Portugal’s Global Cinema: Industry, History and Culture 9781350987586, 9781786732750

Table of contents :
Cover
Author biography
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction: Framing the Global Appeal of Contemporary Portuguese Cinema
Portuguese cinema on the international stage
Cinema of small nations: between globalization and internationalization
Key issues in contemporary Portuguese cinema
1 Filming Narratives Becoming Events: Documentary and the ‘Emplotments’ of the Carnation Revolution
Narratives of the Carnation Revolution: an introduction
Scenes from the class struggle in Portugal
Revolution as narrative
2 Our Beloved Month of August: Between the Filming of the Real and the Reality of Filming
The reality of filming
Filming of the real
Just so: love for reality, desire for cinema
Conclusion: the section which isn’t there
3 Political Oliveira
Legacy of the empire
4 Portugal, Europe and the World: Geopolitics and the Human Condition in Manoel de Oliveira’s Films
Regional/National
Supranational/Transnational/Global
Universal/Local
Conclusion
5 Amália (2008): Stories of a Singer and Tales of a National Cinema
Amália and fado biographies
Between Hollywood melodrama and national Portuguese cinema
6 La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage: A Franco-Portuguese Comedy of Integration
French comedy of integration
Negotiating Portuguese stereotypes
Music, nostalgia, modernity
Conclusion
7 Cinema and the City in European Portugal
The complex relationship between Portugal and Europe
Lisbon Story and European postcards
Portugal, Europe and heritage in Porto of My Childhood
Conclusion
8 Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking
Digital cinema as a (low-budget) production paradigm
Filmmaking at the interstices
Authorship renegotiated
Conclusion
9 Broken Links: The Cinema of Teresa Villaverde
The holy family
Forms and transformations
Figures and feelings
10 Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal: Territory, Littoral, City and Memory Bridge
Portugal as Ruizian territory
Three Crowns of a Sailor (1982), City of Pirates (1983) and impossible cartographies
Mysteries of Lisbon and mysteries of enchantment
11 White Faces/Black Masks: The White Woman’s Burden in Pedro Costa’s Down to Earth
Remaking Hollywood? Volcanoes, zombies, crazy women
Neo-colonial gaze, desire and sexuality
Female embodiment of male masochism: between science and sexuality
Conclusion: a dystopian Island of Love?
12 Light Drops: Portugal Critically Reviewing the Colonial Past?
Light Drops as post-colonial film
Rui Pedro’s two families
Post-colonialism and nostalgia?
13 Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu
Historical detours
The non-story and the index
Fantasy as truth procedure
14 Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions: Rescue and Expansion
Globalization and the national cinemas of Brazil and Portugal
The role of co-productions in Brazilian and Portuguese cinema
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Mariana Liz is a Research Fellow at ICS-ULisboa, in Portugal. She is the author of Euro-Visions: Europe in Contemporary Cinema (2016) and co-editor of Women’s Cinema in Contemporary Portugal (2020) and The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization (2015).

‘A superb collection of essays that rethinks the international meaning of recent Portuguese film and defines the theoretical stakes of studying and conceptualizing this “small nation’s” cinema, its fascinating film history and its innovative and provocative filmmakers.’ – Estela Vieira, Indiana University Bloomington ‘Addressing both auteurs and popular film, as well as matters of representation and of industry, this book – the first of its kind in English – illuminates and nuances key debates in the discipline, especially the rich dialogue between the national and the transnational.’ – Sally Faulkner, University of Exeter ‘A timely volume with a coherent theoretical framework that will appeal to film scholars and students with an interest in Portuguese filmmaking, but equally inform understandings of ‘small’ national cinemas.’ – Lisa Shaw, University of Liverpool

Series Editors: Lúcia Nagib, Professor of Film at the University of Reading Julian Ross, Research Fellow at Leiden University Advisory Board: Laura Mulvey (UK), Robert Stam (USA), Ismail Xavier (Brazil), Dudley Andrew (USA) The W orld Cinema Series aims to reveal and celebrate the richness and complexity of film art across the globe, exploring a wide variety of cinemas set within their own cultures and as they interconnect in a global context. The books in the series will represent innovative scholarship, in tune with the multicultural character of contemporary audiences. Drawing upon an international authorship, they will challenge outdated conceptions of world cinema, and provide new ways of understanding a field at the centre of fi lm studies in an era of transnational networks. Published and forthcoming in the World Cinema series: Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance Michelle Langford Amharic Film Genres and Ethiopian Cinema Michael W. Thomas Animation in the Middle East: Practice and Aesthetics from Baghdad to Casablanca Stefanie Van de Peer Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History Rob Stone and Maria Pilar Rodriguez Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia Lúcia Nagib Brazilian Cinema and the Aesthetics of Ruins Guilherme Carréra

Cinema in the Arab World: New Histories, New Approaches Edited By Philippe Meers, Daniel Biltereyst and Ifdal Elsaket Contemporary New Zealand Cinema Edited by Ian Conrich and Stuart Murray Cosmopolitan Cinema: Cross-cultural Encounters in East Asian Film Felicia Chan Documentary Cinema in Chile: Confronting History, Memory, Trauma Antonio Traverso East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film Edited by Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai East Asian Film Noir: Transnational Encounters and Intercultural Dialogue Edited by Chi-Yun Shin and Mark Gallagher Eastern Approaches to Western Film: Asian Reception and Aesthetics in Cinema Stephen Teo Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film Edited by Lúcia Nagib and Anne Jerslev Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics Edited by Deborah Martin and Deborah Shaw Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond Lina Khatib New Argentine Cinema Jens Andermann New Directions in German Cinema Edited by Paul Cooke and Chris Homewood New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory Asuman Suner On Cinema Glauber Rocha, Edited by Ismail Xavier Pablo Trapero and the Politics of Violence Douglas Mulliken Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Narratives of Place and Yael Friedman

Portugal’s Global Cinema IND U STRY, HI STORY A N D C U LT U R E Edited by Mariana Liz

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain by I.B. Tauris 2018 This paperback edition published by Bloomsbury Academic 2022 Copyright © 2018 Mariana Liz Copyright Individual Chapters © 2018 Cristina Álvarez López, Nuno Barradas Jorge, Anthony De Melo, Michael Goddard, Rui Gonçalves Miranda, Randal Johnson, Mariana Liz, Adrian Martin, Paul Melo e Castro, Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Lúcia Nagib, Hilary Owen, Natália Pinazza, Luís Trindade, Ginette Vincendeau Mariana Liz has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as editor of this work. For legal purposes the acknowledgements on p. xv constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: World Cinema ISBN: HB: 978-1-7845-3198-0 PB: 978-1-3502-4809-0 ePDF: 978-1-7867-3275-0 ePub: 978-1-7867-2275-1 To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Ao Joaquim, português global.

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Contributors

xiii xv xvii

Introduction: Framing the Global Appeal of Contemporary Portuguese Cinema Mariana Liz Portuguese cinema on the international stage Cinema of small nations: between globalization and internationalization Key issues in contemporary Portuguese cinema 1

2

3

Filming Narratives Becoming Events: Documentary and the ‘Emplotments’ of the Carnation Revolution Luís Trindade Narratives of the Carnation Revolution: an introduction Scenes from the class struggle in Portugal Revolution as narrative Our Beloved Month of August: Between the Filming of the Real and the Reality of Filming Rui Gonçalves Miranda The reality of filming Filming of the real Just so: love for reality, desire for cinema Conclusion: the section which isn’t there Political Oliveira Randal Johnson Legacy of the empire

1 2 4 10

15

16 21 26 33 35 38 42 45 47 53

ix

Contents 4

Portugal, Europe and the World: Geopolitics and the Human Condition in Manoel de Oliveira’s Films Carolin Overhoff Ferreira Regional/National Supranational/Transnational/Global Universal/Local Conclusion

5 Amália (2008): Stories of a Singer and Tales of a National Cinema Anthony De Melo Amália and fado biographies Between Hollywood melodrama and national Portuguese cinema 6 La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage: A FrancoPortuguese Comedy of Integration Ginette Vincendeau French comedy of integration Negotiating Portuguese stereotypes Music, nostalgia, modernity Conclusion 7 Cinema and the City in European Portugal Mariana Liz The complex relationship between Portugal and Europe Lisbon Story and European postcards Portugal, Europe and heritage in Porto of My Childhood Conclusion 8 Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking Nuno Barradas Jorge Digital cinema as a (low-budget) production paradigm Filmmaking at the interstices Authorship renegotiated Conclusion

x

67 69 73 76 82 87 90 93 99 102 104 107 112 115

116 120 126 131 135

136 139 144 148

Contents 9 Broken Links: The Cinema of Teresa Villaverde Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin The holy family Forms and transformations Figures and feelings 10 Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal: Territory, Littoral, City and Memory Bridge Michael Goddard Portugal as Ruizian territory Three Crowns of a Sailor (1982), City of Pirates (1983) and impossible cartographies Mysteries of Lisbon and mysteries of enchantment 11 White Faces/Black Masks: The White Woman’s Burden in Pedro Costa’s Down to Earth Hilary Owen Remaking Hollywood? Volcanoes, zombies, crazy women Neo-colonial gaze, desire and sexuality Female embodiment of male masochism: between science and sexuality Conclusion: a dystopian Island of Love? 12 Light Drops: Portugal Critically Reviewing the Colonial Past? Paul Melo e Castro Light Drops as post-colonial film Rui Pedro’s two families Post-colonialism and nostalgia? 13 Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu Lúcia Nagib Historical detours The non-story and the index Fantasy as truth procedure 14 Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions: Rescue and Expansion Natália Pinazza xi

151 151 155 161 167 168 171 176 185

187 191 196 201 205 208 211 218 223 226 230 234 239

Contents Globalization and the national cinemas of Brazil and Portugal The role of co-productions in Brazilian and Portuguese cinema Conclusion Bibliography Index

243 248 254 257 277

xii

Illustrations 1.1

Red Line: critical visions of Torre Bela (Terratreme, 2011)

22

2.1

The film crew on screen: sound director Vasco Pimentel in Our Beloved Month of August (O Som e a Fúria, 2008)

43

3.1

Labour on the Douro River (Manoel de Oliveira/SPAC, 1931)

48

3.2

Luís Miguel Cintra in No, or the Vain Glory of Command (Madragoa Filmes, 1990)

56

Teresinha and the doll in Aniki-Bóbó (Produções António Lopes Ribeiro, 1942)

70

Amália: the protagonist on stage days after the 1974 revolution (VC Filmes, 2008)

88

4.1 5.1 6.1

Poster of The Gilded Cage (Zazi Films, 2013)

100

6.2

Maria in her ‘gilded cage’ (Zazi Films, 2013)

