In the dead of night, soldiers barge into the “entertainment” district of the city and indiscriminately load women into a truck at gunpoint.
Introduction: Benedito Machava (Dept of History, University of Michigan)
In the dead of night, soldiers barge into the “entertainment” district of the city and indiscriminately load women into a truck at gunpoint. Without a word as to their fate, the women are driven to the far north of the country and forced to walk through a deep forest to a re-education camp. Here they will undergo corrective training and ideological instruction on how to become “new women”. As the film progresses, these women find that they are captive to the self-righteousness of a creed that scorns individuality and subjectivity, and makes male domination an ideological prerogative. This spurs the women to defiantly band together to undertake a real revolutionary action and assert their independence from their “liberators.” An evocative exposé of a little-known chapter in the history of Mozambique and Africa, Virgin Margarida is a dramatic and inspiring elegy to the insurgent spirit of women across nations, histories and cultures. (TIFF [Toronto International Film Festival 2012])
Co-sponsored by: Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies Brazil Initiative; African Studies Center; Department of Afro-American and African Studies; Humanities Institute; International Institute; Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; Sheldon Cohn Fund, Department of Screen Arts and Cultures; and Center for European Studies.
For more information about the Lusophone Film Festival, visit the web site HERE.
