Catembe (Faria de Almeida, 1963, 60’)

Catembe documents the seven days of a week in the daily life of Lourenço Marques. In addition to Cinema Directo - used mainly in the opening interviews in which Manuel Faria de Almeida asks passers-by, in downtown Lisbon, what they know about Lourenço Marques - it also included fiction sequences starring the mulatta Catembe. After the Ministry of Ultramar cut 19' of the 87' of the original work, a documentary re-edited from the sequences, a second version of only 45', left without meaning by the cuts, was forbidden by the Censorship Commission. Faced with the paradox of the brutalization of a film subsidized by the National Cinema Fund, it should be explained that this support was part of a commitment to promote the colonies cinematographically.