Race, Fantasy, and Anti-Cinema

Interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student Sol Mussa, and academic Dr Paula Teixeira Molans, are both Galicians living in the UK. In this conversation, Teixeira Molans - whose academic life has been dedicated to the study of the Galician language (hereafter galego) – sought to explore Mussa's artistic practice within the context of her Galician-Mozambican identity and her own experiences of migration, with reference to her experiences as a racialised artist who has lived in London, and Galicia. Mussa's film Stockroom, in which the camera hovers both over and under unseen angles of life in London during Brexit, is discussed here as she shares with Teixeira her impetus to showcase what is hidden or obscured in cities and societies and therefore valued or undervalued as a result. In this vein Mussa exposes the interplay between capitalism and racism, as it plays out in the fetishisation of Black women's bodies in pornography, through her series &$@#/°! She further elucidates on the philosophy behind her films Ratatouille and Proxecto X and what these say about trash and hierarchy. Both Sol and Paula are advocates for, and speakers of, galego, which was the subject of centuries of persecution by the Spanish state, only gaining official status in 1981. This interview was translated from galego into English by Teixeira Molans

Interview · Semi-structured interview · Cinema and Media Studies · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture