From Africa is a Country:
Signs of Mozambique’s booming economy on the one hand and rising inequality on the other can be noticed all over the country. Now even the welfare of those who have fought for the country’s independence has become subordinate to business interests. The “Zona Militar” in the capital Maputo, where demobilized soldiers from both the independence and civil wars live, is threatened to be demolished to make space for high rises for the rich. But the people found a form of expression for their protest–the Mapiko dance–the focus of a new documentary, “The Sounds of Masks,” which is currently filmed and produced. The dance is part of an initiation ritual of the Makonde from northern Mozambique, during which youths are introduced to the world of adulthood–life and death, social and political struggle. According to University of Western Cape Historian Paolo Israel, the dance features “idioms through which Mozambican youth expresses and negotiates its post-socialist modernity.” How that modernity is negotiated in the context of the threats to the Zona Militar is focus of the film...[continue reading]