“Path To The Stars”

Film and video gallery installation “Path to the Stars” (2022) explores the legacy of anti-colonial resistance in Angola through the metaphor of the river, an element that evokes ancient temporalities that cycle and spiral, challenging the triumphant teleologies of political discourse.

The video follows a female protagonist from dawn to dusk as she journeys down the Kwanza River. Eventually, she reaches the river’s mouth, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean and where the Portuguese invaded Angola in the late 16th century.

The Kwanza river is a living organism that carries within the history of Angola – the history of liberation struggle, the civil wars, the precolonial histories, and the stories of the ecological disasters that are happening in this contemporary period.

During her journey, the woman confronts her own “shadow self” through shifting moments in time. Past, present, and future bleed together through various scenes and characters connected to the river. The poetic journey is situated in a space of imagination and liberation that is at once real and utopian.

©️ Still from Path to the Stars (2022) by Mónica de Miranda