Cineblend

Cineblend Café is a recurring documentary evening on cultural diversity at the FilmHallen and Café Belcampo. This edition takes place in collaboration with World Music Forum. After the screening of Cesária Évora, there will be a post-screening discussion in Belcampo with film journalist Stan Rijven and a mini-concert by Cape Verdean singer-songwriter Djocy Santos.

Cesária Évora

World star Cesária Évora (1941-2011) was averse to diva behavior. From the loving portrait of Ana Sofia Fonseca emerges an image of a singer who, among other things by performing barefoot, never forgot her poor origins. A singer with a deeply melancholic voice, “which comes from inside her, her life and her country,” as someone says in the film. That country is tropical Cape Verde, where Évora ended up in an orphanage as a 10-year-old child because her mother could not (raise) six children after the death of her husband. She ran away from there after a few years and became a café singer. That raw life changed when she became a world star at 50. Remarkably, fame did not change her. Using archival footage, concert recordings, interviews and images of Cape Verde, Cesária Évora paints a picture of a woman who always remained herself and never gave up her independence. But also a woman scarred by her leaden childhood. “I don’t believe in dreams,” she says when an interviewer asks her about her biggest dream: “Ask me something else!

’, zegt ze als een interviewer haar vraagt naar haar grootste droom: ‘Vraag me iets anders!’