111

7.1

Postcard iconography in Lisbon Story (Madragoa Filmes, 1994)

123

Jorge Trêpa as a teenage Manoel de Oliveira, dreaming of pastéis (Madragoa Filmes, 2001)

128

Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room (Contracosta Produções, 2000)

141

8.2

Colossal Youth (Ventura Film, 2006)

145

9.1

Alce (Sérgio Fernandes) in the final scene of Swan (Alce Filmes, 2011)

153

Decentered framing: Ana Moreira in Trance (Gemini Filmes, 2006)

159

Applying lipstick: Ana Moreira in The Mutants (Arte, 1998)

162

7.2 8.1

9.2 9.3

xiii

Illustrations 9.4

Smearing lipstick: Ana Moreira in Trance (Gemini Filmes, 2006)

163

10.1

João in anamorphic delirium (Clap Filmes, 2010)

179

10.2

The puppet theatre (Clap Filmes, 2010)

179

11.1

Gothic framing in Pedro Costa’s Down to Earth (Madragoa Filmes, 1994)

197

Tina and Edite – the female gaze in Down to Earth (Madragoa Filmes, 1994)

201

Light Drops: Rui Pedro and Jacopo by the river (Cinemate, 2002)

213

12.2

Ana’s death in Light Drops (Cinemate, 2002)

219

13.1

Tabu: the image of the crocodile stands for an Africa that refuses to fit into the colonizer’s imagination (O Som e a Fúria, 2012)

233

These men and women, performing solely for the sake of the camera (and not of the fiction), reveal themselves as totally unknowable others (O Som e a Fúria, 2012)

236

Brazilian actress Irene Ravache in the Luso-Brazilian Co-production Yvone Kane (Filmes do Tejo II, 2014)

252

11.2 12.1

13.2

14.1

xiv

Acknowledgements I started planning a book on the international status of Portuguese cinema after being invited to teach on the topic at Queen Mary, University of London in 2012. An English-language publication on contemporary Portuguese film seemed like an obvious gap in the literature, and I am thankful to I.B.Tauris for believing in this project, especially Anna Coatman, Madeleine Hamey-Thomas and the editors of the World Cinema Series, Lúcia Nagib and Julian Ross. I would like to thank Paul Cooke, Stephanie Dennison, Alan O’Leary and the Research and Staff Support Office at the University of Leeds for their institutional support. Thank you also to Margarida Cardoso, Teresa Borges (Cinemateca Portuguesa) and Adelaide Trêpa for generously allowing us to reproduce some of the images in these pages. While organizing this book, I discussed the international value of Portuguese cinema with a number of people, including my Contemporary European Cinema students at Leeds, to whom I am thankful for an inspiring debate on small nations and the cinema of Miguel Gomes. I have learnt a great deal about the topic with the contributors to this volume, and I am thankful for their patience and generosity. Thank you to Sally Faulkner, Olga Kourelou, Filipa Rosário and two anonymous reviewers who read and discussed with me earlier versions of this book, greatly improving it with their suggestions. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their constant support and enthusiasm; I finished the book in Lisbon in 2017.

xv

Contributors Cristina Álvarez López is a film critic and audiovisual artist based in Vilassar de Mar, Spain. Her work has appeared in Fandor Keyframe, MUBI Notebook, LOLA and De Filmkrant, and in books on Chantal Akerman, Bong Joon-ho, Philippe Garrel and Paul Schrader. Nuno Barradas Jorge is a teaching assistant in the Department of Culture, Film and Media at the University of Nottingham and Associate Lecturer at the University of Derby. He recently completed his PhD thesis on the work of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa. He is the co-editor, with Tiago de Luca, of Slow Cinema (2016). His research has appeared in the journal Adaptation, in the collections Mediations of Disruption in Post-Conflict Cinema (2016) and Migration in Lusophone Cinema (2014). Anthony De Melo teaches film studies at Sheridan College, Canada. His PhD dissertation, completed at King’s College London, examined the representation of fado in Portuguese film from 1930 to 1950. His publications include a chapter on fado and Portuguese musical comedies in Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema (2012), and an article on the Cinema Novo Português (New Portuguese Cinema) of the 1960s. Michael Goddard is Senior Lecturer in Film, TV and the Moving Image at the University of Westminster. Previously he was a Reader and PGR Director in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford. He has published widely on Polish and international cinema and media culture, as well as cultural and media theory. He is the author of Impossible Cartographies (2013), on the cinema of Raúl Ruiz, and he is co-editing two journal issues on the return of Twin Peaks, as well as an edited collection on music video. Most recently, his research focuses on contemporary audiovisual popular culture and urban space.

xvii

Contributors Rui Gonçalves Miranda is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Nottingham. He holds a PhD on modernist poetry and critical theory (University of Nottingham) and his post-doctoral project (Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia/CEHUM, Universidade do Minho) addressed cultural productions in a South Atlantic post-conflict context. His publications address the interface between politics, aesthetics and critical theory in Portuguese cinema and Angolan, Brazilian and Portuguese poetry and fiction. Randal Johnson is Distinguished Professor of Brazilian Literature and Cinema at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Film Industry in Brazil: Culture and the State (1987), Antonio das Mortes (1998) and Manoel de Oliveira (2007), and editor or co-editor of Brazilian Cinema (1982, 1988, 1985), Tropical Paths: Essays on Modern Brazilian Literature (1993), Black Brazil: Culture, Identity and Social Mobilization (1999) and Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (1993). Mariana Liz is Postdoctoral Fellow at ICS-ULisboa (Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa), in Lisbon, Portugal. She previously taught film studies and Portuguese culture at King’s College London, Queen Mary, University of London and at the University of Leeds. She is the author of Euro-Visions: Europe in Contemporary Cinema (2016) and co-editor of The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization (I.B.Tauris, 2015). Adrian Martin, an arts critic and audiovisual artist based in Vilassar de Mar, Spain, is Adjunct Professor of Film and Screen Studies at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of seven books on cinema, and coeditor of LOLA journal online. Paul Melo e Castro is Lecturer in Portuguese at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Shades of Grey: 1960s Lisbon in Novel, Film and Photography (2011). Lúcia Nagib is Professor of Film at the University of Reading. She is the author of World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (2011) and Brazil on xviii

Contributors Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia (2007). She is the editor of Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film (with Anne Jerslev, 2013), Theorizing World Cinema (with Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah, 2011), Realism and the Audiovisual Media (with Cecília Mello, 2009) and The New Brazilian Cinema (2003). Carolin Overhoff Ferreira is Assistant Professor at the Federal University of São Paulo. Her books include Cinema Português: Aproximações à Sua História e Indisciplinaridade (2013), Identity and Difference: Postcoloniality and Transnationality in Lusophone Films (2012) and Diálogos Africanos: um Continente no Cinema (2012). Her articles have been published in Adaptation, Camera Obscura, Journal of African Cinemas, Studies in European Cinema, Third Text and Transnational Cinemas. Hilary Owen is Professor Emerita of Portuguese and Luso-African Studies at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Mother Africa, Father Marx: Women’s Writing of Mozambique, 1948–1992 (2007), co-author with Cláudia Pazos Alonso of Antigone’s Daughters? Gender, Genealogy and the Politics of Authorship in 20th-century Portuguese Women’s Writing (2011), and co-editor with Anna M. Klobucka of Gender, Empire and Postcolony: Luso-Afro-Brazilian Intersections (2014). She works on feminism, gender and post-colonial theory in Portuguese and Lusophone African literatures and film. Natália Pinazza is an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London. She holds a PhD and MA from the University of Bath and a BA from the University of São Paulo. She undertook a UNESCO fellowship at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr Pinazza’s previous publications include Journeys in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema: Road Films in a Global Era (2014), World Cinema Directory: Brazil (2014) and World Film Locations: São Paulo (2013). She has published in journals such as the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and Alphaville: Journal of Media and Film Studies. Luís Trindade teaches Portuguese Culture and History at Birkbeck, University of London. His most recent book is Narratives in Motion: Journalism and Modernist Events in 1920s Portugal (2016). He has also edited The Making xix

Contributors of Modern Portugal (2013) and has published on the histories of Portuguese nationalism and Marxism, Portuguese cinema, the Carnation Revolution, and the history of mass culture in twentieth-century Portugal. He is currently based in Lisbon, where he is doing research on the history of audiovisual culture in Portugal from the 1950s to the 1980s. Ginette Vincendeau is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London and a regular contributor to Sight and Sound. Among her books are Pépé le Moko (1998), Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (2000), Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris (2003), La Haine (2005) and Brigitte Bardot (2013). She co-edited The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (with Peter Graham, 2009), and with Alastair Phillips, A Companion to Jean Renoir (2013) and Paris in the Cinema: Beyond the Flâneur (2017).

xx

Introduction: Framing the Global Appeal of Contemporary Portuguese Cinema Mariana Liz

This book offers an overview of the Portuguese film landscape of the past four decades, placing key filmmakers and cinematic works in relation to their industrial, historical and cultural contexts. To start an examination of contemporary Portuguese cinema in the mid-1970s means analysing Portugal as a recent democracy and former colonizer, taking the revolution of 25 April 1974 as a foundational moment for the nation and its place within a new global order. It also involves a departure from a focus on the modernist impulse of the 1960s new waves, and the adoption of an approach that charts the development of new forms of authorship and alternative cinematic formats in the digital era, accompanied by the surge of new strategies for film production, distribution and exhibition prompted by the expansion of the European integration process. Central issues in contemporary Portuguese cinema include the proliferation of film festivals and their role in the creation of national and international cinema labels; the ongoing tension between art and popular cinema, particularly within the context of marginal European cinemas and the so-called ‘cinemas of small nations’; and the relevance of transnational frameworks of analysis for an understanding of national cinemas in an increasingly globalized world. Addressing topics that are relevant for

1

Portugal’s Global Cinema other global cinemas, Portugal's Global Cinema explores the international meaning of contemporary Portuguese film, looking at how it positions itself beyond national borders. This volume shows that contemporary Portuguese cinema is a particularly useful case study to examine the way in which small nations become visible in international markets and cultural flows. On the one hand, Portuguese cinema seeks international exposure without giving in to the flattening of globalization. On the other, it departs from an internationalization model, which presupposes the existence of a strong national identity in increasingly transnational contexts, by challenging the importance of the nation.

