INTERMEDIAL INDIAN OCEAN - In Conversation with Nalini de Sousa & Pedro Pombo
Abstract
- Abstract
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As part of the Indian Ocean events in November 2021, filmmaker Nalini Elvino De Sousa and anthropologist Pedro Pombo were guests of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence in Bayreuth. In this interview, they talk with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, Deputy Spokesperson of the Cluster, and Clarissa Vierke, Professor of Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth, about their documentary film “The Club”.
"The Club" portrays the life of Goans in Tanzania and the cultural club that united them. The film team followed families recounting their memories of the club in Dar es Salaam, from the traditions that were maintained there to the music they listened to together.
Origins & context
- Title
- INTERMEDIAL INDIAN OCEAN - In Conversation with Nalini de Sousa & Pedro Pombo
- Language
- English
- Date
- February 13, 2023
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- [Music] good afternoon we are very happy that you came to byroid to show your documentary film the club on goens and zanzibar we would like to learn more about this but first of all it would be good if you could maybe introduce yourselves rapidly nalini would you like to start sure so i'm nadine suze i like to say that i come from guru i was actually born in lisbon i've been living in gold for the last 23 years and apart from being a portuguese teacher and my own ngo i do documentaries mainly for the portuguese television rtp but i also like to do my own documentaries i'm bill lupone i'm portuguese i'm an anthropologist i have a background in art history and architecture and um i did my field work for phd in mozambique and i've been living in india for the last six years more or less thank you probably for those who haven't seen the beautiful film club or the club could you give us a short idea a summary of what the film is about well this documentary is about the go and diaspora in tanzania and we see hundreds the stories that we gathered through the celebration of 100 years of the golden club in dire salem and the space of the club and history of the club ends being what connects to many different life stories that we are able to connect in zanzibar and our salem but we ended up centering the film on darussalam and all the personal narratives the story of the historical background of the golden diaspora to east africa mostly british east africa are made through the relevance that the club as the spice of community has been has been always being as a central space for a community feeling in east africa i mean listening to the summary that you just gave what is what is maybe the main what were your main questions that you wanted to answer with your film because there's about my it's about migrants it's about diaspora it's about the relation between india and east africa it's about life stories i mean there are a lot of things intermingled so maybe you could talk a little bit more about that actually when we spoke to people we we and we end up understanding that there's so many avenues that we can tackle in this documentary and then we kind of had to funnel into one or two of these questions but the main idea that came into this is uh uh so mainly the people who interview people who used to live in dar and in zanzibar and then they left after the independence to mainly to canada uh some to uk and a few to gold so we talked about their memories and what they remember of of that and the how used to be their life their childhood and that is quite quite visible in a in a documentary the you know the the memories that they have of those days yes i think i mean we were very interesting in um working on on this history but through people's narratives and that's why and then we found that the club became so important and we were lucky that at that time it was celebrating uh 100 years and many goans that were living in darus album were coming from many other places in the world so the way that you know people tell their family history the the country's history both india's history and tanzania's independent tanzania history through their own personal attachments to spices to photographs to family histories and the way all this history of the 20th century is narrated through a very personal angle so we interviewed many people inside their homes or you know touching their own photographs and objects and the club was always a central place for those stories and for us it's also very interesting to see that as the spice condenses so much intimacy and life it's it's interesting because now they have their own homes saying canada uk but for all of them the club they all say this is this is a like our second home this is where they feel you know they come there and they feel at home so the top is like a memoir like this this space of memory yes where everybody i mean all the different memories come together and and meet again and in a get together place right it's not even me so it's also like people many of them met after maybe 10 years because it was 100 years many people came after a long time and they met so they also you know catch up on their lives oh now i have a son now oh you have children grandchildren who are interesting so it's so they also you know uh accompanying their each other's uh stories i was thinking um yesterday after watching the film and and since the film also has the title or group i was really very much thinking about what would you think is the club also well would you say the memoir also a kind of a symbol a kind of condensed form of of goldenness in the sense that well it's a place to meet but it's also a place of the past and a place of a particular kind of epoch in the the 1950s and 60s that is so formative for many things tanzania but probably also the golden relations what do you think is the are the golems a club is the club the golems well i mean it condenses the interesting and it's also something that i thought you know with experience of being there on all these decades of history uh no historical the political histories of countries and the