Lourdes Feria /// Interview with Alfredo Jaar

In the opening scene of the film six children pose for the camera, smiling and with their hands on their hearts. Muxima in Kimbundu means heart.

Exactly. When I went to Angola in 2004-2005 to gather the visual material used in the film I researched deeply into all this. It is a song from the traditional folk repertoire which, at the end of the fifties, was recreated by 'Liceu' Vieira Dias, the leader of the Ngola Ritmos, which was a group formed by musicians linked to the forming of the MPLA [Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola], committed to a cultural and political project. Vieira Dias and Amadeu Amorim, another member of the band, were arrested in 1959 and deported to Tarrafal prison, in Cape Verde, from which they only returned ten years later. Indeed, the band was formed in order to affirm the identity of Angola. The lyric, which is apparently innocent, describes the story of a woman accused of witchcraft.(...)"