Portuguese cinema on the international stage Filmmakers including Pedro Costa, Miguel Gomes and João Pedro Rodrigues have in recent years become household names for film festival, art-house theatres and cinephile audiences. The first major international retrospective of Costa’s work took place at the Tate Modern in London in 2009. Introduced by the daily Guardian as ‘the Samuel Beckett of world cinema’ (Bradshaw 2009), in allusion to his work’s austere style and his stern public persona, Costa has been acclaimed worldwide as a cult and unique contemporary director. His films have been screened and discussed across the globe, from Japan to the USA, and have been awarded important prizes at the Cinéma du Réel and the Cannes film festivals, in Munich, Yamagata and Los Angeles. Gomes, renowned for escapist musical fantasies such as Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto/Our Beloved Month of August (2008), received the Alfred Bauer award at the Berlin Film Festival for the Luso-Brazilian co-production Tabu in 2012. While Tabu features in a recent poll on the twenty-first century’s 100 best films (BBC 2016), Gomes’s latest production, the As Mil e Uma Noites/ Arabian Nights (2015) trilogy, has been hailed by critics in Europe and beyond as ‘an astonishing … movie epic’ (Jenkins 2016), ‘constantly surprising and mutable, [and] hugely entertaining’ (Romney 2015). Finally, Rodrigues, nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival with his fi rst feature film O Fantasma/The Phantom (2000), has seen his work recognized in the 2016 edition of the Locarno Film Festival, where he won an award for Best Director with O Ornitólogo/The Ornithologist (2016). 2

Introduction Although Portuguese women filmmakers have been less visible, we should add to this list Margarida Cardoso, Teresa Villaverde and Leonor Teles – the latter the youngest director ever to win a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, for her short film Balada de um Batráquio/Batrachian’s Ballad (2016)  – among others. This is but a brief listing of some of the most prominent contemporary Portuguese filmmakers and their achievements; it testifies nonetheless to the international success of contemporary Portuguese films, which have been screened and recognized abroad more often and in larger numbers than in previous decades. To say that Portuguese cinema has become more visible abroad does not necessarily mean that it has become more important. In fact, a polemical piece in the online daily Observador has launched a debate about how (in)significant Portuguese cinema really is on the international stage (Graça 2016). Dismissing reports in Portuguese newspapers that told of the ‘huge’ presence of Portuguese cinema in the 2016 edition of the Berlin Film Festival, the infamous article by André Rui Graça claimed that even though this might have been the highest number of Portuguese productions ever (eight) in an A-list festival, this was not much when we consider the total number of films screened at Berlin (circa 380), or indeed when compared to those originating from other nations. The article was bombarded with negative comments and a series of pieces refuting it were published on traditional and social media. Portuguese audiovisual industry professionals reacted angrily to Graça’s argument, claiming that the presence of those eight films in Berlin was an undeniable positive sign for Portugal’s film industry (Leonor Teles would receive her Golden Bear the day after the article was published). Filmmakers, producers, actors and technicians also argued this was an unnecessary attack on a cinema that was de facto gathering increasing critical attention beyond national borders, and that, because it is increasingly reliant on international funding mechanisms and global distribution and exhibition networks, clearly benefits from being prominently shown in events such as the Berlin Film Festival. Faits divers such as this one are illustrative of the public discussion around the international status of Portuguese film. On the one hand, it remains true that Portugal produces a very small number of films, that not 3

Portugal’s Global Cinema all of these reach cinema audiences, in Portugal or abroad, and that even the ‘successes’ listed at the start of this introduction are seen by a very reduced number of viewers, often in particular conditions and circuits, such as film festivals. On the other, even if this international visibility is limited, or only reported in the national press (which, as the reviews cited at the start of this introduction show, is not entirely the case), it still carries important consequences for the understanding and status of Portuguese cinema. As the response of cinema professionals to the piece in Observador testifies, Portuguese cinema is often understood as a struggling art form and industry. This might account for the (supposedly) augmented press reports that Graça disparages in his piece. The examples listed previously are even more meaningful when the marginal industrial and cultural position of Portuguese film in a global context is taken into account. The most recent awards are prime examples of this duality, as they are only important for some (those interested in Portuguese culture, cinema, or art cinema more generally), but extremely important for those involved (those working in Portuguese culture and cinema, as well as international film critics and cinephiles following art cinema). This importance is magnified because, while historically associated with the notion of crisis (see for instance Traquina 1994), these awards come at a time when Portuguese cinema is in a particularly vulnerable state. One of the countries hit the hardest by the euro-zone debt crisis starting in 2008, Portugal saw its audiovisual market shrink dramatically ever since. 2012 was labelled the ‘year zero’ of Portuguese cinema, as for the first time since the 1970s zero funds were attributed to the film sector (cf. Kourelou et al 2014). International attention, despite the crisis, is what one festival called ‘the Portuguese cinematic miracle’ (BIEFF 2013). Celebrated Portuguese auteurs (including the late Manoel de Oliveira) had received important prizes before, but not in such large numbers, nor against such a dire financial panorama.

Cinema of small nations: between globalization and internationalization Struggle, survival and resistance are key terms for the study of contemporary Portuguese film. They are also central to the definition of the ‘cinema of small nations’ – a particularly productive framework to understand 4

Introduction contemporary Portuguese cinema. On the one hand, Portugal follows most of the criteria Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie (2007) list as characterizing ‘small nations’, including having a limited geographical area (92,391 km2), population (c. 10 million inhabitants) and internal market; low GDP; and limited influence in the world, which leads it to seek partnerships with other nations – within Europe, as a member of the European Union (EU), and globally, with former colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. On the other hand, Portugal deviates from the notion of ‘small nation’ as, despite having been under the ruling of others (namely, Spain), rather than being marked by a history of colonial dominance, Portugal is a former colonizer. This is a crucial issue to understand contemporary Portugal and its culture, and one that is revisited later in this introduction and addressed in several chapters in the book. This fact alone, however, does not make Portugal less of a ‘small nation’. In fact, the position of dependence Portugal has adopted towards former colonies, particularly Angola (see for instance Gatinois 2014), testifies to the extent to which, despite this ‘variation’ on the ‘small nation’ concept, Portugal is still a minor state on the global political order. To examine Portuguese cinema through the ‘small nation’ lens is to assume that producing films in Portugal is not only about making the most of the opportunities that arise from structural limitations, but also about engaging in consistent resistance to cultural homogeneity. Being the cinema of a small nation has consequences for the form and content of contemporary Portuguese film. As Hjort puts it, one of the key factors that allow small cinemas to thrive is the ‘widespread support for a philosophy of filmmaking that sees constraints as the basis for creativity’ (2010b). As several chapters discuss, many of the Portuguese filmmakers gaining international recognition in the past few years have privileged a cinematic language and style that do away with high production values, and often self-reflexively mirror the artisanal character of the filmmaking practiced. In addition, according to Hjort (2005), small nation cinemas try to ensure that ‘alternative imaginings’ of a new global order take hold, and thus tend to offer different views of neoliberal globalization. Contemporary Portuguese cinema has vividly reacted against austerity, with films and filmmakers denouncing the catastrophic effects of recently 5

Portugal’s Global Cinema implemented policies that have eroded the welfare state and destroyed social cohesion. For instance, Miguel Gomes’s Arabian Nights was based on stories the production team collected about the impact of the crisis in individuals and communities across Portugal.1 Similarly, Nuno Lopes dedicated the Best Actor award he received in Venice in September 2016, for his performance as a debt collector in the film São Jorge/Saint George (Marco Martins, 2016), to all those suffering the consequences of austerity2. Referencing the work of Peter J. Katzenstein, Hjort and Petrie (2007: 14)  insist on the importance of the distinct terms ‘globalization’ and ‘internationalization’ for an examination of contemporary small nations and their cinemas. Whereas globalization points to a flattening of cultural specificity (in the case of cinema, being generally synonymous with the dominant Hollywood model in industrial, narrative and aesthetic terms), internationalization acknowledges the growth and diversification of political, economic and cultural processes involving the engagement of the nation on a global stage, and suggests these processes preserve what is nationally specific. Hence, according to the latter framework, national cinemas engage with other (trans)national cinemas in order, for instance, to guarantee funding and distribution (the case of many co-productions in contemporary Portugal), but the resulting products (i.e. films) clearly express what is unique about their national culture. The Portuguese film examples presented so far point towards a reading of contemporary Portuguese film as an ‘internationalized’ cinematography, rather than a ‘globalized’ one. The films of Costa, Gomes and Rodrigues represent particular visions of Portugal, following a tradition that places art cinema as the guarantor of national specificity within at least the European context (see for instance Elsaesser 2005). However, recent years have also witnessed the emergence of a number of important Portuguese productions and co-productions in mainstream cinema, which aim for commercial success and wide visibility in Portugal and beyond. This is for instance the case of the biopic Amália (Carlos Coelho da Silva 2008). The film’s topic is undoubtedly national (the life of fado star and Portuguese national symbol Amália Rodrigues), but, as Anthony De Melo argues in Chapter 5, its language emulates what could be understood as ‘global’ cinematic speech (that of Hollywood melodrama). 6

Introduction Popular cinema does not always adopt the arguably uniform outlook that is attached to the aim of global visibility. In Chapter 6, for instance, Ginette Vincendeau claims that the Franco-Portuguese hit La Cage Dorée/ The Gilded Cage (2013) uses European cultural and cinematic codes to present clichés with a (more positive) cosmopolitan tone. Despite having a culturally translatable story and featuring universally relatable protagonists, The Gilded Cage clearly presents national (French and Portuguese) specificity. At the same time, even the supposedly ‘purely national’ art films of many of the directors examined in this book (Costa, Oliveira and Villaverde, among others) have, as several contributors show, increasingly tried to break free from the historical and seemingly inherent association with the nation that has defined Portuguese cinema. As Tiago Baptista (2010) argues, Portuguese cinema has been significantly more interested in realism since the early 1990s. The generation of filmmakers coming to prominence in this decade portrays people in Portugal not as Portuguese people, but as people; stories taking place in Portugal are featured on screen not as Portuguese stories, but as stories. Unlike in the films of the ‘Portuguese School’ of the 1980s which, many critics argue, were obsessed with exploring and representing Portugal and Portuguese national identity (see for instance Cunha 2013), in contemporary Portuguese cinema the nation is increasingly less important. The connection between contemporary Portuguese cinema and the history of filmmaking in Portugal that was so obviously present in the films of the 1980s has started to dwindle too: as Muñoz Fernández and Villarmea Álvarez (2015) argue, rather than referencing Portuguese films of previous eras, contemporary Portuguese cinema has been developing a lively dialogue with (old and new) cinemas from cultures across the globe.3 Portugal’s Global Cinema allows for a clearer understanding of contemporary Portuguese film by challenging seemingly obvious pairings (e.g. popular: global; art: international). In contemporary Portuguese cinema, many mainstream films aim for global standing but remain centred on the nation (and could therefore be perceived as ‘internationalized’), whereas growing numbers of art films vehemently reject globalization, but engage in a form of internationalization that eventually dismisses the nation (to 7

