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Spell Reel

Forum 2017
© Stills from Spell Reel, 2017
The first image is in black and white, upside down and projected into a black box that then becomes the frame. It now hovers like a time capsule near a man’s face. He looks down, listening in on a female guerrilla fighter and translating her words from Fulani. Within the capsule, money is counted and paid out as a new currency, the numbers of the years run backwards in the black box. A 16-mm film glides through the man's hands and is transferred to a laptop screen frame by frame.
Filipa César's Spell Reel is the result of a multifaceted research and digitisation project that she initiated in 2011 with Sana na N’Hada and Flora Gomes. Having studied film in Cuba, the two began using the camera to observe the fight for independence in Guinea-Bissau (1963–74). After the decaying visual and audio material was digitised in Berlin, the filmmakers travelled with a mobile cinema to the places where the footage had originally been shot and showed it to audiences for the first time, adding their own commentary. They then moved on, also returning to Berlin. Spell Reel watches an archive at work to produce the present.
by Filipa César Germany / Portugal / France / Guinea-Bissau 2017 Portuguese, Fula, Guinea-Bissau Creole, English, French 96’ Colour Documentary form

Crew

Director Filipa César
Screenplay Sana na N'Hada
Cinematography Jenny Lou Ziegel
Editing Filipa César
Sound Design Didio Pestana
Sound Nikolas Mühe
Production Design Olivier Marboeuf
Producers Filipa César, Oliver Marboeuf Spectre, Maria João Mayer Filmes do Tejo II

World sales

Spectre Productions

http://www.spectre-productions.com/en http://www.spectre-productions.com/en

Produced by

Filipa César

Spectre Productions

http://www.spectre-productions.com http://www.spectre-productions.com

Filmes do Tejo II

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Photos

Filipa César

© Dario Lehner

Born in Porto, Portugal in 1975. She studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and at the Faculdade de Belas Artes of the University of Lisbon. In 2008, she completed an MA in art in context at Berlin University of the Arts. Since 2011, she has been researching the origins of the cinema of the African Liberation Movement in Guinea-Bissau as a laboratory of decolonising epistemologies. She premiered her first feature-length film Spell Reel at the Forum in 2017, while Quantum Creole was exhibited at Forum Expanded in 2020. She lives and works in Berlin.

Filmography

2007 Rapport; 16 min. · Allee der Kosmonauten; 8 min. 2008 Le passeur; 34 min. 2009 The Four Chambered Heart; 29 min. 2010 Insert; 10 min. · Memograma; 40 min. · Porto, 1975; 10 min. 2011 The Embassy; 7 min. 2012 Cuba; 10 min., Forum Expanded 2013 · Cacheu; 10 min. 2013 Conakry; 10 min. 2014 Mined Soil; 32 min. 2015 Transmission from the Liberated Zones; 30 min., Forum Expanded 2016 2017 Spell Reel; 96 min., Forum 2017 2018 Sunstone; short documentary 2020 Quantum Creole; short documentary 2024 Resonance Spiral; documentary

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2024