Legend has it that in the Middle Ages, a Christian ruler named Prester John lived somewhere in Africa amid the threat of an ever-expanding Islamic power. Today, in the tourist-flooded Gondar, the grandiose city that during the 16th century was the capital of the Ethiopian Empire, people continue to hold Timkat (or Epiphany), the festival that celebrates the baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan River, a ritual designed to cleanse and save man from the original sin. From this Biblical episode, baptism came to be understood as a rite of Christian initiation and as an indispensable condition for its followers to enter the kingdom of heaven and save their souls. Ico Costa, returning to Curtas almost a decade after his debut, takes up familiar processes (analogue film, in this case Super 8mm), the way of seeing (eminently observational) and a thematic axis (Africa as a place of heterodoxy) to document a narrative about the importance of the past and community relationships in defining the present and future ways of life. (PC)