Cine Zunga: Conversation with Jorge Cohen about Angola’s film consumption

Abstract

In this interview, we spoke with producer Jorge Cohen, the creator and general director of Cine Zunga, a project linked to the production company Geração 80 that aims to revolutionize the relationship between the Angolan public and cinema. Cohen shares the project's operational dynamics, objectives, already achieved results, and curatorial criteria based on "proximity cinema." In a context where the Angolan public still has difficulty getting to know its own national cinema, the project demonstrates that strengthening the audiovisual field demands the engagement of production companies not only in projects that allow the creation of new works, but also in initiatives that promote the circulation of these productions, enabling audience development and encouraging a new generation of professionals for the audiovisual sector. In a conversation that goes beyond simply referencing the Angolan films shown, the starting point is the understanding that by investigating aspects of exhibition and the cinematic experience in different contexts – in this case, African countries like Angola – it becomes possible to discover broader patterns of film consumption in the Global South and to test possible explanatory hypotheses that, going beyond the temporal and spatial limits of the experience considered (Thissen, 2019), allow a review of the history of these cinemas.