Portugal’s Global Cinema the extent that they can be understood as ‘globalized’ films). Hence, contemporary Portuguese cinema helps to rethink both terms: ‘globalization’ and ‘internationalization’. Testifying to the growing interest in this object of study is the expansion of publications about Portuguese cinema. Writings on Portuguese cinema are not only a key part of its international visibility (as the number of reviews and news items cited previously has shown), but also critically assess the global nature of Portuguese film. Adding to histories of Portuguese cinema (for instance, by Félix Ribeiro [1983], de Pina [1986] and da Costa [1991]), recent decades saw the publication of important dictionaries, encyclopedias and introductions of Portuguese film (Leitão Ramos [1989; 2005; 2012]; Grilo [2006]; Ferreira [2007]; Baptista [2008]; and Areal [2011a; 2011b]). Written in Portuguese, these map key films and directors, movements and stylistic features. Opportunities to publish on film and culture in Portugal are limited due to a volatile editorial market. Brazil has been an important outlet for books on Portuguese cinema, including overviews of Manoel de Oliveira’s work (Ferreira 2013b) and introductions to the history of Portuguese cinema (Cunha and Salles 2013). International visibility and interest in the wider academic community is also highlighted in books emerging on this topic in other European languages. Examples include, in Spanish (Villarmea Álvarez and Muñoz Fernández 2014), French (Murcia and Salado 2015) and German (Hagener and Kaiser 2016), volumes discussing Portugal’s status on the global art cinema stage, the work of Manoel de Oliveira and the films of Pedro Costa, respectively. The development of film studies in the Anglo-Saxon world and the growing attention to small and peripheral cinemas (Hjort 2005; Hjort and Petrie 2007; Hjort 2010b; Iordanova et  al 2010; Blankenship and Nagl 2015), as well as to issues including the transnational, globalization and world cinemas (Ezra and Rowden 2006; Durovicová and Newman 2010; Dennison 2013; Shaw 2013), have meant English-language publications on Portuguese cinema have emerged in recent years. The contemporary focus of this collection means it differs from those works looking at the history of Portuguese cinema (as for instance Vieira 2013).

8

Introduction Key English-language publications on contemporary Portuguese cinema have focused on internationally recognized auteurs, especially Manoel de Oliveira (Johnson 2007; Ferreira 2008). Portugal’s Global Cinema updates such discussions by framing the work of Oliveira and other contemporary directors in relation to debates about the meaning of the nation and national cinema within the developing phenomena of globalization and internationalization. Aiming to offer a truly comprehensive view of contemporary Portuguese cinema, this collection brings together chapters on auteur and popular Portuguese films. Examples of the latter (including A Canção de Lisboa/Song of Lisbon [José Cottinelli Telmo, 1933]) have been discussed in essays featured in previously published edited collections, namely The Cinema of Spain and Portugal (Mira 2005) and Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema (Shaw and Stone 2012). However, there is scope for further and more detailed analyses of contemporary popular films made in Portugal. Furthermore, these volumes examine Portuguese cinema side by side with Spanish cinema and in relation to the Ibero-American context, whereas Portugal’s Global Cinema is focused on Portugal, avoiding direct comparisons to any specific nation. Similarly, Portugal’s Global Cinema distinguishes itself from works focused on the identity and culture of the Portuguese-speaking world (Ferreira 2012; Owen and Klobucka 2014; Rêgo and Brasileiro 2014). Although, as this volume will show, an examination of contemporary Portuguese cinema cannot escape issues to do with Europeanization and indeed post-colonialism, this collection analyses films from Portugal only. The chapters in Portugal’s Global Cinema focus on a new generation of filmmakers who have a new vision and understanding of Portugal and (Portuguese) cinema. This is therefore a timely volume, which examines key films and directors (Our Beloved Month of August, Tabu, Casa de Lava/ Down to Earth [Pedro Costa,  1994]; Oliveira, Gomes and Costa) alongside lesser-known case studies (Amália, The Gilded Cage and documentary films such as Linha Vermelha/Red Line [José Filipe Costa, 2012]), and analyses them by focusing on essential concepts for the contemporary era, including small nations, globalization and internationalization.

9

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Key issues in contemporary Portuguese cinema The cinema of small nations is often political, stylistically and/or in narrative terms, and contemporary Portuguese cinema is no exception. This volume begins with an analysis of Red Line. Luís Trindade discusses, in Chapter 1, the different ways in which cinema remembers and has represented the 25 April 1974 revolution, a major moment in the political history of the country. By reminding us that historical episodes, even if ‘real’ or ‘realistic’, are necessarily dramatized, and therefore told through a specific angle, Trindade pinpoints the importance of ‘authenticity’, which emerges as a key concept in contemporary Portuguese film. The idea of ‘authenticity’ is also central to Chapter 2, in which Rui Gonçalves Miranda draws on the work of Jacques Rancière to offer a detailed analysis of Our Beloved Month of August and discuss the way in which the film engages with and at the same time shapes ‘real’ characters and situations. What both Trindade and Miranda show is that, by making such choices, Portuguese filmmakers not only capture political realities, but also make political films. Portuguese cinema’s political character has been a key factor in its internationalization, and as such is a major issue in this volume. In Chapter 3, Randal Johnson argues that the cinema of Manoel de Oliveira should also be read as political. Johnson discusses Oliveira’s resistance to commercial conceptions of filmmaking, considers his modernist cinematic language and aesthetic choices in detail, and examines films from different phases in Oliveira’s long career. Until his death at 106 years old in 2015, Manoel de Oliveira was the most international and the most important filmmaker in Portuguese cinema. Despite directing his first film, Douro, Faina Fluvial/Labour on the Douro River in 1931, Oliveira only stepped into the international limelight in the 1980s. In 1985, he received an honorary Golden Lion for his career at the Venice Film Festival – a prize he was awarded again in 2004. Oliveira was an incredibly prolific and original filmmaker. As the most prominent Portuguese director, active throughout the twentieth century and into the 2000s, Oliveira was a true ambassador of the nation and its culture, and is a key reference to understand the internationalization of contemporary Portuguese film. In Chapter 4, Carolin Overhoff Ferreira explores the connection between intimacy and global relevance in

10

Introduction Oliveira’s work, by studying what she defines as the director’s ‘universalist method’. Oliveira’s cinema, as Portuguese cinema more generally, tends to be a cinema of scales, where the private, national and transnational are always somehow visible and simultaneously challenged, represented but called into question. The probing of how the nation relates to other spheres of identification is common to several chapters in Portugal’s Global Cinema. Chapters 5 and 6, as noted above, question the different ways in which popular film projects a global vision of Portugal. Discussing the place of Amália in the global film industry, De Melo turns to the history of Portuguese film. On the one hand, Amália seems to replicate Portuguese popular comedies of the 1940s. On the other, it wishes to align with international trends of commercial authorship, and as such references the 1960s, when Portuguese cinema, inspired by different ‘new waves’, developed its own Cinema Novo (De Melo 2009). European cinema is an important reference for Portuguese filmmakers. Similarly, Europe remains a positive point of identification in contemporary Portugal. This is despite the euro-zone debt crisis and growing political opposition to the EU.4 For instance, as Vincendeau shows in Chapter 6, throughout the course of The Gilded Cage, the film’s protagonists stop being migrants to become cosmopolitan citizens, who are no longer Portuguese, but significantly, European. Portugal’s positive transformation through the rapprochement to Europe is also examined in Chapter 7. Mariana Liz discusses the European Capital of Culture initiative and, analysing Lisbon Story (Wim Wenders, 1994)  and Porto da Minha Infância/Porto of My Childhood (Manoel de Oliveira, 2001) – films produced to commemorate the status of Lisbon and Porto as ‘European capitals of culture’ – argues that Portugal’s Europeanization has as much to do with democracy and modernity as it does with tourism and cultural heritage. By probing the connection between Portuguese and European identity, Chapters 6 and 7 highlight the paradoxical status of contemporary Portugal and its cinema:  on the one hand, it seeks openness, international visibility and credibility; on the other, it aims to downplay the consequences of such openness, especially a supposed loss of specificity, cultural dilution and the commodification of values and ideas. 11

Portugal’s Global Cinema Chapter  8, by Nuno Barradas Jorge, continues the discussion about the ‘Europeanness’ of Portuguese cinema5 by investigating the production and financing strategies adopted by Pedro Costa. Jorge discusses the ways in which Costa’s approach to filmmaking is simultaneously close to and departs from European art cinema practices, and the extent to which the filmmaker has, in recent years, moved away from an industrial mode of production. The tensions inherent to the cinematic globalization of the nation are once again clearly visible. Although the chapter shows that Portuguese cinema has been increasingly integrated into global filmmaking practices, especially through the development of digital technology, it also discusses what is specific to Portuguese cinema, namely its artisanal character and industrial limitations. The films of Pedro Costa are also a major example of an ostensibly characteristic interest in ‘social realism’ in contemporary Portuguese cinema. As stated, Portuguese cinema has, since the 1990s, increasingly focused on issues including (un)employment, migration and social exclusion. Teresa Villaverde is often listed as one of the key filmmakers representative of this new Portuguese cinema. However, Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin show, in Chapter 9, that the social commitment of her cinema is more evident through style than through content. Characterized by ‘dysnarration’ (a term Álvarez López and Martin borrow from Alain RobbeGrillet), Villaverde’s films often refuse to tell a story, instead showing it in fragments. In her films, framing is also decentered, which visually intensifies ideas of exclusion and displacement. The concept of displacement is particularly helpful to illuminate the issue of the different scales being employed and challenged in contemporary Portuguese cinema. In Chapter 10, Michael Goddard analyses the work of Raúl Ruiz, particularly the films the Chilean director shot in Portugal. For Goddard, the last film Ruiz completed before his death, Mistérios de Lisboa/Mysteries of Lisbon (2010), highlights the same sense of displacement that has characterized many other Portuguese productions, and as such, while far from ‘social realist’ tendencies, can be seen as a pastiche of Portuguese film. The remaining chapters in this volume explore Portugal’s post-colonial status. Hilary Owen examines Pedro Costa’s Down to Earth in Chapter 11, 12

