Divina Comédia

Are even the best and brightest revolutionary movements doomed to inevitable compromise, betrayal and failure? That question haunts this documentary, a biography of Angolan-born Mário Pinto de Andrade (1928–1990), a key figure in African revolutionary and anti-colonial struggles.

Following the 1884–85 Berlin Conference resolution on the partition of Africa, the Portuguese army uses a talented ensign to register the effective occupation of the territory belonging to the Cuamato people, conquered in 1907, in the south of Angola. A STORY FROM AFRICA enlivens a rarely seen photographic archive through the tragic tale of Calipalula, the Cuamato nobleman essential to the unfolding of events in this Portuguese pacification campaign.

“Rio do Ouro and Água-Izé were among the largest cocoa plantations in São Tomé and Príncipe during the Portuguese colonial era. Thousands were marked by forced labour equivalent to slavery. I return to my country to find the traces of that past.” — Silas Tiny