Suleimane Biai (Farim 1968) is a filmmaker, producer and screenwriter at the Instituto Nacional do Cinema e Audiovisual in Bissau and since 2010, also as the régulo for the villages around his native town Farim. He studied film directing at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba and alongside the realization of his own films and documentaries (including Djitu ten ku ten, 1997) worked as an assistant to Flora Gomes (including Pó di Sangui, 1995) and to Sana na N’Hada (Xime, 1993). Biai is one of the members of the Geba Filmes Cooperative of Guinean Filmmakers, with Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in collaboration with the collective archive project Luta ca caba inda and is now enrolled in the research project Mediateca Onshore.

Works

Uma Cabana, 2014

Uma Cabana, Filipa César & Suleimane Biai, HD video, colour, sound, 41’, 2014

Between February 15th and March 9th, 2014, the population of the tabanca (village) of Birbam, under the guidance of architects Djibril Biai and Mamadi Seidi, assisted by Nhanbi Soncó, Seco N’Djai, Queba Soncó, Aruna Seidi, Mamadi Djambã and Aua Dabó, constructed a CABANA(1) to serve as a meeting place for representatives of the 16 neighbouring tabancas under the jurisdiction of the tribal chieftain. As an architectural model, the two architects arranged the foundations of the circular constructions to coexist, mandinga vernacular, in symbiosis with contemporary construction elements. Cement protects the adobe, the grass roof supports a solar panel, and openings in the walls facing north condition the passage of shade cooled air.

The small filming crew – made up of Jenny Lou Ziegel, (alias, Jenny Dabó Conte) filming, Dídio Pestana (alias, Dídio Seidicani) on sound, and us, Filipa César (alias, Filipa Biai) and Suleimane Biai, sharing direction and production – documented each moment of the construction. The circle, drawn on the ground by a giant compass, the cutting of the sibi or mollusc-palm (Borassus akeassii ) for the roof beams, the making of the adobe tiles, the last bundle of capim [grass] placed on the roof closed the freshness of dawn within the cottage for all time.

The conditions of producing this film were intertwined with the necessities of constructing the cottage. The camera documented the handling of construction materials in order to produce an image and to record a memory; the community of Birbam used the production of the film as means of building a space with social organization functions. This assembly of space and proposals invites sitting, meeting, listening, conversing, exchanging opinions and deciding on positions and actions to be taken. Uma CABANA reflects upon the return of a traditional social organization, initially eliminated completely by colonialism in what was then Portuguese Guinea, and completely abolished during  the revolutionary period of Guinea-Bissau.

In recent years, faced with the country’s recurrent political instability, the reactivation of the power of the tribal chieftains in the organization of the communities has become an alternative to the lack or absence of political action by the various Guinea-Bissau governments. Within the cottage we drifted in conversations about architecture, friendship, liberation wars and the drama of present day abusive foreign exploitation of the holy po di sangui wood.

The cancuran only came close for farewell.

April 2014

Suleimane Biai and Filipa César

[1] Cabana means cottage. The cottage was baptized by the community with the name “Cottage-palace Luís Cabral” in memory of the first President of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau who presided from 1974 to 1980.