Tales of Oblivion

Über vierhundert Jahre hinweg wurden rund sechs Millionen Menschen, die als Sklav*innen verkauft wurden, zwischen Portugal und Brasilien über den Atlantik befördert. Dulce Fernandes erzählt diese Episode des Menschenhandels durch das Königreich Portugal anhand eines Massengrab-Fundes in der südportugiesischen Hafenstadt Lagos. Eine Ausgrabung brachte dort eine Müllkippe des 15. Jahrhunderts und darin die Gebeine von über 150 Afrikaner*innen ans Licht. TALES OF OBLIVION macht daraus einen Ort mahnender Erinnerung, mit wohl durchdachten visuellen Annäherungen und einer Stimme, die dazu berichtet; die politischen Verantwortlichen bauten statt eines Mahnmals ein Parkhaus. (Jakob Dibold)

In a hot summer morning in 1444, in the fishing village of Lagos, southern Portugal, a group of African people was disembarked. In the field next to the port, they were given away as slaves to the local noblemen and merchants. For the next 400 years, more than six million Africans would be trafficked in Portuguese ships to Europe and across the Atlantic. In a rainy winter afternoon in 2009, in Lagos, archeologists excavating the site where an underground parking was under construction, began to find human skeletons. Working on the site for the following five months, as the parking was being built around them, the archeologists uncovered the skeletons of 158 enslaved African men, women, and children. Their bodies had been dumped in a XV-century landfill. Intertwining these two storylines, TALES OF OBLIVION threads tales of violence and brutality from the past with sights and sounds of the present. Evoking what took place in these sites and conjuring memories from the past, TALES OF OBLIVION is a film-territory where we have no choice but to look at how the present continues to be shaped by the history we carry within us.