vanessa fernandes e kitty furtado

After the screening of Si Destinu (2015), by Vanessa Fernandes, curator and cultural critic Kitty Furtado talks with the director about the themes portrayed in this film. Built around themes such as Between-Place, Memory and Ancestry, Ecology and Feminism, Anti-racism and Family, this conversation seeks to reflect, from the film Si Destinu and the director’s work, on the variants that constitute the Black Gaze, in Portugal and around the world.

Si Destinu follows the story of Awa, a teenager who lives in Lisbon with her father, Abdul. The young woman’s drama unfolds under the influence that her paternal family, living in Guinea-Bissau, exerts over Abdul, causing Awa’s future to be conditioned by norms and traditions inherited from her parents’ homeland. More than a film about female genital mutilation, it is a reflection on the persistence of invisible powers and silent laws that cross borders and perpetuate themselves in the intimacy of family relationships.

kitty furtado
Ana Cristina Pereira (AKA Kitty Furtado) is a cultural critic committed to dissolving boundaries between academia and the public sphere. She is currently a researcher at CECS (UMinho), where she develops the project The Black Gaze, a guest lecturer at FBAUP (UPorto) and co-director of VISTA: Journal of Visual Culture. She also works as an independent curator of (post)colonial cinema and Black Cinema programmes, promoting public debate around Memory, Racism and Reparations. Among her most relevant contributions are the creation and coordination of Reparations Art-Lab (mala voadora, Porto, 2023), the curation of the programme Biomes, within the scope of Portugal’s representation at the Venice Art Biennale (2024), the exhibition Cinemas nas Independências (CC Batalha, 2025) and the curation of the programme Black Gaze: Cinema Negro em Portugal (CAM – Gulbenkian, 2025).

supported by portuguese republic – culture, youth and sports / general direction of the arts / network of portuguese theaters and cinemas (rtcp). portuguese contemporary art network (rpac).