Women, nation and struggles in anti/postcolonial cinema in Guinea-Bissau

Abstract

This work analyses entanglements between representations of women and their struggles, on one hand, and the comprehension of the nation, on the other, in their social and cinematographic expressions. It is based on the analysis of Flora Gomes's Mortu Nega (1988) and Sana Na N'Hada's Bissau d’Isabel (2005), films where the liberation war/struggle is a point of departure of nation-building, starred by female protagonists. It aims to problematize the representations of women as bearers of the nation by establishing a dialogue between this imagination off and on the screen, and its relation with a shared feeling of an orphaned nation.