Introduction reflecting on the implications of bringing together race and gender in a film that displaces Portugal’s ‘bad conscience’ towards Cape Verde, a Portuguese former colony. The inability of contemporary Portuguese cinema to engage with the colonial period is also explored by Paul Melo e Castro in Chapter 12. Discussing Fernando Vendrell’s O Gotejar da Luz/ Light Drops (2002), Melo e Castro argues that contemporary Portuguese cinema is not yet sufficiently committed to exploring the trauma of colonialism. For Melo e Castro, a truly Portuguese post-colonial cinema has not yet taken hold. In his conclusion, Melo e Castro points towards the melancholic, even nostalgic tone of Tabu, as an example of the limited postcolonial questioning of contemporary Portuguese film. In the following chapter, Lúcia Nagib addresses Melo e Castro’s question about whether Tabu is a post-colonialist film  – and agrees that it is not.6 Drawing on the work of Alain Badiou, Nagib returns to the issue of authenticity discussed at the start of the volume. As Nagib argues, Tabu is a contradictory film: on the one hand, it denies history (representing the ‘atmosphere’ of colonialism, rather than colonialism itself); on the other, it is considerably realist, yet it is not grounded in material reality as much as it is grounded on the reality of the cinematic medium. Tabu is also one of the films discussed by Natália Pinazza in Chapter 14. Examining the recent history of funding mechanisms and bilateral agreements between Portugal and Brazil, Pinazza challenges mainstream notions of ‘European’ and ‘Latin American’ cinema. With reference to films such as Yvone Kane (Margarida Cardoso, 2014) and A Primeira Missa ou Tristes Tropeços, Enganos e Urucum (Ana Carolina, 2014), the final chapter in this volume investigates Portugal and Brazil’s strategies for globalization and internationalization. Portugal’s Global Cinema explores the role played by film in positioning Portugal beyond national borders. Since it is inherently transnational, cinema is a privileged medium for the questioning and projection of cultural visions. As this volume shows, contemporary Portuguese cinema is a cinema of scales, in which the national is increasingly less important, but the international, while gaining currency, is not just taken for granted. The diversity of films, filmmakers and genres examined in this volume testifies to the vitality of Portuguese cinema – a singular case study within global cinemas of the contemporary era. 13

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Notes 1. The stories were collected by journalists during the film’s pre-production stage and are available online on the film’s website: http://www.as1001noites.com/en/ reality/ (accessed 13 September 2016). 2. Lopes’s acceptance speech is available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xNufcZyi6Sw (accessed 15 September 2016). 3. For a discussion of contemporary Portuguese cinema and cinephilia see also Faulkner (2015) on Miguel Gomes’s Tabu (2012). 4. The 2015 Eurobarometer standard survey (Eurobarometer 84)  shows that 72 per cent of Portuguese citizens consider themselves to be European citizens. This is significantly higher than the European (EU-28) average: 64 per cent. It also constitutes an increase in national terms: only 58 per cent of Portuguese citizens saw themselves as European citizens in 2013. The Eurobarometer surveys reports are online. Available at http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/ PublicOpinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/STANDARD/ yearFrom/1974/yearTo/2015/surveyKy/2098 (accessed 19 September 2016). 5. For more on the meaning of ‘Europeanness’ in cinema, see Harrod et al 2015. 6. A similar point was made by Margarida Cardoso in the ‘Portuguese Film: Colony, Postcolony, Memory’ symposium, which took place in London in January 2016; see Faulkner and Liz 2016b.

14

1 Filming Narratives Becoming Events: Documentary and the ‘Emplotments’ of the Carnation Revolution Luís Trindade

This chapter analyses the ways in which documentary film engaged with the 1974–75 Carnation Revolution in Portugal through both the direct involvement of filmmakers in the events and in more recent efforts to critically revisit the militant images shot at the time. Whereas the former has led to the creation of important documents for the history of this political event and of the forms of activism (political and aesthetic) that pervaded it, the latter constitute good opportunities to question the role of documentary film in the social memory of the revolution. These films go well beyond a mere representation, or commentary, of the event. In fact, they contribute to the event’s ‘emplotment’, a concept Hayden White (1987) uses to ground historical knowledge in narrative forms, thus establishing a close relationship not only between historiography and literature, but also between all kinds of fictional and non-fictional narratives. In this sense, the chapter’s main argument is that even in self-reflexive films, as the ones we are discussing, the ways in which the event presented itself dramatically had a decisive impact in the forms films dramatized the Revolution by giving it a plot. In other words, even when filmmakers positioned themselves critically in relation to the revolutionary process, the latter’s development 15

Portugal’s Global Cinema played a constitutive role in the final structure of the narratives. But before discussing these films and their impact on history and memory, it is useful to discuss how complex the Carnation Revolution really was, in order to then be able to assess how its complexity represented a challenge to both historical and filmic narratives.

Narratives of the Carnation Revolution: an introduction The military coup of 25 April 1974 was highly unexpected. Not only did the regime seem to have been taken by surprise, the people came out to the streets not knowing what to anticipate. As soon as the movement of the captains (Movimento das Forças Armadas, from here on, MFA) made public its very limited programme  – the end of the dictatorship and of the colonial wars in Africa – a bond was immediately established among improbable allies: the soldiers and the crowd, as well as several political forces which, in normal circumstances, would stand in opposition to each other. In this atmosphere, during the first couple of months after the coup, the country experienced what many describe as a honeymoon period: a consensus over the end of 48 years of authoritarianism and 13 years of war. Political activity was intense, but the spirit was celebratory and fraternal. Over the summer, however, the mood started to change. The captains’ minimal programme started to be perceived as too broad, and the initial consensus hid important disagreements over key aspects of the process. Gradually, two political lines, clearly defined against each other, started to form:  the designated president, general Spínola, and his military and political entourage, on the one hand, and the MFA, on the other. At stake was the issue of decolonization and the different solutions to be found after the cease-fire in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. Whereas the captains seemed, in their majority, to favour the full independence of the colonies, the old general championed a transcontinental federation, or what he envisaged as a Portuguesespeaking Commonwealth. The revolution, in this initial context, had two heads and two voices. 16

Filming Narratives Becoming Events This mounting tension would come to a closure on 28 September 1974:  the president precipitated the confrontation by calling a demonstration in Lisbon with what he defined as the ‘silent majority’ of the Portuguese population – an initiative the MFA took as a covered countercoup, blocking the access to the capital, and forcing Spínola to resign and leave the country. From then on, the general would continue to act as a hidden player, conspiring from the outside. Meanwhile, the political situation was becoming more complex, as economic and social issues would soon add to the colonial question as sites of struggle. At the same time, however, the ideologies in contention were becoming better defined. From a contention between a conservative general and a group of inexperienced young captains – both with hidden and/ or undetermined political agendas – the split was now, and increasingly so, between communists and their model of socialism, on the one hand, and social-democrats (even if these called themselves socialists too) in favour of Europeanization and parliamentary democracy, on the other. The second important moment of clarification came, once again, as the result of a period of mounting tension and by the hand of general Spínola: on 11 March 1975, ‘Spínolist’ parachutists flew over Lisbon and tried to topple the revolutionary government. The coup was however soon dismantled and more radical groups involved in the process, including the Communist Party and the most ‘progressive’ members of the MFA, gained the upper hand. Only a few days after these events, the banks and other key sectors of the economy were nationalized and the country semi-officially started a path towards socialism. It was the beginning of PREC, the Processo Revolucionário em Curso (literally translated as the ‘ongoing revolutionary process’). Meanwhile, the MFA had committed itself to elections to the constituent assembly, symbolically scheduled for 25 April 1975 – the first anniversary of the revolution. The victory of the moderate forces (socialists and popular democrats) over the communists and the far left, however, complicated the situation further. Not only was the revolution divided between two opposing legitimacies – the majority in parliament and the government of General Vasco Gonçalves, close to the Communist Party – but also, and even more dramatically, those same divisions were projected onto the MFA, which, from then on, became a broken army. 17

Portugal’s Global Cinema This was the situation during the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975. While, in Africa, new countries started celebrating their independence (Mozambique in June, Angola in November), Portugal was in turmoil:  in parallel with mounting tension on the streets, the occupation of houses, land estates and factories, contention between reformist social democrats and revolutionary communists spread from parties to the government and split the MFA into two increasingly incompatible sides. Events succeeded vertiginously and the order of political institutions was challenged to the limit, sometimes with dangerous consequences, other times leading to bizarre events: the siege of parliament by construction workers is a good example, as are the episodes in which the government went on strike or decided to bomb the transmitter of a Catholic radio broadcaster, which was occupied by workers. The country seemed on the verge of civil war and, in fact, events precipitated on 25 November 1975. In what remains a very confusing episode, an act of provocation by the conservative forces of the MFA led some radical officers to occupy strategic targets in Lisbon. The conservatives, well prepared, as if waiting for the first opportunity, responded vigorously. The radicals, weakened by the decision of the Communist Party not to intervene (or allow its units to do so), were easily dismantled. Meanwhile, on TV, a leading figure of the moderate MFA, Ernesto Melo Antunes, declared the Communist Party ‘fundamental’ to the future of Portuguese democracy. This was a compromise that, by removing the most radical officers (and their socialist project) paved the way for parliamentary democracy, including the communists in the new regime and thus avoiding what would probably become a civil war. It could be argued that the most relevant aspect of the narrative I have just told is the way in which it struggles with both the frenetic succession of events and the multiplicity of protagonists involved. What I have presented so far is an effort to reproduce the most familiar, although not necessarily neutral, account of the PREC (cf. Rezola 2007). The weight given to some episodes and characters or the terminology used may differ whether one adopts a more reformist or a more revolutionary perspective. What I mean by a familiar account of the PREC, however, does not depend on political interpretation, but rather on its historical meaning. 18

Filming Narratives Becoming Events What is familiar, then, is this idea that the revolution was frantic, exhilarating or frightening, but always somehow excessive. Frenzy, or excess, is thus what makes the narrative so challenging, with so many protagonists and episodes populating one single plot. Among the protagonists we find:  Spínola and his nemesis, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, as well as the other key officers involved, president Costa Gomes, prime-ministers Vasco Gonçalves and Pinheiro de Azevedo, well known members of the MFA like Melo Antunes, not to mention all the politicians representing the most important political forces, like the communist and socialist leaders Álvaro Cunhal and Mário Soares. And then, the dates and events: 25 April 1974, 28 September 1974, 11 March 1975, 25 April 1975, the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975 and 25 November 1975. Despite this proliferation of figures and events and the narrative challenges they pose, one may wonder what this same narrative would look like without them. For it may actually be the case that these people and what they represent, these moments and what they mean, work as a metonymy for much broader phenomena; they are narrative crutches that allow us to make some sense of the very complex whole that is the Carnation Revolution. In other words, despite the hectic narrative they compose, these names and dates may hide an even bigger multiplicity of events and protagonists. With all its profusion of facts, my initial narrative may, after all, be seen as a simplification. For successive generations of Portuguese people, this simplification was mainly experienced through the broadcast of brief five-minute summaries encapsulating the whole of the revolutionary process, year after year, on national TV on the occasion of the anniversary of the 25 April. The journalistic rhythm imposed on the short piece, just as the short narrative summarizing the whole revolution, necessarily selects one dimension and leaves out other important aspects of the historical event. It is not only that a proper articulation of the process would require a slower pace, but also that given the historical specificity of the PREC, the confinement of its history to a linear narrative is in itself a choice that leaves out important elements. In other words, more than a narrative with more names and dates (or other names and dates), a proper narrative of the Carnation Revolution would probably have to stand without identifiable particular events and individual protagonists altogether. 19

