The relevance of Cesária Évora @SXSW 2022

Many documentarians will tell you that it is a pleasure to hunt down and go through archival footage. Whether they gain much footage or not is sometimes irrelevant. It is all about how and who they talk to in order to get that footage. This strategy serves director Ana Sofia Fonseca for her biopic film of musician Cesária Évora. The self-titled documentary does more than focus on the success of a 50-year-old female African musician back in the 1960s. It is about her fight for freedom and rise from poverty that allowed her to become free during the peak of her career.

The Hunt for Archival Footage

Her success and its lack of coverage were what inspired Fonseca to make a documentary. A journalist herself, Fonseca had to go to great lengths to get the footage that she wanted. Much of it was not available through mainstream networks but rather people who were close to her. Fonseca was able to gain footage from a musician close to Évora who had 13 mini-DV cassettes back in Cape Verde where she grew up. Having a home as well in Cape Verde, Fonseca ironically did not have to go too far in finding footage of the empowering musician. Even audio bites were found 15 minutes from her home.

Fonseca piecing together all the footage that she can of Cesária Évora deserves the utmost respect. As she discusses in her interview with FERNTV is that the technology wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today to capture Évora. But that does not mean the footage captured is not genuine. What is important is the freedom and success that she experienced late in her life is crucially relative today through a lens that was difficult to tamper with.

Defying the odds

This point of her life was documented and still resonates with many of us who are still fighting today for those freedoms. It was unheard of that a poverty-stricken 50-year-old African female musician would make it. Her rise to fame was like no other in the business as her voice and music spoke to many globally. But being one of the unspoken pioneers of the women’s movement for gender equality can never be more inspiring in today’s world.

This is why this film was so important for Ana Sofia Fonseca to piece together by all means necessary. It communicates and inspires the vulnerable sectors of our society. Cesária Évora was proud of who she is and where she came from. Her granddaughter says,

What is amazing about Cesária Évora is that she did not even know how much of an impact she would have amongst her fans, family and friends. She just got up and did what she had to do because she felt that it was right.

Her spirit lives on

Biopic films such as Cesária Évora are difficult to do because there is so much digging. There is so much patience that goes into doing these types of documentary films. Although, going through archival footage is a spiritual conquest for both the director and its subject. Fonseca was able to rekindle Évora’s spirit that is so needed today. The director reminds us on FERNTV that there was no mental health narrative back then but Évora was still able to rise to the occasion. It was the power of her voice that expresses her confidence in herself and the situation she was in. And that was really all she needed at the end of the day.