family and personal histories are really condensed in in the building and it it takes it really a memory of a certain past which it's not there anymore the reality really changed a lot the city changed life changed but at some time and it was something that was a name of these celebrations by the present chairperson and administration was to make that past also you know a part of the present and at the same time that everyone was celebrating a past they were still [Music] celebrating also the belonging to something that it's it changed people might write it again but still exists and we think that even when people talk about the architecture of the building because it's very you know it's a very important building for modern architecture in tanzania you know the second floor but they remember the second floor it was the space we danced so there's always a very strong attachment to the even the materiality of the place but also as something that it's part of the past that they want also to keep being part of a presence although in a very different way and probably in that sense it's a place of memory but also a memory that wants to be enacted to not be forgotten in today's situation which is very different even the name changed now it's dar institute yeah i was also thinking how it's actually also really linked to activities like you said the sunken floor that's dance then there is the section at the bar which is about the dart and then you have the section so to say where all the hockey successes are being celebrated so it kind of so to say put lots of emphasis on sports on dance on coming together and um in a sense even is it about performing goldenness then as well i think this is how bones are oh you've got goals no no no musicians for sure i mean you you go to go to any family you find someone who plays the violin or the keyboard or some instrument okay uh they might not be professional musicians but there is music there's always music even see i was born and brought up in lisbon my parents were from go and went to lisbon and my childhood but there was always music like my father used to play the gum my mother used to dance someone else used to sing so they're always this is always my memory even wherever they go there will be music and sports also i don't know why but uh yeah everybody has to do some kind of sports in in goa wherever the golems went they took all this this this idea of being together of playing of of sports it's there and actually the anthony ahmed when he thought about the building yeah it was prepared all this is in mind right so even the the way the building was is was designed was for that for for them to come together yeah i mean i think probably similar to many other communities in diaspora you have always to perform some kind of belonging from our probably anthropological perspective of working how do we work these feelings in in film which was a dialogue that we always had because we i mean we have very different experiences of working with kind of research is and then we wanted to have some part where people were telling how do they tell themselves are you tanzanian are you going because there is this identity or this sense of belonging to something that it's not you know included in only one national border but it's part of several spices and so for example for the celebrations they had portuguese dances that company dancers from goa and although most of the the community that we met don't speak portuguese or company because that's an identity marker of vindagorn there it's always there so there's always a kind of performance of finding something that we know that it's part of our heritage and even if we don't speak if we don't you know speak the language even if if you don't dance a portuguese dance but still when we get together that it's part of the history of our parents grandparents and it's part of some kind of sense of community that they want to keep it alive and and that is very i mean we were seeing portuguese dances i really you know i recognize a bit being portuguese but it's something that i do not know how to dance even but it's very important for these you know or the food for example we have corn foods tanzanian foods and this belonging to different places for us was very interesting because it's a difficult it's difficult even in terms of you know the practical life because people really feel i feel i belong to go but i i was born in dar es salaam so i'm feeling completely tanzanian but i know that i'm different from other tanzanians and where one fits in all these discourses can i ask another question because you just mentioned of course again yeah the two of you you had different uh you just mentioned it rapidly like different experience with uh research or maybe your approach i guess all to this filmmaking yeah so what if you could talk a little bit more about those different research research approaches and how then also you brought this baby together like giving us a perfect example and maybe the more conflictual example to illustrate this cooperation will be really interesting as we're also always discussing in this in this context also about construction of knowledge and different these positives and formats so that would be really interesting because because i was not born in work but i i feel good my parents were gone so uh every story that touches goa it you know it's uh uh there's something that also is my belonging right i was saying yesterday during the movie when the duncan asked what are your memories and the memory that stick to me was being there for the new year and feeling at home i was so far away from goa i was in tanzania but i was feeling at home right and and so that also has a big part in it and then as a filmmaker obviously that i will care more about how it looks the angles the sound well i've i mean i think even in the disagreements of the disagreements in the sense you know maybe we should do this maybe we should do that not really fight and i think we i mean it ended up working quite well of course but it's i think because we managed to gather some narrative not discreet but that lines we fight okay this is an important topic so for example