The Islands' Message

A documentary series which depicts a gathering of healers in the United Jau, in Huila province.

Adapted from two legends of the Nyaneka people in southeastern Angola. Set during a time of famine, and with only two families surviving, the film charts the struggle of Nelisita, a young man who confronts the spirits with help from animals and his friends.

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, poet and novelist, finds out that his father left papers in the Namib desert that would help him shed light on a mystery that occurred in 1923. Through his search, he embarks on an epic tale that goes from the turn of the 19th century to the end of the 20th, in the magnificent Angolan south.

Scenes from the three last days of the festival in which the population of the old Kingdom of Jau participate yearly.

A documentary in which Angolan laborers describe their working conditions under colonial rule.

The confrontation between two visions of the world: that of the elders of Jau and that of the students of the Faculty of Arts in Lubango, in what is considered to be Ruy Duarte de Carvalho's most ethnographic cinema.

Two meetings in 1978 with Kimbanda Kambia, a traditional healer in rural southern Angola. Kimbanda shows the place where he treats and prepares medicines, the women who help him with these preparations, and talks about his practice - how he treats cases of madness, epilepsy, spirit and witchcraft possession.