Deixem-me ao menos Subir às Palmeiras / Let Me at least Climb the Palm Trees

Joaquim Lopes Barbosa

Joaquim Lopes Barbosa (1945-2021), born in Porto, went on an adventure in Angola in the late 1960s. He discovers the violence and injustice of colonial exploitation and meets poets, MPLA activists, Viriato da Cruz, António Jacinto. Passionate about Brazilian Cinema Novo, he directed a short film O Regresso. Then he left for Lourenço-Marques to work for an advertising and documentary production company. The producer agrees to give him the means – team, film, material – for his first feature film, adapted from a short story by Mozambican Luis Bernardo Honwana. He turns in the countryside with peasants and the help of the painter Malangatana. The film is completely banned by censorship and the filmmaker has to flee hastily to Lisbon. After 25 April 1974, the first, scheduled for 7 September in Lourenço Marques, was prevented by the revolt of the colonists. In Portugal, Lopes Barbosa directed documentaries and then in the 1980s, he returned to Mozambique where he created a film production company, and where he remained until his death. His iconoclastic fiction, one of the very few anti-colonial films before 1974, was forgotten for more than thirty years.