Social History of a global document: the lives of the film 25 and the writings of a post-colonial African history (Mozambique, Brazil, and Europe, 1974-2019)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the paths that led to the Edgard Leuenrouth Archive (AEL), located at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), having a large number of written documentations, photographs, and posters produced during the filming and distribution of the film 25. The paper also analyzes the challenges of writing African history caused by the inevitable pulverization of the documentary collections about the African past in archives located around the world. Produced and directed by José Celso Martinez Corrêa and Celso Luccas, both from the Brazilian dramaturgical group Teatro Oficina, with Portuguese, English, Belgian, French, and Mozambican funding, the film is a record of Mozambique’s independence, a creation of a visual post-colonial imagination and a proposal to build a global postcolonial future. The film 25 and a whole range of documents related to the film are interpreted from the perspective of social history. In this sense, the article addresses issues related to film production in the context of Mozambican independence and the writing of African history during and after the formation of African nations. The contemporary difficulties in having access to archives in and from African countries implies the need for producing a history of post-colonial Africa that considers the internationality of the dynamics of the formation of African nations. In this sense, the paper analyzes 25 as a way to debate the study of African pasts during and after the decolonization and the archives as an important space of production of the official history of the nation.