A Nossa Alemanha
Our GermanyFilm in development / 2019 —
A Nossa Alemanha (Our Germany) portrays the stories of my family’s emigration to Germany, as told by my grandmother over the years. This project is divided in a photobook and a documentary. With the Super8 images and photographs captured at the time, the project weaves a story of love, intimacy and nostalgia of a time so significant to my family.
Photobook
My parents spent their childhood and adolescence in Germany. I grew up listening to all their stories and some I know by heart. My grandparents, both paternal and maternal, emigrated young, although to different cities, with children in their arms and without knowing how to speak German. Their homes were the most special places and where they keep the greatest memories. Our houses in Portugal are still made up of furniture bought in Germany at the time and the kitchens still keep German recipes. We own albums and albums full of photos from the 70s and 80s and each photo tells a piece of my family’s history and of the fifteen years they spent in Germany.
A Nossa Alemanha tells the story of the emigration of my father's family, in an exploration of dualities - Germany and Portugal, here and there, as experiences of the women and men of the family, and the past and the present. The emigration period marked three generations, leaving a strong German cultural heritage. Opening the curtain that separates public and personal, Our Germany presents a journey into the past, an invitation to enter our homes and our lives. Starting from memory fragments from the 70s and 80s, present in family albums and videos in super 8 of my family archive, adding analog and digital photographs that I took on trips to Monchengladbach between 2018 and 2020, using letters that my grandmother wrote to me telling several of the stories that make up this narrative and recipes from the menus she brought in her luggage, this photobook presents an intimate and nostalgic portrait of what she considers to be Our Germany.
A film on paper.
Hard cover, 17x21cm, 119 pages, 1 postal & an explanatory letter
106 images
14 pages with 9x11cm
Project supervised by Ângela Berlinde
This book is not for sale yet, but I’d love to print copies!💌 email me at hellonicolenoia@gmail.com if you’re interested in helping :)