The impetus for this “hip hop opera,” as described by its creator Isis Hembe, was the launch in 2017 of Angola’s first satellite, Angosat, which vanished into space.
In the film, Isis Hembe portrays the character Man Ré, an Angolan scientist who “goes into space in search of intelligent life.”
“[There] he begins to reflect on the necessity of finding intelligent life within ourselves,” Hembe, a musician, poet, and activist, explained.
“As Aventuras do Angosat” started as a theater piece and evolved into a film under the direction of Marc Serena, a Catalan journalist known for award-winning documentaries like “Tchindas” and “The Writer from a Country Without Bookstores.”
Angolan artist Resem Verkron, a member of the street art collective Verkron and co-director of short films such as “Lola & Mami,” which addresses toxic masculinity, co-directs this 34-minute film. The film’s action unfolds on the streets of Cazenga (Luanda), accompanied by urban beats mixed with the Angolan musical instrument quissanje.
Speaking to Lusa, Isis Hembe highlighted that the film depicts a world where diversity “is acknowledged and utilized as a resource,” reflecting Angola’s composition of various “cultures, sensitivities, and different bodies,” resulting from its history.
Like Isis Hembe, who uses a wheelchair, most of the film’s cast comprises individuals with varying abilities, such as urban dancer Scott Suave, who lost an arm and a leg in an accident but continues to dance.
Hembe contracted polio as a child but could not receive appropriate treatment due to Angola’s civil war, which ravaged the country for nearly three decades from 1975 to 2002.
Isis Hembe emphasizes that difference “should be considered in constructing this collective space called Angola” and hopes the film will also be seen as “a political project for the inclusion of alterity,” to which society will respond positively.
The film is presented in several languages, including dialogues in Angolan sign language, the primary communication method for two of the actors (Celeste Wacalenda and Domingos Malebo), and features a version of the popular song Umbi-umbi, sung in Umbundu, the most spoken indigenous language in Angola.
Following its world premiere on May 18 at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem during the New York African Film Festival, where Isis Hembe held an interactive Q&A session, the film will be showcased in Portugal on June 7 at FEStin, the itinerant Portuguese-language film festival held in Lisbon, which features productions from nine countries of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
The Angolan premiere is scheduled for June 20 at a free screening at Cine São Paulo, one of the largest cinemas in the city of Luanda.
