Description:

Spell Reel
(Filipa César, 2017, France/Portugal, DCP, 96 min.)

Freedom fighter Amìlcar Cabral commissioned a group of young filmmakers to document the independence movement in Guinea-Bissau; lost for decades, their footage was recently restored. Portuguese artist Filipa César collaborates with the surviving filmmakers to tour the material around Guinea-Bissau, staging public screenings with live narration and discussion. Recovering layers of history behind these images, César and her collaborators also expose a yearning for African self-determination that persists in the present.

With an introduction by Sarah Estrela, doctoral candidate in Art History at Northwestern.

Personal Archives, Political Memories: The Radical Past in Contemporary Documentary

As activists around the world revisit the successes and failures of earlier political movements, a new wave of documentaries and essay films have begun to look beyond official archives, recovering lost, forgotten, and unseen images to tell stories of struggle. Whether incorporating family photos, home movies, or decades-old documents of protest, the films in this series explore turbulent histories through a distinctly personal lens