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Matinee: 'Memories of Love Returned' Share This on LinkedIn   Tweet This   Forward This

24 May 2025

Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?

So we're pleased to present the 605th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Memories of Love Returned.

In this just over five-minute segment of the PBS News Hour, Ali Rogan interviews Ntare Mwine about his film Memories of Love Returned. The film explores the five decade career of rural Ugandan photographer Kibaate Ssalongo.

Mwine stumbled on Ssalongo's studio when his car broke down. He took a look around and realized he'd "struck a gold mine." There were portraits that went back 50 years.

So Mwine spent the next 22 years telling Ssalongo's story.

It's a different picture of Africa than we typically see. More like the studio portraits from the beginning of the 20th century when families would put on their Sunday best, go down to the photographer's studio and have their portrait taken. Individuals, couples, graduates, families, you name it.

And because they reach so far back in time, the images seem to comment on the present. What is forbidden now was acceptable then, like miniskirts.

All of which became public when the project printed the negatives and displayed them outdoors in large poster prints holding about 90 images per sheet.

We see a number of the images in this piece, but here's the trailer for the film too:

In the film, Mwine tells Ssalongo he's taken "some really important photographs" but the way he's stored them (in plastic bags), "they won't last."

They will now.

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