Between political and aesthetic efficacy: 40 years of audio-visual practice in lusophone Africa

This article provides an overview of the audio-visual histories in lusophone Africa – Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique – since these countries’ independences. The emergence of these new nation states in 1974 and 1975 led to a strong interest in film production and thus to the ‘birth’ of these histories. I will assess them critically using the still valid idea of a necessary decolonization of the mind. Furthermore, I will discuss their transnational nature, which stems from the lack of training, production and distribution possibilities in the new nation states. Jacques Rancière’s concepts of political and aesthetic efficacy will serve as methodological tools so as to understand the dynamics of the audio-visual projects and films produced over the last four decades. Accordingly, this article’s main objective is to present and update existing studies, offering a critical outline of the lusophone African audio-visual sector between 1974 and 2015.