By Yun-hua Chen.
A profoundly enlightening film from Angola that delves into the essence of independence, the sacrifices it demands, and the transformative power of cinema.”
Selected for the “Rizome” program at IndieLisboa, a section that highlights relevant current issues, Nome, an Angolan film directed by Sana Na N’Hada, is a complex and sophisticated convergence of past and present, black-and-white archival images and newly filmed yellow-toned footage, narrative and experimental filmmaking. The film revisits the origin of the nation and demystifies Guinea-Bissau’s war for freedom from colonizers, which ended rather anti-climactically at the negotiation table with the new Portuguese government. It features an anti-hero who accidentally becomes a war hero and then consciously chooses to exploit the country’s post-independence resources and his post-guerilla positions.
Set in Guinea-Bissau in 1969 during the Portuguese Colonial War, the film portrays what happens to common people during the conflict between the Portuguese colonial army and the PAIGC guerillas (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde). Marcelino Antonio Ingira plays the eponymous role of Nome, a boy watched over by a spirit, or a figurative form of subconsciousness, as he grows into a young man and falls in love with Nambu, who helps his mother with household chores. Beginning with a voice-over from an indeterminate figure, “the sky was six years younger when the war started,” it sets the tone for a world where the spiritual seamlessly coexists with the earthly. At that time, young people leave their tranquil village life to join the war, filled with zeal and hope for the country’s future after independence. Under the scorching sun, against the yellow tones of straw and ground, Nome transitions from village life and shamanistic traditions to life as a guerilla soldier and ultimately to the modern urban world and a market-driven exploitation system. Nome, initially tasked with restoring balance to the village after his father’s death by reconstructing Bombolom, decides to fight in the war in an unheroic way, driven by his desire to escape the fact that he has impregnated Nambu. Eventually, he moves to Bissau to work as a government official after the war, exploiting his position for shady business, denying his village past, and betraying his combat comrades, all while losing his connection with nature and the spiritual world. Divergent to usual discourses surrounding liberation from colonialism, the film Nome unapologetically reveals that people might fight the war of liberation for the wrong reasons, a brave man who is not afraid of bullets might fear his girlfriend’s pregnancy, and that a villager might despise the word “village” after moving to the capital. It also highlights the flipside of the male-dominated guerilla war, showing how women fend for themselves when left behind or when they join the guerilla wars.
As Nome’s coming of age runs parallel to the country’s formation, archival footage from the fight against colonialism takes viewers back to the turning point when the country transitioned from a society of solidarity closer to nature and spirituality to a postcolonial neoliberalist society where everyone fends for themselves. These archival images that flow into the fictionalized narrative come from the first filmmakers in Guinea-Bissau. During the PAIGC guerilla time, leader Amílcar Cabral sent four people, Flora Gomes, Josefina Lopes Crato, José Bolama, and Sana na N’Hada who is also Nome’s director, to study cinema in Cuba. With help from other sympathetic filmmakers, they documented their fight against colonialism to raise awareness internationally. Later on they also filmed the birth of the independent state of Guinea. These fragile traces of the pioneering filmmaking project in the country are brought back to life in Nome. Shots of troops marching, military training on gun use and trap setting, and still shots of woods are edited into the reenactment of historical moments. These archival images, captured with carefully orchestrated movements and nuanced camera angles, intentionally highlight the grandeur of the guerilla fighters. Their juxtaposition with the fictional world, which reveals other than idealistic sides as deglorifying mirror images, provides precious space in-between for reflection, introspection, and contemplation about the historical event, individual roles, and the aftermath.
What is truly beautiful in Nome is the merging of experimental filmmaking’s abstraction. At the inception of love, Nome and Nambu’s faces are beautifully lit against a pitch-dark background, with their bodies turning in time-lapse images against rhythms that punctuate the young man’s sexual desire. The string instrument is contemplative, at times virtuosic, with echoes of folk music due to the plucked music used. The hypnotic rhythm of the djembe and shakers creates a trance-like backdrop. The use of abstraction also intricately serves to avoid depicting violence on screen when portraying a violent history. Violence either happens off-screen or, when shown, switches to abstract images of color morphing, microscopic patterns of organisms, against non-diegetic sounds. Subtle yet outspoken, it is a profoundly enlightening film that delves into the essence of independence, the sacrifices it demands, and the transformative power of cinema.
Yun-hua Chen is an independent film scholar and critic and associate editor of Film International Online.