Portugal’s Global Cinema This is my key argument: as a restricted aspect of the PREC, the political and military protagonists and the important dates are truly just the tip of the iceberg of something much more intense and widely participated. I  am of course referring to the vast grassroots activism that is usually ignored, or only very superficially mentioned in the histories of the revolution, starting with my own initial narrative: the mounting tension on the streets, the occupation of houses, land and factories, that is, the generalized challenge to private property and capitalism that made such an impression on those who witnessed the revolution at the time.1 The PREC, from this perspective, would be less the institutional process of politicians, militaries and political turning points, and more of a massive and constant collective participation, impossible to quantify and with no distinctive protagonists; forms of activism unfolding in the everyday, with no easily identifiable chronological markers or breaks. More than a question of numbers or even rhythm, what historical narratives find difficult to come to terms with, is the account of the depth and intensity of such a sudden transformation in Portuguese society. Depth and intensity, here, can only be truly measured against its own historical background, that of a country that seemed lost to twentieth-century history and of a society perceived as immobile. To put it very bluntly, the PREC seems to require a narrative-shock enabling us to tell the history of a social eruption that tried to carry out in only 18 months political transformations that had been on hold for 48 years (which also brings us back to the ways in which the dramatic presentation of the event constituted a challenge to filmmakers and other narrators, as mentioned in the introduction). I am aware of how schematic this temporal quantification is. Chronologically, 48 years and 18 months are of course incommensurable. Yet, in terms of the narrative, one is entitled to ask what impact a five-minute TV summary, or a brief written introduction such as this one, has on the historical perception of an event as participated and as intense as the PREC. To start with, it necessarily dramatizes it, as my initial pages demonstrate. It is often said that the revolution resembled a film. It was, in fact, the object of many spectacular films (see Costa 2002): it had a plot filled with sudden shifts and uncertain outcomes; protagonists, both heroes and anti-heroes; dramatic settings; moments of humour; violence and emotion. But what we 20

Filming Narratives Becoming Events should be asking is whether the PREC was filmic because it had drama, plot or protagonists, or because drama, plot and protagonists were the easiest forms film found to narrate the PREC. The answer is both. The documentary films narrating the revolution would not have been able to become the figuration of this event if the elements of the narrative were not somehow in the actual event in the first place. Conversely, however, we are entitled to suspect that what became the dominant narrative representing the revolution, and thus the ways in which the latter was historicized and appropriated by social memory, was precisely the combination of those aspects of the event that lend themselves more effectively to filmic representation: dramatic events and protagonists. In what follows, I will start by discussing two recent documentary films that try to grasp some of the challenges posed to filmmakers in 1974–75, before moving, in the last section, to a close analysis of two of the most relevant films made during that period.

Scenes from the class struggle in Portugal José Filipe Costa critiques these filmic narratives in his meta-documentary Linha Vermelha/Red Line (2012), where the impact and making of Thomas Harlan’s Torre Bela (1977), one of the most emblematic films ever made about the PREC, are closely analysed (see Baptista 2015). In Red Line, Costa explores the twofold relationship between revolutionary events and militant cinema – a good example of the PREC as a historical challenge to filmmakers and, simultaneously, their films as a historical ‘emplotment’ (White 1987) of the PREC – by looking in detail at the ways in which Harlan, filming a very specific episode (a case study, one might say: the occupation of a large aristocratic landed-estate by peasants and the following creation of a cooperative) interfered in the course of events by triggering actions, inventing protagonists and thus dramatizing the whole story of the occupation. Harlan’s problem – the specific challenge posed to his film by the form of the event – was to do with the routines of the cooperative: in between the more dramatic, but infrequent, moments of actual occupation, discussions, assemblies, etc., not much happened. As such, what went on in the estate during the occupation – the 21

Portugal’s Global Cinema repetitive, dull, tasks of rural life  – did not constitute the matter of a good plot. Costa does all he can to emphasize the distance between his own film and Harlan’s, not only by historicizing it – namely by confronting the utopian drive behind the occupation with an utterly apolitical present – but especially by disclosing the procedures of his own work in research, shooting and editing: the voiceover directly addresses the figure of Harlan, the presence of Red Line’s camera (and microphone) is given away more than once, and the editing table and both films’ reels are allowed to become protagonists in their own right (see Figure 1.1). What Costa is most concerned with, however, is the deconstruction of Harlan’s own work procedures and ethos. It is particularly interesting to notice how Red Line’s reflexivity contrasts with the transparent relation Thomas Harlan tried to establish between Torre Bela, the film, and the occupation of the eponymous property. In this sense, Costa unveils how Wilson, one of the squatters, was chosen as the film’s protagonist. He

Figure 1.1 Red Line: critical visions of Torre Bela

22

Filming Narratives Becoming Events also exposes the staged character of a very dramatic sequence that would eventually become decisive to the film’s international recognition, and is reminiscent of Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana (1961), when the members of the cooperative enter the manor house and ‘discover’ the luxurious lifestyle of their former employers. The narrative categories used by Costa in his deconstruction work seem more suitable to fiction. In Red Line, we can see Torre Bela’s film editor Roberto Perpignani speaking of the ‘rhetoric’ and the ‘acting’ of Wilson, whereas Wilson himself confesses his life dream of becoming an actor (an aspiration cherished by Harlan, who had recognized his talent in front of the camera). The occupation of the house, on the other hand, is analysed in Red Line through its mise-en-scène and the manipulative effect of the camera within the event. In an article that can be read as a supplement to the film, Costa’s argument becomes more nuanced. The article’s title, ‘When Cinema Forges the Event’, does not in fact do justice to the subtlety with which Costa proceeds with the re-evaluation of Torre Bela as a staged film, allowing the isolated event to become part of a wider struggle in the context of the Portuguese Revolution. What Harlan does, then, with his ‘manipulation’, is to endow what was already an event pervaded by speech and narrative with a filmic articulation. As Costa puts it: ‘Harlan has suggested that his film is woven around language as it is conquered and seized by a group of people who, in so doing, create new relations of power and sociability to cement a new community’ (2011: 107). Torre Bela’s interference, in this context, ceases to be an external imposition on the event, to become a sort of collaboration, exposing but also giving visibility to the ‘difficulties and dissonances [at work in the event] without these being domesticated and integrated in a framework of linear political interpretation’ (Costa 2011: 111). In short, the singularity of the occupation of Torre Bela allowed Thomas Harlan to get involved in the event, while his camera, more than a protagonist in the occupation, was what allowed squatters to ‘communicate’ their struggle beyond the landedestate, to the rest of the Portuguese revolutionary process and ultimately to the broader history of class struggle. In the same article, Costa uses this proximity to draw a distinction between Torre Bela and other documentary films of the Carnation Revolution 23

Portugal’s Global Cinema where, rather than the focus on a specific episode or the close involvement with an event, what we are given is a pre-established narrative (what Costa refers to as ‘expository units’) submitting particular events to the wider political and military history of the PREC. In short, what seems to be suggested here is a distinction, within the corpus of documentary films on the Carnation Revolution, between those ‘dramatic’ narratives that became involved in events – at the risk of interfering, or even ‘forging’, its occurrence – and more detached approaches to the revolutionary process, in which pre-given narratives (and ideologies) would necessarily prescribe the meaning of events in advance (Costa 2007: 109). In Outro País/Another Country (Sérgio Tréfaut, 2000), another documentary film about the documentary films made during the PREC, this time from the perspective of foreign filmmakers and photographers travelling to Portugal in 1974 and 1975, the origins and risks of these ‘expository’ narratives become very apparent. Another Country reflects less about film technique and the aesthetic and ideological problems posed by the relation between cinema and revolution than Red Line. Its aim is rather concerned with historical memory and in particular the urgency of collecting and archiving the immense corpus of images of the Carnation Revolution captured by foreign filmmakers and photographers. Most of these filmmakers and photographers came to Portugal searching for a unique opportunity to participate in a revolution. In the aftermath of the political engagement of the 1960s, and in particular with the defeat of the different forms of rebellion around 1968, the PREC was seen by many as a last chance to become involved in this type of event. The motivations for this could be more strategic or personal, but were always deeply political. Swedish TV director Pea Holquist claims in Tréfaut’s film that he came because ‘these people were doing something’ that he only knew from history books (about the Spanish Civil War, for instance). The story behind the production of Setúbal, Ville Rouge (Daniel Edinger and Michel Lequenne, 1976) is even more telling: as also told in Tréfaut’s film, after careful planning on the form of participating in the revolution, the French Trotskyists of LCI (Ligue Communiste Internationale) eventually sent a film crew to make a film for international distribution.2 Harlan himself, in an interview to Another Country, also recognized that Torre Bela 24

Filming Narratives Becoming Events was part of a wider movement to show the PREC outside of Portugal and hopefully inspire political struggles elsewhere. The combination of political expectations (individual or collective) and the role these documentary films played in wider forms of political activism raises two main questions. On the one hand, these productions were instrumentally submitted to the strategic aims of political organizations. From the choice of topics (usually some grassroots form of activism) to aesthetics options (i.e. ‘direct cinema’ style and the use of voiceover), these films were invariably subsumed by political ideologies. However, on the other hand, these political ideologies themselves can be seen as a constitutive part of a long-lasting and worldwide political culture – that of communism and revolutionary traditions – that to a large extent permeated the forms of political struggle in the Carnation Revolution in the first place.3 In this sense, some of the films trying to give the broad picture of the PREC – by glancing over the different aspects of the struggle and/or the whole chronology of the political process – may be seen as more than just prescriptive impositions from some pre-established ideology on the course of events, as the events and the people participating in them already saw themselves as the protagonists of wider radical traditions. It is thus fair to say that the problem Torre Bela raises is slightly different from the challenges presented by those films that went beyond the localized event – an aspect of the revolution, a specific moment, a specific place – and tried to encapsulate the whole of PREC within the temporal and narrative limits of the documentary form. These other films can be said to constitute a different category within the filmography of the Carnation Revolution. Their historical interest partly lies in the way in which they are closer to our initial narrative of the PREC, as syntheses of the whole revolutionary process. In some cases, like As Armas e o Povo (Colectivo de Trabalhadores da Actividade Cinematográfica, 1975), a collective film made in the first week after the 25 April 1974, the structure is heavily dependent of the political and military narratives of TV journalism. Other cases are more complex with regard to their filmic structure than these films in-between documentary cinema and TV journalism. Films like Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (Robert Kramer, 1977)4 and Bom Povo Português/The Good People of Portugal (Rui Simões, 25

Portugal’s Global Cinema 1981)5, for example, create a proper historical narrative by going beyond the emplotment of a specific event within the revolution and ultimately deploying the mechanisms of film language to simultaneously narrate and interpret, e.g. historicize, the revolution. Hence, after introducing the relation between film and revolution through films which have treated documentaries on the Revolution as historical sources – by reflecting on the filmic apparatus (Red Line) or historical memory (Another Country) – I will now turn to those films that more intensely engage with the historical process as such.

