Optical image of Cen A (kindly provided by D. Malin) showing the diffuse emission and the location of the so-called inner and the outer filaments. The white contours denote the radio continuum emission of the inner lobes (bottom-right of the figure) and the large-scale jet connecting the northern inner lobe to the base of the outer lobe (top-left of the figure). The black contours refer to the northeast outer H i cloud. The location where young stars have been found is marked with a dashed line. Zoom in: optical image of the outer filament region (kindly provided by Rejkuba). The hatched area indicates where anomalous velocities are detected within the H i cloud. The region covered by our observations is drawn with two red squares.