Na Caminhu Pa Acácia.
Na Caminhu Pa Acácia (2025)
Installation view + film stills.
Na Caminhu Pa Acácia (2025)
diptych film-installation
22:25 min.
Written, directed, produced + edited by Janilda Bartolomeu
Cinematography + color grading by Nuno Boaventura Miranda
Sound Design + music by Kems Kriol
EXHIBITION
Another Island
Nieuwe Instituut
4 December 2025 - 2 May 2026
Email for screener requests.
Na Caminhu Pa Acácia (On the Way to Acácia) is a film that sprung from my long-term research between the ‘island-cities’ of Rotterdam and Dakar. Through these two cinematic portals you are granted a temporary look into the dreams and intuitive imaginations these Cape Verdean diaspora’s have in common.
What if such collective imagination serves as a compass to navigate towards our collective future? What does it mean for us to define our own dream along the way? And what stories do we tell ourselves once liberated from our double-consciousness as colonial migrants? This is a peek into the possibilities that connect us as a global archipelago.
In this work, the wishful ‘San Jon’ tradition serves as a portal between port cities Rotterdam and Dakar. Na Caminhu Pa Acácia shows what dreams are veiled behind our extra-biblical folklore of Saint John The Baptist. In four audio-visual parables, documentary and speculative video material merge and call upon possible future scenarios for our communities in Rotterdam and Dakar.
What does co-migrating figurehead ‘San Jon’ say about the self-image of our community, our creative potential as well as our dreams? In this year that Cabo Verde commemorates 50 years of independence, I look half a century back and half a century forward.
From survival to future dreams. From creatures to creators.
Another Island
The Another Island exhibition was also curated by Janilda Bartolomeu. Next to the Na Caminhu Pa Acácia (2025) installation, this spatial ‘land and sea map’ also consists of archival materials and found objects. Amongst these are Daniel da Conceição’s Rotterdam-local magazines Nos Vida, with issues ranging from 1971 to 1981. Zé (the boat) named after a central character in the film, and islands traced, cities foreseen (2024) is also screened as a first draft of the project. The walls in the space are recreations of ideas and concepts coming from Bartolomeu’s process notebooks.