Once a week, UMBIGO invites one person to share their 5 cultural suggestions. What can we do at home? From a book to a podcast, album or film: here are recommendations from artists, curators, gallery owners, cultural activists, friends.

We will share the recipe for what makes us better, and we remain united and positive.

Umbigo has been publishing this section since the beginning of the pandemic.

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Book

Histórias e Memórias de Mulheres de Cabo-Verde em Portugal
UMAR – União de Mulheres Alternativa e Resposta
2020

It is the result of the 2020 edition of the Memory and Feminisms Project of UMAR – Union of Women Alternative and Response, financed by the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality. This book, coordinated by Teresa Sales (responsible for the project) results from the collection of emancipatory testimonies of Cape Verdean women in Portugal, their experiences, integration and dreams.

Movie

The Breadwinner
Nora Twomey
2017

2001. Afghanistan is under Taliban control. Parvana is an 11-year-old girl who sees her life completely change when her father is unjustly accused and imprisoned. Since, according to Taliban precepts, no woman can work outside the home, the mother is left with no means of supporting her children. That’s how little Parvana makes a brave decision: cut her hair, wear boy’s clothes and look for work. With this she will discover a world full of injustices, where survival, difficult, depends almost exclusively on solidarity.
Premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Animated Film, a drama written and directed by Nora Twomey (co-director of the animation The Secret of Kells, also nominated for an Oscar) who adapts to homonymous work by Canadian activist Deborah Ellis. Produced by Mimi Polk Gitlin and Angelina Jolie, the original version features the voices of Saara Chaudry, Soma Bhatia, Kane Mahon, Laara Sadiq and Shaista Latif.

Available at RTP Play.

Interview

ISTO É O POVO A FALAR | Pandemic Apocalypse
Ana Leonor Marciano (Jurist at UMAR)
Kuriakos TV

Focusing on the pandemic crisis, Ana Leonor Marciano explains the mobilization of the system to respond to victims of domestic violence in this context; advising strategic guidelines, resources and services available to people who are in a situation of violence. [Portuguese only.]

Music

Deixaas
Mercedes Péon
2018

Mercedes Peón, an instrumentalist and Galician vocalist, is considered one of the most charismatic women in the world music circuit. After deepening the Galician tradition during more than 15 years of research, in 2000 she recorded her first album Isué. The tone of her debut album was so strong and energetic that she became her own brand. Peón masterfully mixed the tradition of the bagpipes and percussion with his powerful voice.

Deixaas is a metaphor anchored in the naval industry in Ferrol (Galicia), a conceptualization of realities that makes the social and cultural fabric visible in the subjective sound mapping. Everyday realities that live on this platform without realizing the existence of the total. From the tiny sparks that come from an angle grinder to a critique of the social construction of gender.

The DEIXAAS-band format expands the creative universe of Mercedes Peón with Ana Fernández and Mónica de Nut on stage.

An amalgamation of musical ability and creative vanguard that retains the essence of the current concerns in the composer’s music: identity, genre, aesthetics, language, belonging, global-local tension, political positioning.

A Project to Follow

Shared Readings
CCIFUMAR
2019

In September 2019, the Center for Feminist Culture and Intervention (CCIFUMAR) created the feminist reading group Shared Readings which meets every two weeks via online.

In this space, any type of text is welcome, it can be a quote, verse, poem, article, novel, essay, news, manifesto … The important thing is to share a writing that touches us in a feminist perspective and the respective joint reflection.

As a challenge, thematic Shared Readings, previously announced, are periodically carried out to focus more on the work of a specific author or subject, such as those already dedicated to the writers Maria Velho da Costa and Clarice Lispector.

As part of the International Women’s Day 2021, a special edition of Shared Readings will be organized on March 11 at 6 pm: The Feminist Word in the Public Space: Speeches and Manifestos.

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UMAR – Union of Women Alternative and Response – is a women’s association formed on September 12, 1976.

It was born from the active participation of women on the 25th of April 1974 and the felt need, by many of them, to create an association that fought for their rights, in that new political context.

UMAR is today an association that claims a socially committed feminism, committed to awakening feminist awareness in Portuguese society. This commitment translates into intervention work in different areas and regions of the country: Braga, Porto, Viseu, Coimbra, Lisbon, Almada and Funchal.

CCIF – Center for Culture and Feminist Intervention, founded by UMAR in 2011, came to respond and shape the need to cross feminist activism with Culture and the Arts. For this purpose, it regularly offers a cultural program that integrates different themes and approaches (debates, workshops, cinema cycles, theatre, exhibitions, free courses). Since the second half of March 2020, due to the pandemic, the entire programming has been put into a digital environment, thus ensuring the continuity of its mission.