Screenings

Introduction by Dr. Michael Kraus, Georg-August University Göttingen

Q&A with director Dulce Fernandes

Synopsis

On a hot summer morning in 1444, in the fishing village of Lagos, southern Portugal, a group of African people was disembarked. In the field next to the port, they were given away as slaves to the local noblemen and merchants. For the next 400 years, more than six million Africans would be trafficked in Portuguese ships to Europe and across the Atlantic.
On a rainy winter afternoon in 2009, in Lagos, archeologists excavating the site where an underground parking was under construction, began to find human skeletons. Working on the site for the following five months, as the parking was being built around them, the archeologists uncovered the skeletons of 158 enslaved African men, women, and children. Their bodies had been dumped in a XV-century landfill.
Intertwining these two storylines, TALES OF OBLIVION threads tales of violence and brutality from the past with sights and sounds of the present. Evoking what took place in these sites and conjuring memories from the past, TALES OF OBLIVION is a film-territory where we have no choice but to look at how the present continues to be shaped by the history we carry within us.

Director

Dulce Fernandes

Biography

Dulce Fernandes was born in what was then the Portuguese colony of Angola and divides her time between New York and Lisbon. She studied photography at Ar.Co in Lisbon, film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the International School of Film and Television in Cuba, as well as international relations in Lisbon and New York. Her debut film LETTERS FROM ANGOLA has been shown at international festivals and has received multiple awards. Her film has been nominated for the Portuguese national film award Prémios Sophia.

Filmography

Letters from Angola (2011), Tales of Oblivion (2023)

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