″ Young Johnny ″ returns to writing on a journey between Lisbon and Luanda in the 60s
After a written and photographic journey through the 1940s and 1950s and to the city of Porto, João van Zeller returns in time, in an account of his youth lived between two continents. Young Johnny, Lisbon and Luanda the 60s (Afrontamento edition), reminds us of a decade of revolution in costumes. Vertiginous years that gave us May ’68, going to the moon, the pill, the miniskirt, but also the Colonial War and the Berlin Wall. From all of this, in an autobiographical record that crosses facts, personalities, encounters and disagreements, João van Zeller deals with the testimony that he leaves us with the society of the time. Historical portrait, but also intimate, where love, bohemian, naivety, amazement, shame, success and failure fit. “The portrait of a vanished Portugal. Already forgotten by many who were contemporaries of it, and ignored by millions of other Portuguese”, former ambassador Marcello Duarte Mathias in the preface to the work. On the day that marks the launch of Young Johnny, Lisbon and Luanda the 60s We spoke with João van Zeller, 79, a man with a long international career in the financial sector, linked to the founding of TVI, arising since his return to Portugal, in 1992, in the Social Solidarity sector.
In the preface to his book, ambassador Marcello Duarte Mathias says that “talking about us is talking about others”. More than an autobiography, are we facing an exercise in the recovery of collective memory?
Without a doubt, it’s a decade that revolutionized the world, with the arrival of Man on the Moon, Vatican Council II, the pill, the miniskirt, May ’68, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Woodstock, the Yippies, the Spring of Prague, John Kennedy, the Berlin Wall. A total revolution in clothing that influenced the way the youth lived and that I was lucky to experience. Basically, the post-war baby boomer generation I belong to.