Namibian Premiere: “The Great Kilapy” by Zeze Gamboa, Saturday, 26 July 2014, 19h00, Goethe-Centre, Windhoek

On Saturday, 26 July, 19h00, at the Goethe-Centre Windhoek, AfricAvenir invites to the Namibian Premiere of “The Great Kilapy”, directed by Zeze Gamboa, 2012, Angola/Brasil/Portugal. The Great Kilapy the story of a crooked but irresistible bon vivant who, on the eve of Angolan independence in 1975, pulls off a massive swindle at the expense of the Portuguese colonial administration. Inspired by a real figure, director Zézé Gamboa’s decade-spanning historical drama is a refreshing take on the national liberation story, and turns its conventions upside down with elegance and humour.

Gamboa offers a witty and compelling portrait of the last decade of Portuguese rule in Angola, and incisively depicts the world of wealth, glamour and insouciance in which the elite class moves against the background of the colonial regime’s collapse. Colorful, charming, and featuring an authentic soundtrack of the country’s rich Angolan music from the 1970s, The Great Kilapy is a vivid testament to the vitality of cinema from Africa.n"Entertaining, Gripping, Educative, Great Acting and a Great Deal for Global Cinema." Hans-Christian Mahnke

"Angolan filmmaker Zézé Gamboa offers a quirky political observation of the lives and passions of flawed characters set in Luanda and Lisbon." Keith Shiri

The film series African Perspectives is supported by AfriCine, WhatsOnWindhoek, and the Goethe-Centre Windhoek.n

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Director Zeze Gamboa about the film:
"The story takes place precisely in the period between 1965 and 1974, and relates the adventures of a petty-crook who draws up a master plan to manage to swindle money from the Colonial Tax and Revenue Services. The narrating of these adventures permits a gaze on a recent period of Portuguese/Angolan history, in which I intend to show the glamour of the rich sixties, the irreverence of young people at that time and the greatnesses and frailties of a regime in utter decline. This is a period that is somewhat mythical nowadays and that has never been dealt with in the cinema of these two countries, either out of forgetfulness or other unfathomable reasons on the one hand (Portugal), or due to the several different trials of a recently-born country in which it is only now that there is the birth of what we may call fictional cinema, as previously there had mainly been documentary films."

About the director:
Born in Luanda in 1955, he worked for Angolan television between 1974 and 1980, directing information programmes and news broadcasts. In 1984 he qualified as a sound engineer in Paris, and worked as such on numerous international productions before, in 1989, starting working as a documentary director, with Mopiopio and Dissidence receiving some international recognition. In 1992, as the peace process in Angola got underway, he attempted to develop a first feature, but the renewed eruption of civil war and associated logistical difficulties meant that The Hero did not emerge until over ten years later. When it did, it won a major Jury Prize at Sundance in 2005. The Great Kilapy is his second feature.

Filmography n

• 1991 Mopiopio [doc]
• 1998 Dissidencia (Dissidence) [doc]
• 2001 Burned by Blue [doc s]
• 2002 O desassossego de pessoa [doc s]
• 2004 O Herói (The Hero)
• 2009 Bom Dia, África [s]
• 2012 O Grande Kilapy (The Great Kilapy)

n© Copyright AfricAvenir 2014