While traveling in Cape Verde, I came across a biography of the African revolutionary leader, Amílcar Cabral. In those pages, Hamilcar’s life exuded utopia, ambition and commitment throughout his life. Despite the lucidity of his ideas and the height of his feats, I discovered a leader mistreated by History. Thus began the desire to make a documentary, which would bring Cabral closer to the contemporary European public and give an account to a character to whom surprisingly no in-depth documentary has been dedicated. We started by doing some interviews in Cape Verde, we talked to his wife, his daughter, historians and several comrades from the PAIGC party.
Appointing Cabral in Cape Verde arouses mixed feelings among the faithful and those who question some of his enterprises, such as that of trying to unite in the same state cultural and geographical realities as disparate as those of Cape Verde, populated by the so-called civilized, and Guinea Bissau, mostly indigenous.
In the same way, colonial wars still provoke a certain modesty in Portugal. When we traveled to Lisbon to conduct some interviews, we encountered a certain caution when it came to assessing what really happened during the war. In Portugal, the figure of Cabral also generates lights and shadows. The armed conflict was not always clean, neither on the part of the Portuguese nor on the part of PAIGC, and time has changed some positions. Others, on the other hand, remain intact.
The same happens with the goat ideas embodied in his texts. Many of them retain a striking validity. Questions about the search for cultural identity and values continue to raise questions in contemporary European and African society where feelings of belonging often do not coincide with the delineation of borders; in which racism is still a common evil.
Hamilcar is, therefore, the tribute to a key figure in the past of the twentieth century who will build bridges between the European viewer and Africa while serving to reflect on the decolonization of Africa and the situation in which Guinea and Cape Verde live today, where the demand for a national culture and social rights have not yet been fully achieved.
More information about the documentary in www.amilcar-cabral.com