sometimes i was preparing the interviews and sometimes interviews i was asking about something and someone else was talking about something else and she was asking about it asking about it so we were but we seem to know what word we wanted you know the conversation flow and then and then it helps because for example even photographing the space we knew okay maybe the preparations are important or okay they are talking they are always talking about this particular place and from my perspective of more historical and anthropological okay this is something that you know they mention these and it's something that we can highlight a bit how to do it through sounds and video it was something that you know not only came up with solutions are okay these angles are better this works better and then in the editing process i was you know nalin and gaspar okay this can come for two seconds i think two seconds it's nothing it's okay you want five seconds left five seconds and i said well this is too long so i don't you know for me what's the learning you know the editing process and i think for us some something i think the most probably in the editing were the the sequence when we were changing a little bit of subjects that sometimes i was saying okay this looks too you know to narrative and not learning no but we have sometimes we have you know a break between things or the conversations flow there's too much conversation and i think probably it was where i was a little bit more lost in the editing process and i said okay you do also think you know best thing but in general i think at least the main topics we were actually quite insane to need to and then sometimes someone was saying something that we didn't know and we're looking each other wow this is you know incredible because okay this is something that we really have to work more on and then you know collecting pictures and then i would do a kind of research you know try to find historical pictures and archives libraries bibliography and then aldeny will work with that material visual okay this is interesting to insert in the film uh and with the music for example it was not in his work i didn't i mean i didn't intervene with that in that sense because she knew the musician much better and you know it's her language also that she used to how to put all these in a visual which i'm not for that but we ended up you know working quite well i think but i think it is important i think it is important to have this interdisciplinary work you know it is because as a filmmaker i also look at things in a different way he makes me look at things in a different way and there should be more work like this you know yeah instead of only filmmakers with you know with that kind of team we have to work more together like this yeah i think it's really i mean as an experience personal or i i really felt it was um very important to see things in a different way or see things in a different timing or even at kind of editing what kind of teams are important for example when we're shooting when we're shooting you know with the drone in zanzibar and i was more oh wow you know the city you know i'm completely lost in the beauty of all that but then we wanted this effect yeah drone effect and because you know we were very lucky to really every time i think that we were actually in dire salon in the club in stone town in san diego it's just i mean it's a privilege it's really and the people were talking with us about their own lives and showing that is extremely and that i think that it's the we wanted to be sensitive to that and i think coming from different parts because nalini is very used also to you know to interview people to so this human touch that ethnography does and the work that he has been doing also does help us to our sensitivities to connect and many times was to you know okay do it and then we will see because i don't know how to do it and you know zanzibar okay we want and i was like i was lost in the beauty of the images but then okay let's focus on the street because someone was talking about these streets and how to you know how to build a different narrative which which really i mean i think it's really open many different ways of working and probably also see other people's work i i would have a question actually because you started when you summarized the film um you said it's this very particular situation of course well on the one hand and salaam on the other hand in zanzibar about gohans in british east africa which is different from gohans and goa definitely and different from gowans in in mozambique or from other parts of the world what is your experience about that also i think it's also a question to you since you've been kind of working around or working about the golan diaspora from very different angles what is the particular kind of the other situatedness or the goalness in in this particular kind of setup or context and afterwards socialist tanzania i mean it's a very particular kind of history as well uh you tell people you don't want to talk about it well i mean it's it's a curious history and they have i mean there have been we were supported by research was also being done by several scholars and oral history projects um but the ones in british africa had a very social situation which are really in between empires because they were portuguese citizens they were going to uh first german tanganyika until the end of the first world war and then british british territories and because goings the i mean we are talking about catholic coins which are really the most of these gun diaspora in east africa were were seen by british administration and by portuguese has been more westernized between commerce were more fluent in english because many one settled in bombay or in karashi or many ones were working in ships as stewards battlers cooks and they're british you know ships under british flag so there were and they were seen as adequates to civil servants and to many other professions that were in between the european colonial power and between the local african population in east africa because uh for example for zanzibar many go and many men certain ones start to go to zanzibar