“Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?)” is an experimental film focusing on interwoven narratives around the mutual struggle against Portuguese colonialism between India and Africa and the bonds of solidarity that developed between the two continents. Told through a mix of interviews and fictional narratives, Two Refusals utilizes a blend of CGI animation, super 16mm film, hand-processed and destroyed archival film to uncover lost layers of world-building, kinship, and the material and immaterial network of relations that developed between historical figures in Goa, Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau.
A woman’s dreams become haunted by a mythological titan from Portuguese mythology called the Adamastor—a giant storm cloud formed on the Cape of Good Hope who sought to destroy Vasco de Gama’s ship and prevent him from ever reaching India. Repurposed from Portugal’s oldest work of epic poetry, Os Lusíadas, the Adamastor becomes a figure of refusal but also of failure to ultimately pose the question, “What could have been?”
