro de Tecnicas Básicas de Aproveitamento dos Recursos Naturais was part of Eduardo
21

Mondlane University.
22
Report by the CEC (Centre for Studies and Communication) of the Institut de Investigação Cientifica
de Mozambique (author's archives).
23
This report was among the documents which the CEC gave us after various missions. It is not dated
but was written at the end of the first phase.

Translated into French by the author based on reports produced by the different centres (and into
24

English by the translator)

25
The titles of these four films are: De Albergue a centro educational, Chiango Province de Maputo,
36mn; Organizar a saude e tarefa de todos, Hospital central de Maputo, 35mn; As Maos do povo,
Mercado de Xipamanine, Museu de arte popular, 17mn; Material didatico, UEM, 20mn.
26
Françoise Foucault was a very close collaborator of Jean Rouch at the Ethnographic Film Committee
and she actively took part in organizing this mission. After Jean Rouch's death, she was elected General
Secretary of the same Committee.
27
G. Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Paris, Aubier, 1958 (last corrected and
updated edition, Flammarion, 2012).
28
C. Fernandes, "Actualité, urgence et travail collectif dans l’émergence d’un nouveau champ du
savoir in Mozambique: le cas du Centre des Études Africaines (1976-1986)", Identity, Culture and
Politics, vol.2, no2, CODESRIA/ICP, December, 2010, p.82.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid, p.78
31
"From this time on, as Borges Coelho puts it, the red membership party card would be the test of
admission for being Mozambican. In other words, one had to "belong to" and support Frelimo to be
Mozambican.": J.P. Borges Coelho, "Um Itinerário Histórico da Moçambicanidade", in F. Rosas and
M.F. Rollo (coord.), Língua Portuguesa: A Herança Comum, Lisboa: Pavilhão de Portugal -
Expo’98/Assírio & Alvim, Maio de 1998, p.87-126.
32
Resistência Nacional Moçambicana.
33
C. Geffray, "Fragments d’un discours du pouvoir (1975-1985): du bon usage d’une méconnaissance
scientifique", Politique africaine, n° 29, March 1988, p. 71-85,
34
"Actualité, urgence et travail collectif...", op. cit., p.71-86.
35
This shoot produced the film Organisar a saude e a tarefa de todos.
36
M. Cahen, "Mozambique, une nation africaine de langue portugaise", Canadian Journal of African
Studies, n°3, vol. 24, 1990, p.315-347.

Compound name made up of Xico, the nickname of a particularly cruel prison guard, and Nhoca
37

which means 'cobra'.

38
“The figure of Xiconhoca was produced to represent the internal enemy in its multiple forms and in a
range of circumstances”: Lars Buur, “Xiconhoca: Mozambique’s Ubiquitous Post-Independence
Traitor”, in Thiranagama and Kelly (eds), Traitors, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1978, p.24-47.
39
B. Luis Machava, “State Discourse on Internal Security and the Politics of Punishment in Post-
Independence Mozambique (1975-1983)”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 37, n°3,
September 2011.
40
A. et M. Mattelart, "De l’usage des Médias en temps de crise", op. cit.
41
As Cahen analyzes this quoting A. Dinerman's book, Revolution, counter-revolution and revisionism
in Postcolonial Africa (London/NewYork, Routledge, 2006) which calls the "French school"
revisionist thus referring to: Luís de Brito (Paris-Maputo), Michel Cahen (Bordeaux), Christian Geffray
(Paris) and Claude Meillassoux (Paris) and also Adolfo Yáñez Casal (Lisbon) and William-Gervase
Clarence-Smith (London).
42
"The talvera is the edge of a field which is not laboured to create a space for manœuvre. It is used in
multiple ways by farmers and is an old Occitan word which, taken literally, can be used as an analyzer
to think about inventions for working in fields about which there is not agreement and also the relation
between researchers or practitioners to their fields.": B. Emme, "Postures assignées, postures
revendiquées de la talvera", Journal des anthropologues, H.S. 2011, p.21-48.