Building Utopias

The Mediateca Abotcha project is a cultural initiative fostering dreams and utopias with the local community. It started as a project to rescue Guinea-Bissau’s militant cinema archive and became a permanent ecological space in 2021, built with the community of Malafo - a traditional Balanta village. Featuring a media library, multipurpose space, residency program, and sonoteca—a sound studio and seed bank—the Mediateca bridges music, orality, culture, and agriculture. It preserves material and immaterial archives, including films, sounds, songs, and storytelling, while hosting research, community gatherings, and participatory cultural activities. The project is showcased with the film Resonance Spiral.

In the feature Resonance Spiral (2024), directors Filipa César and Marinho de Pina document the construction of the Abotcha and the agro-poetic practices that take place there, showing dialogues between archive, performing arts and community. At the same time, they grapple with their own position, sharing insights, despairs – and the mud of the mangroves.

After the film, Marinho de Pina will go into conversation with Elettra Bisogno.

Since 2017, Marinho de Pina has been collaborating with Filipa César, Sana na N’Hada, and Suleimane Biai on Mediateca Abotcha in Guinea-Bissau (mediateca-onshore.org), a program for the cultural creation of dreams and utopias with the local community. Together, they manage, produce, curate, communicate, and animate cultural activities, facilitating a collective exploration of the militant cinema practices of the African Liberation Movement in Guinea-Bissau and their enduring potential. He co-directed the feature-length essay film Resonance Spiral with Filipa César, which premiered at Berlinale Forum in 2024. As a research assistant at DIN MIA’CET-ISCTE, the Centre for Studies on Socioeconomic Change and Territory, he is currently pursuing a PhD on sacred spaces in Bissau. Marinho is a consummate wordsmith and storyteller, skilled across various formats. He is unwavering in his belief that doubts are preferable to rigid certainties. A transdisciplinary artist, he is also a performer, poet, musician, and writer—even on weekends and holidays.

Elettra Bisogno studied graphic design in Italy before turning to the moving image as she arrived in Brussels. Inspired by many cinematic languages and the beauty and injustices of the world, she emerges as documentary filmmaker with two shortfilms (Ultima Cassa and Old Child). Her latest work is The Roller, the Life, the Fight an award winning feature documentary that premiered at Cinema du Réel in 2024. She lives, draws inspiration and works in various contexts in Brussels.