Flora Gomes’s Postcolonial Engagement and Redefinition of Amílcar Cabral’s Politics of National Culture in Nha Fala

This article looks at the politics of culture in modern Guinea-Bissau in the film Nha Fala/My Voice (2002) and, in particular, Flora Gomes’s re-interpretation of the country’s traditional understanding of national culture and engagement with oral tradition as a form of questioning instability, political unrest, disunity, and dissenting voices. It argues that it is impossible to examine Gomes’s representation of Guinea-Bissau’s national culture without an understanding of how these issues relate to Amilcar Cabral — the hero and mentor of the country’s independence to whom he dedicates the film — and his take on the intricate conceptual relationship between ‘nation’ and ‘culture’, hence national culture. It then examines Gomes’s redefinition of the postcolonial space through engagement with Cabral, in terms of his ideology of the nation and demand for a ‘return to the source’. Thirdly, it looks at silence and allegorical dimensions in Nha Fala, critically examining Guinea-Bissau’s insecurity, its confrontat...