in the second half of the 19th century and some were were able to study medicine lawyers so you know there are histories of guns where doctors of the zanzibari sultans cooks musicians lawyers many ones were portuguese consuls in zanzibar because actually the portuguese population was almost absent for a very long time so gohans were the ones were representing portugal as diplomatically so many many of them achieved really very important position photographers the history of photography in east africa is very centered about going photography studios and then many of them were you know inhabiting all the new cities that were built with the railways and all these infrastructures of the colonial and economically was known to be much better than muslim for example that's why most of gun dies for india were british territories because the economy was also much better and i think that their the way they were educated being catholic speaking english uh being more equated to a european colonial presence in that sense made them very able to to navigate these social in between situations which were which were very adaptable to the context yeah so when it was the time to choose what they should opt for tanzania portuguese english very sizable to england and to canada yes because with independences so after 61 it was more difficult to come back to go if you were if you kept the portuguese passport with an accession of goa by india and then with the tanzanian independence you could be you could opt for tanzanian citizenship or you could opt for a british citizenship and go to uk or you could opt to come back to goa but for that you have to become indian citizenship or keep the portuguese citizenship and go to mozambique or to portugal and it's and this for us was very interesting because you know all very often they had documents with you know portuguese documents english documents and they were you know it was many times was a treasure like someone who comes in the film and it was like a family treasure because it was a you know a memory of you know citizenship and and cancelled passports and stems and and we we understood that that was very important also for their stories but there's also lots of what is it nostalgia and sadness or disappointment that's at least what i found in the film as well about being so quickly in a sense excluded from the from the nation state building than in in tanzania itself right so it's like sitting on the ruins of several empires all of the sudden i mean having many options but then also [Music] in a sense probably having not so many options or being in a sense also left out in many different ways i feel it's not that they don't live better now it's just because we always attach to our childhood right so it's i think marvin says this in the movie for us our home is always those those first few years of our life is what we identify so that is that nostalgia not that they don't live well they don't have a good life in other countries but it's always that nostalgia of the childhood they do that is it's not lost it's there but it's not you know it's better but i think what is all what's really there what's striking is you have this there's more political freedom with those independencies but at the same time you have more restrictions because nations are built which is kind of contradictory you get more freedom but in the end you you are you you have to decide to stick to one territory i don't want to say that empires were good but i mean in personal experiences this is what it's also meant at the same time and then there's also this nostalgia maybe also about this yeah you could more or less easily travel from india to east africa maybe to portugal i mean with all the other problems that colonialism is coming with but but yeah i think that might also be i mean this kind of layer in all these stories yeah now we have learned a lot about the plume or the club sorry but i know there was another film that you did on mozambique could you maybe also tell us a little bit about that film and then maybe in the end as you have to come to an end um is there another project an interdisciplinary project or individual ones but first baby but here are the other no no i know i'm connected together we'll start oh next 10 movies no so so yeah so the the project before this one was special envoy and about the life of akin bragansen again he was gone but he had a very important role in the mosaic and independence and it's something that it was kind of it is or people don't know much about it not only mozambique but he was he was also important he was fighting together with all the leaders of angola what kavlar of guinea-bissau they're all together like like like a team and so the movie is all about him but again that was the portuguese uh the portuguese africa and now then we came to this uh uh it was a different aspect of it but it is to say that actually there's many guns who contributed to to to africa not only politically but music in many in many areas so this is something that i really like and i want to continue doing is the contributions that go uh gave in in africa in different aspects and we we have another project in photography no yes yeah well i mean several indians but i think the first one we really want to work is when we work with the footage that we use for this documentary and because we felt that in zadzibar we also have really interesting touching stories and you know quite a lot that we wanted to do another documentary on on the go on presence in zanzibar true i mean the stories sometimes are although it's very close to dire salaam the historical context is rather different and we want to do a second documentary on that presence and then keeping working on these you know these communities that belong to multiple places multiple times historical times national nation-style projects and how we will evolve after that we will we'll see but the next one is okay okay so thank you very much thank you for sharing all your ideas and the projects with us we're looking forward to having with us again in the latest to present your next project and byroid and have a nice sunday afternoon thank you thank you so much you