From the tabanca to Bissau, from Bissau to the Diaspora: Social Narratives in the Bissau–Guinean Popular Cinema

This chapter aims to analyze a set of films directed by young adult Bissau-Guinean filmmakers both in Guinea-Bissau and in its Diaspora. All these films were produced with insignificant budgets and outside of the conventional film productions structures. The chapter designates these films as popular cinema for two reasons: they are produced in a popular culture context, by non-institutionalized agents, and they are the most screened films in the territory, through informal exhibition circuits also non-institutionalised. It contextualizes the history of the Bissau-Guinean cinema, since the colonial era until current times. The chapter aims to argue how the films that have been produced informally by young Bissau-Guinean filmmakers may enlarge the debate on the ‘decolonization of the gaze’. In Guinea-Bissau, the armed uprising was led by African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape-Verde, whose leader was Amilcar Cabral. Amilcar Cabral was one of the most charismatics African thinkers of the 20th century.