"ANGOLA SAUDADES FROM THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU”

Angola is a documentary that tells the story of the people of Angola as they grapple with coming to terms with their new "peace" following years upon years of civil unrest. It is very clear and worth noting that the civil unrest that threatened to destroy this country, which is rich in natural resources were deliberately perpetrated by evil colonial forces:" Unlike Portugal's other African possessions, which had made relatively peaceful transitions to independence months earlier, by November 11, 1975, Angola was in chaos". See ANGOLA:INDEPENDENCE AND THE RISE OF THE MPLA GOVERNMENT for more on Angola.

In attempting to make sense of the events highlighted by this documentary, I find myself having to grapple with the question of meaning making. In other words what “truth” if any was the director trying to communicate to us the viewers when he set out to making this documentary? There are of course numerous compartments that ultimately make an “ideal” called “truth”. But over the years the notion “truth” has seen different debates reducing it to a mere relativity. “The truth” as a concept is now considered a relative concept. I don’t agree, but I will not deal with this phenomenon here. My basic endeavour here is to extrapolate themes running through or addressed by the director of this award-winning documentary which to the best of my convictions is indeed a brilliant documentation of such issues as the one here addressed.
The documentary "Angola Saudades from the one who loves you” is based on Angola’s struggle to recover from a 27 years of civil war. Angola is just one among many African countries which have just emerged from a devastating legacy of atrociously inhuman sufferings at the peril of civil wars. The documentary does extracts or represents in a kaleidoscopic way different strands of causative forces that can rightly be implicated in the face of these national atrocities. To capture and utilise this filmatographic art of story-telling, the director uses an anonymous voice that reads letters chronicling the events of the war, in a way that takes the viewer on a journey. These letters sample different realities of life in this oil producing country in ways that creates a dichotomy of livelihoods, between rich and poor, street kids and their squalor versus the duality of the lives that the fashion models of that country live under. Through this medium we encounter yet another kaleidoscope of aesthetics emanating from the juxtaposed differences in livelihoods.
For once we are transferred into a state of psychological engagement with the documentary. Our political, anthropological, economical and linguistic strands of reasoning are pulled into “excruciating” and laborious actions. We begin to reckon with the mechanisms of exploitation laid bare before our eyes by the documentary. We try to make sense of it in the “normal” way of making meaning of such activities but this one betrays in many ways our normalised ways of reading our world. Personally, I am stretched beyond what I have experienced before. I am forced to read the situation from a political point of view, but no, that is not entirely what it is. It’s an economical battle. But also not in its entirety. There are more forces to reckon with here than meets the eye, but I am only equipped with just a little knowledge to grapple with the aforementioned issues.
I feel a bit overwhelmed by circumstances these people had to grapple with. I want to make sense of these happenings in an objective way that journalists should approach their subject matters with. However, the pain these people had to go through, affects me so bad I can’t stand the colonial exploitation the African continent had to reckon with. I see clearly the devastating effects this system left on our poor continent. It’s painful to even think about it. Here is a country, rich in natural recourses but very poor in any other means possible. I see the poverty in the art and skill of leadership. I see the ignorance perpetrated by this lack. Black people against black people. Colonialism is over in theory but still deeply imbedded in the way things are run and systems articulated on the ground in most of Africa. For most of the black folk as was indicated by one of the characters, we have lost hope in not only our leaders but also in those systems: humanitarian systems that are supposed to be protecting us. The system is now bought and initiated into the western colonial patterns now unfortunately propagated by the leaders African people elect to represent them. Greed and exploitation is now a new definition of a truly democratic democracy in Africa. The only thing that remains to the people on the ground is to ‘act’. The fashion models carry this painful metaphoric re-enactment of life-after-colonialism with such fervency that betrays any kind of illusion by which the political and economic realities of the Angolan problems can be evaded.
It is so clear in this documentary that outside we appear happy and jovial, but the truth is: it’s just an act and the sad thing about it is this happiness is momentary and it keeps office hours, that’s it. Beyond the office it’s over—completely non-existent. The models who brings this reality to bear in our minds, after acting in the world that exploit and mines their talents for selfish gains do go back to the squalor to which they were born, after office hours. This is how I read the events of this documentary and to me it makes much sense that way. Meaning it is said is a re-enactment of our on socialisations and I think my social upbringing gave me such spectacles by which I read through the events chronicled in this documentary.
This collage of events is effectively presented rather descriptively through a clever and catchy usage of very symbolic sound tracks that make the thematic journey through the documentary one that hooks and engages the audience with almost the same convictions as the makers of the documentary themselves. Together, the film and the music create a vivid extrapolation of the enigma that is Angola. Coupled with the soothing poem and the soul piercing music and pictures that for once makes one’s heart skip a beat, the film is given a poetic and yet a very strong feel, that it almost speaks loudly to the reformer in each audience whose motivation is to do just that. The constant recitation of the phrase “He wrote” resounds with an air of determination and a vehement spirit, painting with the rigour of the strokes of a rough textured paint-brush in the hands of an amateur painter, the immediacy and accuracy of the events chronicled by the documentary. This anonymous voice reads or should I say recounts and rubs-in the question that is in everyone’s mind: “will Angola (or Africa) rise from the ashes and rebuilt again?”
Furthermore, by the beautifully sound-tracked journey through the documentary, the director seems to take us through a cul-de-sac of impossibilities. He paints descriptively quite a world of contrasts presented through a kaleidoscope of visuals sampling the diverse experiences of Angolans: from wealthy oil barons to street children, with mansions and malls juxtaposed against rubble and decay. By painting such a landscape of dichotomous events, the award-winning documentary seem to suggest that a prosperous future is still out of reach for the majority of Angolans in this theoretically rich but practically anguished land. And the politics and colonial exploitation re-lives yet again…