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BEYOND MY STEPS

DOCUMENTARY | ANGOLA | 2019 | 72 MIN

Director: Kamy Lara

Co-Director & Producer: Paula Agostinho

Photography Director: Kamy Lara

Editor: Gretel Marín

SINOPSYS

During the creation of the 2017 season show of the Contemporary Dance Company of Angola coreographed by Mónica Anapaz, five dancers explore the concepts of tradition, culture, memory, and identity, questioning the transformation and deconstruction of these themes in their own lives.

Most of them - coming from other provinces of the country - bring memories and traditions with them when moving to the bustling, erratic and frantic reality of the capital.

For the sake of integration, there is a need for the partial abdication of who we are and the need to create a new identity, reflecting on what remains original in us along the different paths of life we trace.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

In October 2016, in a small auditorium in the city center of Luanda, the Contemporary Dance Company of Angola premiered the show “Ceci n’est pas une porte”. At that time we were in a tense political time. Activists had been arrested and convicted. The country seemed pressured and about to explode at any moment.

On stage, the dancers, confined to small dimly lit boxes, are struggling to express themselves in a tight, stifling space. It was at that moment that the idea for this documentary came to me. What was the path those dancers went through until they reached the stage? How could I, through cinema, continue the debate that was initiated on stage?It was thus that in early 2017 I proposed myself to follow the montage of the CDCA show for that season, from the initial idea to its transformation into dance and choreography movements.

“BEYOND MY STEPS” uses the show as a starting point to pursue the dancers’ reflection on the themes explored throughout the show: their origins, traditions, their loss of identity and the construction of a new one, imposed by time and by moving from a rural area to an urban Luanda. A similar story for so many Angolans.

This path of adaptation assumes the inevitable mutation of their dreams, values, and expectations. Not only as citizens, but also as artists. Luanda’s vision as a great stage for their art collides with the realization that the recognition of culture and dance doesn’t depend solely on their resilience, discipline or ability to balance in the chaos of this urban and capitalist reality.

As an Angolan filmmaker trying to make movies in Angola, it’s impossible not to identify myself with the anguish, dreams and transformations that I came to learn with the dancers. Through this documentary, I add my own voice to theirs, to the Dance Company and to all the people who are afraid to forget who they are, and where they come from while reflecting on what they may have lost along the way