Muxima, the first film by Alfredo Jaar, is centered around five recordings of “Muxima,” an Angolan folksong that served as the structure of his portrait of a complex and changing society.

Since Jaar first came to international attention in the Aperto section of the 1986 Venice Biennale, he has explored issues of displacement, the imbalance of power between industrialized and developing nations, and the effects of military conflict on human life. He has done several bodies of work drawn from witness in Africa, notably Geography=War (1990), The Rwanda Project (1994-2000), and now Muxima (2005). It continues this investigation but marks a new evolution in his formal means, as well as a return to his first interest in the visual arts, which was film.

Muxima (meaning “heart” in Kimbundu, an indigenous language of Angola) is a cinematic elegy dedicated to the people of Angola. Jaar visited Angola in 2004 and 2005 to gather the visual material used in the film. Divided into 10 cantos, it is guided rhythmically and conceptually by different interpretations of the folksong.