Fernando Matos Silva (an important assistant director in the Portuguese New Cinema, namely from Os Verdes Anos and Belarmino) was recruited for military service in 1969, as part of the Army's Cartographic Services (responsible for filming and photographing military operations). The director, posted to Guinea-Bissau, took extra film with him and filmed what he saw on his own, particularly on the island of Bolama. A decade later, in 1979, the director recovered these images and integrated them into a "trans-historical travelling film" that spans 500 years of Portuguese colonial occupation: from the navigators to the independence fighters.