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REIMAGINING THE COUNTRY: CINEMATIC VISIONS OF PORTUGAL IN THE WAKE OF REVOLUTION
Dr. Ana Vera
UCD - University College Dublin
In the aftermath of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, Portuguese cinema witnessed a surge of creativity, with around 133 films, encompassing both documentary and fiction, produced during this period. This prolific output reflects the diversity of aesthetic and political expression that emerged in relation to the revolutionary momentum. The urgent social questions of the time fuelled an unprecedented boom in documentary filmmaking. Alongside this, a significant body of fiction films, often incorporating documentary elements, reveals how the exploration of national identity became a central creative concern for Portuguese cinema. This transformative historical period, marked by profound political change, was a crucial moment for rethinking and reimagining the country. In this presentation, I will examine a series of case studies to explore how Portuguese filmmakers represented and conveyed their visions of the country through cinema. These works consistently reflect on Portugal’s evolving sociopolitical landscape, oscillating between a critical political commentary and an ethnographic or sociological perspective.
REVOLUTION AND VIOLENCE: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF PORTUGUESE DEMOCRACY
Dr. João Sarmento
Geography Department and Communication and Society Research Centre
University of Minho, Portugal
The Carnation Revolution on April 25th 1974 changed the course of a country and its people. It brought peace, freedom, the end of censorship, widespread access to education, health and social security, among many other substantial social and economic improvements. This triumph over a long dictatorship cannot be separated from a devastating three front war in Africa that lasted 13 years (1961-1974). In this talk I want to address three key aspects of the last 50 years which interconnect democracy and violence. Firstly, I want to take a look into the ways in which the roughly 100 thousand war veterans, and especially war disabled, mostly born between 1940 and 1950, were (un)supported by the state in the last 50 years. Secondly, I want to analyse the ambivalent ways in which the approximately half million retornados, who arrived in Portugal mostly in 1975 and 1976, were received and integrated in the country. Lastly, under the light of recent violent events that convoke ideas of structural racism and violence, I want to think of democracy in contemporary Portugal, addressing the absence of a meaningful national debate about the country’s colonial past in view of the rise of anti-democratic forces.
WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE REVOLUTION IN PORTUGAL: CREATIVE EXPERIMENTALISM AND CIVIC AGENCY
Dr. Leonor de Oliveira
NOVA FCSH | Art History Institute
UCC | University College Cork
In this paper, I will address the trajectories, creative practices, and interventions of Portuguese women artists in the period that preceded the Revolution and in the post-revolutionary context. During this extended chronology, women artists proposed alternative representations of historical and social experience and contributed to expand and complicate the recording and materialisation of past and present histories while experimenting with new artistic forms such as installation and performance.
By making women’s experiences and perspectives on political transformation, patriarchy, dictatorship, and war visible, the work of women artists promoted new ways of engaging collectively with neglected cultural and artistic practices, such as the ones associated with the feminine world, and with traumatic memories, especially related to gender violence. Their creative practices contribute therefore to amplify the democratic transformation of the country and the role of women in this context of political rupture with the dictatorial past.
CRAVOS DO TEMPO DE DIVISAS NA TETRALOGIA LUSITANA DE ALMEIDA FARIA
Carnations of a Time of Divisions in Almeida Faria’s Tetralogia Lusitana
Dr. Edimara Lisboa
USP - Universidade de São Paulo
O romance português não participou da euforia de primeira hora da Revolução dos Cravos, segundo diagnóstico de Eduardo Lourenço, no ensaio "Dez anos de literatura portuguesa (1974-1984): literatura e revolução". Foi preciso maturar o processo redemocratizante, bem como refletir sobre os efeitos do longo período de censura na forma romanesca, para que o 25 de Abril de 1974, o Salazarismo e a Guerra Colonial se tornassem temáticas profícuas da ficção portuguesa contemporânea (Calafate Ribeiro, 2004). A Tetralogia Lusitana, do escritor alentejano Almeida Faria (n. 1943), composta pelos romances A Paixão (1965), Cortes (1978), Lusitânia (1980) e Cavaleiro andante (1983), é representativa desse momento de transição tanto político como estético, pois elege os Cravos de Abril como fio condutor a posteriori, sugerido no segundo título com discrição, por meio da intertextualidade com os versos “Esse é tempo de divisas/Tempo de gente cortada”, de Carlos Drummond de Andrade, e reivindicado de maneira explícita, cada vez mais recorrente, nos títulos seguintes. Nesta comunicação, será discutido o contributo da Tetralogia para tornar perceptível o caráter dúbio com que a revolução foi sentida pelas famílias portuguesas na altura, considerando a polissemia da palavra cravos; simultaneamente, metáfora da liberdade reconquistada (flor do craveiro) e do perceber-se opressor de outros povos (prego de ferradura). Em função dessa ambivalência indissolúvel, Almeida Faria desenvolveu, em quatro etapas, uma das primeiras narrativas a repensar Portugal após o fim da ditadura e do império.
Abstract: According to Eduardo Lourenço's analysis in his essay “Ten Years of Portuguese Literature (1974-1984): Literature and Revolution,” the Portuguese novel did not initially share in the early euphoria of the Carnation Revolution. It took time for the redemocratization process to mature and for the impact of the long period of censorship on the novel form to be fully understood before April 25, 1974, Salazarism, and the Colonial War became fruitful themes in contemporary Portuguese fiction (Calafate Ribeiro, 2004). The Tetralogia Lusitana by Alentejo-born writer Almeida Faria (b. 1943), which includes the novels A Paixão (1965), Cortes (1978), Lusitânia (1980), and Cavaleiro Andante (1983), represents this moment of both political and aesthetic transition. The tetralogy uses the Carnation Revolution as a retrospective guiding thread, hinted at subtly in the second novel through intertextuality with Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s verses “This is a time of divisions / A time of people cut off,” and explicitly emphasized in the following titles. This presentation will explore how the Tetralogia captures the ambiguous way in which the revolution was experienced by Portuguese families at the time, considering the polysemy of the word "cravos" (carnations): simultaneously a metaphor for reclaimed freedom (the carnation flower) and a symbol of Portugal's awareness of its role as an oppressor (the horseshoe nail). Due to this indissoluble ambivalence, Almeida Faria crafted, in four stages, one of the first narratives to rethink Portugal in the aftermath of the dictatorship and the empire's end.
The promotional images used for the event were created by Portuguese illustrator Marta Nunes and were used with permission. The illustrations featured in this programme are part of Marta Nunes's series 25 Dias para a Liberdade (2023). To explore more of her work, click https://www.martanunes.work/.
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