04 Jan 2016

This film explores the cultural memories of the largest Afro-Sri Lankan community. Dances and songs (in creolised Portuguese, a language of trade and commerce for 350 years in Sri Lanka) connect the Afro-Sri Lankans to Africa, their erstwhile homeland. The vast majority of Afro-Asians were pushed to the margins by colonialism and by the loss of patronage. Traditional dances and songs enable Afro-Sri Lankans to carve out a niche in the cultural arena of their host land. Fading memories of slavery and the slave trade can still be discerned in the narratives of their oral literature. The documentary was screened at the School of Oriental & African Studies and Institute of Commonwealth Studies (University of London), University of Vienna, High Commission for Mozambique (London), University of Kobe and University of Kansai (Japan) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain).

Year of Production: 2014. Length: 40 mins. The conversations in the documentary are in Sinhala and songs are in Sri Lanka Portuguese with narration and subtitles in English.