Revolution as narrative In both Kramer and Simões, the engagement with such a complex historical process involves a very intricate deployment of film techniques. Despite some important differences in their historical relation with the revolution – Scenes can be seen as an effort, by a North-American filmmaker, to insert the Portuguese Revolution in the international context of anti-imperialism; The Good People of Portugal as the coming to terms by the leftist director with his own defeat – both films follow the same basic strategy:  to establish a contrast between the standard narratives of the political-military process and of grassroots class struggle. This contrast is what opens the historical event to the innumerable agents involved in the process and in its temporal continuum (no dates, no protagonists) in a deliberate effort to make the narrative more heterogeneous, with both political and aesthetic consequences. The constant juxtaposition of forms of struggle – occupations, assemblies, demonstrations, interviews – with the chronology of political dates not only complicates the traditional narrative of a revolution made by politicians and the armed forces, it actually endows a background to the dramatic narrative of the political process, a context that ultimately explains its instability (the frenzy of our initial narrative). In other words, more than opening the revolution’s narrative to a different perspective, both films define it as class struggle, social mobilization and grassroots activism, of which the armed forces and politicians would be either facilitators or adversaries, but always second-degree agents. 26

Filming Narratives Becoming Events In these circumstances, it becomes very difficult to summarize the plot. We have two parallel lines in tension, the political-military process and the grassroots movement, sometimes collaborating in the development of the historical process, other times clashing with each other. Then there are all the other internal and external elements punctuating the narrative and affecting, when not indeed determining, its evolution. For instance, the films show the processes of African independence, especially in Angola and Mozambique, a determining factor in the emergence of the military movement and in the insertion of the revolution in the international context, as well as the significance of the rural north, permanently presented as still another country, and which is shown as an obstacle for a true national uprising, and indeed a setting for the counterrevolution, with the activism of the Catholic Church, the arson attacks against Communist headquarters and other forms of right-wing terrorism. All these conflicting players will eventually ally with the broader context, with both Western Europe and the USA making pressure for democratic ‘normalization’ and the suspension of the socialist revolution. Finally, and returning to the beginning of the narratives – which, as such, work as spirals, with the constant return to the same agents and struggles evolving chronologically in a process of increasing dramatization – the action of political parties and the divisions inside the armed forces are shown to be strongly conditioned by all these contradictory forces. The multiplicity of agents working in parallel suggests that montage was the only language able to render these stories. Both films, in this sense, are virtuoso exercises in editing. Sequences are permanently put in contrast, somehow juxtaposing negatively, either by developing a counter-narrative or directly deconstructing the plot of the master political history. But the range of resources used by both directors goes well beyond editing: the very diverse origins of footage (filmic and journalistic, colour and black and white, contemporary and archival, in good and bad condition) is apparent and becomes, in itself, an element of narrative instability. There are also interviews, photographs, intertitles, written documents and murals. Both films are thus visually elaborate, and the line of reasoning emerging from this intense exercise of montage is often convoluted. 27

Portugal’s Global Cinema And yet, despite this visual extravagancy, the most decisive way in which the narrative of the political-military history of the PREC is put under scrutiny is more easily seen in the films’ non-visual elements. In fact, both music and narration play decisive roles in the saturation of meaning. In The Good People of Portugal, for example, a vast range of musical traditions negotiate, non-diegetically, with the visual sequences, either by enhancing or breaking meaning. Narration is even more imposing, although it does not necessarily come as a compensation for any shortcoming in the visual aspects of both films. What it does is in a sense the opposite: rather than adding meaning, narration literally controls the radical openness of meaning conveyed by the images themselves. Either through the anti-imperialist pamphlet of Scenes, or the poetic lament of The Good People of Portugal, both texts situate those rebel images very rigorously in international politics and give them a stable place in history. I would like to explore the paradox of narration in these films a bit further – in between narrative interference in the historical event and the guarantee that the latter emerges in its full complexity – by focusing in more detail in two sequences (one from each film) that will hopefully allow me to illustrate the role of contrasting elements in narrative. My key point here will be that narration, despite the inevitable normative power exerted by the voiceover, does not necessarily make the narratives linear and less critical. On the contrary, although the texts indeed fix meaning, they do so in order to prevent the frantic narrative of the revolution as chaos, or excess, to come forth as a random succession of events. The anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and anti-American charge of Scenes, and the dramatic epitaph of The Good People of Portugal are acutely ideological. What this means is that they read the struggle politically, which not only situates the fi lms as participants in the events they narrate, but also grants the whole process a purpose: history, as a history of class struggle, is open rather than chaotic; the revolution is the moment when already existing contradictions come forth. The drama stems precisely from this openness to contradiction, as the expression of a precarious historical moment that is kept undetermined at least as long winners and losers are undecided and the narrative can finally come to a closure. 28

Filming Narratives Becoming Events The opening of Scenes and the moment when the closure of the narrative, and of the political process, is declared in The Good People of Portugal, show how these filmic narratives are completely immersed in history in a sense that goes well beyond ideological positions and political activism. For what they do is to absorb a narrative structure that was somehow already present in the event itself. In this sense, Scenes starts by establishing the film’s programme, its own context of production. But contrary to what one would expect from a film with radical ideas and a welldefined ideological world view, the text is tentative, presenting its making as a method, rather than a doctrine, and opening itself to an exploration of reality that coincides with the experimental visual aspects of the film. Portugal and the revolution are still absent from this initial sequence. All we see is just the film, that is, the planning and the makers: a typed page in a typewriter, photos of the directors, and a list where one can read different topics, many of them arranged in pairs, as if everything could only exist, or make sense, in its diversity and contradiction: ‘Events/History; Facts/ Principles; Actuality/Potentiality; Friends/Classes; Words/Images; Music; National Liberation; Proletariat; Potential; Love.’ The initial plan, it seems, was nothing but a commitment to history, the openness to an ongoing process and to the variety of materials, to the proliferation of discourses, an engagement and coming to terms with the singular nature of the historical event (cf. Brom 1976: 29–30). The parallel between the films’ plots and the historical event reaches its peak in the decisive moment of the narrative of The Good People of Portugal when, during the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975, the first signs of counterrevolution start to loom large. Two scenes mark this moment. In the first scene, Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves tries to convince his soldiers to keep their commitment to the revolutionary process. In the second, the dramatic voiceover – by José Mário Branco6 – declares that, because the revolution is heading to its conclusion, the film also has to end: Vasco Gonçalves: In my opinion, the historical experience we are living is a moment we can compare to 1820, to 1836, to 1910. Those were dates when promises of a better life opened up to the Portuguese people. And those promises were deceived.

29

Portugal’s Global Cinema Well now, it’s a duty of honour for the MFA and all other progressive and patriotic forces in our country not to allow that hope to be tarnished, so that this time we won’t lose our future. We need to be conscious of the moment we are living. This is a historical moment (…). We need to be conscious that, as the makers of our future, we know what steps have to be taken (…). Narrator (Jos é M á rio Branco): PS [the Socialist Party], in an anticommunist campaign, brings several classes together for the ideological, not class, struggle. Pinheiro de Azevedo [conservative prime minister, who replaced Vasco Gonçalves during the Summer of 1975] is sung, pamphleteered, used by PS. Nineteenth century overcoming the twentieth. This is the moment when the closure of the film is decided. The closure of this history, this movement. (my emphasis) Both sets of discourse show us how the film was the history of an event acutely aware of its place in history. With Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves encouraging his soldiers to make history, on the one hand, and the film establishing the closure of the social revolution – the revolution that would transform Portuguese society – at the moment of its political defeat, on the other, The Good People of Portugal (in this sense similar to Scenes) absorbs the event’s historicity and declares its closure as defeat. The explanations come next, in 20 long minutes of downfall:  we see the action of the Catholic Church and political terrorism in the conservative North, the return of African settlers, the re-emergence of police violence, the right-wing turn of the government and the armed forces. Mass political participation and the daily transformation of Portuguese society suddenly disappear, subsumed under the master chronology of political history. Interestingly, it can at this stage be suggested that it is precisely when the voiceover ceases to interfere that the films lose their ‘ability to say the situation, to fictionalize it’ (Rancière 2012: 21). In other words, in both Kramer and Simões, narration can be seen as what countered the master narrative of the revolution, opening space for alternative versions of the PREC to emerge and short-circuiting the power of dominant political and military history to stand on its own. 30

Filming Narratives Becoming Events Which brings us to our last question: where was the grassroots revolutionary process defeated? Was it in the revolutionary process or in these filmic narratives? In both, of course, but one is left wondering whether another narrative would have been possible, one more resistant to the political forms these films tried to criticize but to whose logic of power, breaks and protagonists they ended up submitting to. In other words, would it be possible to think of a narrative based on the continuities, permanence and deep change of the social movement? This was probably easier in those films focusing on localized events (but, as José Filipe Costa shows in relation to Torre Bela, even there the story ends in defeat). In the case of the wide syntheses of the revolutionary process like Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal and The Good People of Portugal, the task was more difficult. For if, on the one hand, these films managed to criticize the dominant history of the political-military process and our initial image of chaos and excess, on the other hand they did not avoid following its temporality. In between the fictional historicization of the films  – of how the narratives tried to change the history of the revolution – and the filmic narrative of political history – the way the winners of the revolution imposed their specific version – the latter seemed to have prevailed. And yet, recent film analyses of the memory of the New State dictatorship and the Carnation Revolution – such as Red Line and Another Country – have proved decisive in keeping the images of the past open to new meanings and interpretations.

Notes 1. A recent, although unfortunately quite biased, effort to do this was recently authored by Raquel Varela (2014). 2. In An Impatient Life, Daniel Bensaid (2013) gives some details of the political plans and preparation of what would become Setúbal, Ville Rouge. 3. The struggles within the Carnation Revolution may in this sense be seen as part of the wider history of communism made of discourses and narratives, or, in the words of Fredric Jameson, an ‘eternity of debate and discord, the perpetual present of ideological passion and politicized consciousness’ (2005: xxvi). 4. Raquel Schefer offers a good survey of Kramer’s work, and the role of Scenes of Class Struggle in Portugal in it, in “The Lived Cinema of Robert Kramer: Politics and Subjectivity”, La Furia Umana 16, April 2013.

