Abstract
This article analyzes how the historical tensions in Mozambique were narrated in the Cuban short film Maputo, meridian novo, directed by Santiago Álvarez in 1976. The film uses archive images and records of the Cuban cameraman Julio Simoneau, made in the post-independence. The latter denounce the continuation of social exclusion in Maputo, inherited from the colonial period. On the musical side, the short uses a varied repertoire, like the jazz version of the music of 2001: A space odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and a carnival samba, used as ironic devices by the narrative. The result in mise-en-scène is a purposely short documentary that on the one hand endorses the "liberation script" (João Paulo Borges Coelho) defended by the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo) and, on the other hand, exposes the fissures of social body, generating several tensions in the aesthetic side of the film.
Keywords:
Cuba; Mozambique; cinema; socialism; political representation
