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Contribution short abstract:

This contribution analyses the film 25 (1974-1976) as a transnational and transoceanic crossroads. Directed by Celso Luccas and José Celso Martinez Corrêa, the film is part of Teat(r)o Oficina's cinematographic work and one of the first films released by the Mozambican Instituto Nacional de Cinema.

Contribution long abstract:

In the context of early African film history, I propose to interrogate the variable collective frameworks inscribed and mobilized in the film *25* (1974-1976). Directed by Celso Luccas and José Celso Martinez Corrêa, both members of the Brazilian artistic group Teat(r)o Oficina (renamed as Oficina Samba from 1973 to 1979), during their exile in the 1970s, *25* became one of the first productions by the Mozambican Instituto Nacional de Cinema. Considering its possible similarities with other films by Brazilian filmmakers on the independence of Mozambique, such as Essas são as armas (1978), by Murilo Salles, and Plantando nas estrelas (1978), by Geraldo Sarno, as well as other Mozambican cinematographic and audiovisual experiences in the post-independence period involving foreign filmmakers, such as those of Jean Rouch with Super-8 and Jean-Luc Godard with television, I intend to situate the film *25* in a comparative perspective, understanding it as both a transnational and a transoceanic crossroads. As part of a broader project dedicated to identifying and characterizing the variable collective frameworks to which the film is related, understanding them as cosmopoetics of the commons (variably defined in nationalist, pan-Africanist, socialist and other terms) which remain in dispute and confrontation, in this contribution I will focus on the ways in which Luccas and Corrêa seek to "sweep away the images of the past", as they put it, by articulating their 16mm footage with excerpts from newsreels, Portuguese television records, colonial fiction films, songs and films associated with anti-colonial struggles in different historical contexts etc.