Memorizing equatorial crossing

: lusophone postcolonialities in Miguel Gomes’ Tabu and Zeze Gamboa’s o Grande Kilapy

Abstract

Based on an initial theoretical framing of the late Portuguese colonialism and by identifying general and also specific procedures of cinematographic construction of imperial spaces through montage and movement, the thesis discusses the aesthetic and narrative configurations of two contemporary films, namely O Grande Kilapy by the Angolan director Zézé Gamboa and Tabu by the Portuguese film-maker Miguel Gomes. It identifies the crossing condition realised through movement as a central element, both of cinema as a (post)colonial apparatus of spacial and symbolical (dis)appropriation, as in the particular cases of the two films that, among historical examples, are examined in detail. To classify not only the diverging modes of belonging that are carved out in the films’ analysis, but to account also for their different approaches to screening past colonial movements in the present, it proposes two oppositional models grounded on Gilles Deleuze’s thinking of cinematographic assemblage: The empowering black movement-image drawing on the Blaxploitation genre and the colonial time-image disrupting the sensory-motor schema of classical montage.

Date of Award	8 Feb 2016
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Isabel Capeloa Gil (Supervisor)