Maria Lusitano

Nostalgia, 2002

DVD, colour and sound. Projection of variable dimensions, 17’43”

Nostalgia  is a video-essay done with super 8 mm footage, postcards, photographs, aerogrammes transposed into minVD.

The video was chosen to participate in Manifesta 5 that happened in 2004 in San Sebastian.  The video-essay resulted from a long term research about the Portuguese colonial experience, that included  work with audio-visual  archives, as well as interviews  with Portuguese citizens that were born in Mozambique, and moved back to Portugal after the independence of the African countries. The result of the interviews was the basis for the script of the film. Via the recycling of super eight home movies, aerogrammes, photographs, postcards and telegrams,and using subtitles to narrate the story, this work counts the naive story of a girl who marries a soldier and goes to Africa. The narrator of the story is her younger brother, a sixteen year old adolescent who, shortly after her sister, will also move to Mozambique,  to spend there the “most marvelous year of his life”. The boy describes a fascinated and rosy view of a fantastic and “paradisiac” land, that sharply contrasts with, and is blind to the brutal reality of colonialism and war happening at the same time, which is hinted at in parts of the video.