:30:20
He wrote me that the pictures of Guinea-Bissau
ought to be accompanied by music from the Cape Verde islands.
:30:25
That would be our contribution to the unity
dreamed of by Amilcar Cabral.
:30:33
Why should so small a countryand one so poor
interest the world?
:30:36
They did what they could, they freed themselves,
they chased out the Portuguese.
:30:41
They traumatized the Portuguese army to such an extent
that it gave rise to a movement that overthrew the dictatorship,
:30:45
and led one for a moment to believe in a new revolution in Europe.
:30:47
Who remembers all that?
:30:48
History throws its empty bottles out the window.
:30:56
This morning I was on the dock at Pidjiguity,
:30:58
where everything began in 1959,
when the first victims of the struggle were killed.
:31:02
It may be as difficult to recognize Africa in this leaden fog
:31:07
as it is to recognize struggle in the rather dull activity
of tropical longshoremen.
:31:11
Rumor has it that every third world leader
coined the same phrase the morning after independence:
:31:15
"Now the real problems start."
:31:17
Cabral never got a chance to say it:
he was assassinated first.
:31:21
But the problems started, and went on, and are still going on.
:31:24
Rather unexciting problems for revolutionary romanticism:
:31:27
to work, to produce, to distribute, to overcome postwar exhaustion,
temptations of power and privilege.
:31:34
Ah well... after all, history only tastes bitter
to those who expected it to be sugar coated.
:31:56
My personal problem is more specific:
how to film the ladies of Bissau?