Three communities of women from the north and south of Mozambique share some of the secrets of their relationships with the land, their husbands, their family and their community, through song, dance and stories.

Drawing on a rich body of research conducted in collaboration with young Mozambican researchers and filmmakers over five years, each portrait in this trilogy of films is told through a musical genre that conveys both the joys and hardships of women’s lives in Mozambique. They act as vehicles of protest and provocation, bringing the female perspective to three gendered ideological moments in Mozambique’s historical progress towards the human rights of women and girls.

Traditional songs of farming, ritual and motherhood in the north of the country expose the uncertainty of living off the land and the challenges of bringing daughters into an ever-changing world. Xingomana, a genre born out of post-civil war liberation politics reflects a time of change where women’s strength and contribution to the revolution began to be celebrated.

The films in this trilogy were co-created in collaboration with their protagonists, the women of Lipende, Niassa, the Xingomana group of Nwajohane, Gaza and the warrior dancers of the cultural association Horizonte Azul (Blue Horizon), in Maxaquene, Maputo. The research was conducted collaboratively by Karen Boswall and the participants of the Speak My Sister research project, during her Creative Critical Practice and Anthropology doctoral research at the University of Sussex.

This film was made possible with financial support of the AHRC doctoral training partner CHASE (Consortium of Humanities and Arts of the South East).

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