31

Portugal’s Global Cinema 5. The most comprehensive study about Rui Simões and Bom Povo Português is Mickaël Robert-Gonçalves’s Bon people portugais de Rui Simões (1980): Histoire et esthétique d’un film-révolution, mémoire de Master, Université Paris 1: Panthéon Sorbonne, 2010. 6. José Mário Branco is a Portuguese musician best known for his political activism. He is seen as the key voice in música de intervenção (‘intervention music’), a genre of popular music that addresses social and political problems. Exiled in France since 1963 after being persecuted by the New State’s political police, Branco returned to Portugal in 1974, and was an important voice during the PREC.

32

2 Our Beloved Month of August: Between the Filming of the Real and the Reality of Filming Rui Gonçalves Miranda

Miguel Gomes’s second feature film Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto/Our Beloved Month of August (2008) has been praised for its label-defying approach. Writings about the film have mainly focused either on its subversion of genres or on the film’s undermining of the distinction between fiction and non-fiction (see Pereira 2010:  164; Prysthon n.d.; Silvestre 2008b; Lim 2010). This has led critics to arrive at bold, yet not altogether helpful, definitions of Our Beloved Month of August as ‘at once a musical, a travelogue, a quasi-incestuous family melodrama, an ethnographic portrait of Portuguese folk traditions and an account of its own chaotic production’ (Lim 2010), or as ‘a highly-codified melodrama, which finds its roots in reality (i.e. that of a region and its music), using cinematic artifice to create an effect of organicity’ (Neyrat 2009). Our Beloved Month of August fuses fiction and documentary by representing a disastrous film shooting in the Portuguese rural region of Arganil, interspaced with apparently spontaneous and fairly unscripted interviews, and footage of summer festivities in the region. Invigorated by an influx of emigrants returning to their native region for vacations, the festivities include popular Portuguese music (‘pimba’ music) gigs and 33

Portugal’s Global Cinema religious processions. These are captured alongside interviews with local characters, with a prominent role for fictionalized versions of the film crew and director. Halfway through the film, we witness the emergence of a fictional plot line starring some of the previously featured inhabitants of Arganil, now playing characters who are ‘pimba’ performers in a romantic melodrama. The bipartite structure of the film is clearly marked, on screen, by a literal change of lens – the inclusion of the filming devices marks a transition between ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction’ as well as a transformation of what is supposedly documentary into a supposed fiction. The film was conceived with the day-to-day life and summer parties of Arganil in mind – Gomes was familiar with the region; these same events will determine the ways in which the film was reworked in the course of filming and became something other than the ‘original idea’ of a ‘melodrama with music’ (Peranson). This chapter addresses the articulation between cinema and the real, or between the filming of reality and the reality of filming, in Our Beloved Month of August. My aim is to demonstrate that this feature film, while not a ‘political’ film in the sense of being militant or even engaged with contentious current affairs as are Gomes’s latest releases Redemption (2013) and As Mil e Uma Noites/Arabian Nights (2015), is structurally ‘political’ in the way that it is produced, processed and structured. My argument builds on Jacques Rancière’s conception that art and politics share an effect of ‘dissensus’, that art has no lessons or destination in mind (2010: 140). As Gomes himself notes, and this is a crucial point, his film leaves it up to the spectator to negotiate the constitutive, often competing, layers of the film (in Santos Touza 2009). This chapter also follows Rancière’s approach to the ‘distinct figures through which filmmakers engage in merging the two meanings of the word “politics” which can be used to qualify a fiction in general and a film fiction in particular’ (2011:  75). Our Beloved Month of August may not address politics explicitly (i.e. ‘the history of a movement or a conflict, the uncovering of a situation of suffering or injustice’), but it very openly employs the ‘specific strategy of an artistic approach’ (Rancière 2011: 75). In this case, the fusion of genres and the structural overlapping of diverse narrative lines undermine from its very inception the credibility of the 34

Our Beloved Month of August documentary part of the film, blurring the supposed distinction between the documental and the fictional, and interweaving fiction and reality to the point where they cannot be distinguished from each other. Our Beloved Month of August’s treatment of the real that it ‘documents’ (i.e. summer festivities in the region of Arganil), and its exploration of the ‘desire for cinema’ which must come to terms with its surrounding reality (Augusto and Gomes 2013), both anticipate and illustrate Rancière’s remarks on politics in film fiction as the ‘relation between a matter of justice [justice] and a practice of appropriateness/accuracy [justesse]’ (2011: 75).

The reality of filming This story and those that follow it can be found in the film, although for the sake of truth it must be acknowledged that appearances are deceptive and that certain directors have an inherent inclination towards mystification. (Gomes 2011: 13)

Our Beloved Month of August would be a different film had it not faced difficulties with funding – it would portray, as originally intended, a melodramatic love affair and family drama, set in the interior of Portugal in the buzz of summer amidst festivities and the return of emigrants. Yet, a new film was engendered out of the failure of the first when Gomes, faced with the prospect of having to indefinitely postpone the filming of this script, decided to film nevertheless  – although not exactly, not immediately, what was scripted. This is how he describes the response of the director (himself) in the Director’s note on the DVD edition by Second Run: Quickly getting over that shock, the director decided to set off for the location anyway, with a 16mm camera and a crew of five – small but feisty! – and to film everything he deemed worthy of recording, committing himself to rejigging the fiction accordingly. (Gomes 2011: 13)

Gomes claimed to have opted to respect the desire behind the script, setting in motion a creative process of conjoint editing and rewriting of the script (Calcagno et al 2009). His description of the process is illustrative of 35

Portugal’s Global Cinema the balance between filming what is ‘deemed worthy of recording’ and the ‘rejigging’ of the fiction: When I  was there for the first time, in the summer of 2006, I just didn’t know what I was going to do. There was a script and I knew I had to return to the script in some way. And – this is one of the biggest lies in the film – I had some of the actors already cast, like the cousins (Hélder and Tânia). But I filmed them like the others, as if I had found them there at that moment. I filmed for about four weeks the first time, then I thought about it, then shot for two more weeks, two weeks after. Then I  added this material from the first shooting and I asked my screenwriter to be involved in the editing, and I asked my editor to be involved in the rewriting of the script. Because it was almost the same thing. And then we came to a conclusion: we should make this first part of the film seem like we’re looking for characters. … And then we just rewrote the script and tried to make some connections between the first part and the second. (cited in Peranson)

The anecdotal aspect of the difficulties of this film’s production, which ends up being represented in the film, also acts as an indictment of the inherent difficulties of producing independent cinema in marginal European markets, such as the Portuguese. Jacques Lemière’s perspective on Portuguese cinema as ‘a centre on the margin’ highlights not only the difficulties felt by Portuguese directors (including the very limited availability of funds, the absence of a distribution circuit and/or a market and very low prospects of a return on the investment) but also, crucially, how such difficult circumstances fuel creativity and foster innovative cinematic practices and, thus, products that escape from standardized formats and standardization. Such conditions may be the only shared trait of Portuguese films, although they are not exclusive to Portugal (see Lemière 2006: 736; Grilo 2006: 38; Villarmea Álvarez and Muñoz Fernández 2014: 206–210). Even relative strengths, such as the considerable artistic freedom of directors – consecrated in agreements with funding bodies such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and other governmental institutions (namely the legal framework of 1971, a historical landmark for Portuguese cinema

36

Our Beloved Month of August production)  – result from a structural weakness:  the lack of a distribution market, which would render Portuguese films commercially viable (Lemière 2006: 747). It is hard to argue with Cyril Neyrat when he puts forward the view that the film owes its ‘form’ and its ‘magic’ to its rocky production history. Neyrat highlights the ways in which the director was able to ‘seize the accident as a chance of freedom’ by making the ‘accident of the double shooting the poetical principle underlying the film’ (2009). I would highlight, furthermore, that the film is successful insofar as mentioned structural weaknesses were used to the advantage of the creative process. Miguel Gomes recognizes that the fragilities of Portuguese cinema production, somehow paradoxically, allow for the ‘luxury’ of being able to produce ‘a personal cinema’ (Augusto and Gomes 2013; see Santos Touza 2009). Our Beloved Month of August is both the result of wider structural limitations and the performance of a specific problem-ridden, limited, but nevertheless creative and artistically liberating production. Its ‘political effect’, to use Rancière’s words in relation to Pedro Costa’s films, ‘stems from its very exteriority to the formatted distribution of thoughts and sensations to formatted audiences’. As Rancière puts it, works of art ‘rework the frame of our perceptions and the dynamism of our affects’ and have the potential to ‘open up new passages towards new forms of political subjectivation’ (2009: 82). The power of Our Beloved Month of August stems from the way in which it acknowledges but chooses to depart from standard, recognizable and consumable formats and thus force the audience to reset its expectations and re-evaluate its own interpretations throughout the film’s inseparably bipartite structure. In the case of this film, this is not so much a choice as it is a necessity intrinsic to the realities of filmmaking: the structural weakness of a marginal cinema such as the Portuguese demands creative responses. This necessity, as Gomes makes clear, is what explains the singularity of each of his films, which are a consequence of the negotiation between filmed reality and the reality of filming: Because they are the product of some desire, a desire for cinema faced with the reality of the present circumstances – money, who

37

Portugal’s Global Cinema you want to make the film with, where, the number of days you are going to shoot, that’s reality. Between the desire behind the film, the will to film with certain people, accomplishing certain actions, having certain histories, including songs that I  want, things that at that moment in time I want to include in a film, then the reality which exists, the conditions, all of that changes. So each film is a different film. (Augusto and Gomes 2013)

The artistic decisions and the set of strategies that are deployed – and, to some extent represented – in Our Beloved Month of August in order to cope, resist, as well as engage with and respond both to the realities which are filmed and to the realities in which filming takes place, both have and are a political effect. Thus, the film aptly (and mostly) addresses and redresses the aesthetic and ethical frameworks of cinema as well as the production and filmmaking practices under deployment. In this sense, the scenes in which the director and producer discuss the insufficiencies of the budget and the failure to produce the film are but an over-elaborate representation of what the film presents as a negotiation between the filming of reality and the reality of filming. This is visible in the duplication and/or unfolding of characters and events as a ‘reality’ (music bands, Arganil, the ‘people’ who will become actors in the second part of the film, the ‘crew’ who will disappear behind the scenes) from which a fiction feature  – albeit not the ‘intended’, ‘original’ one  – will emerge. The film repeats itself, to paraphrase the Marxist dictum, first as docudrama (the tragedy of not being able to film the script) and then as melodrama – the possible fiction feature under the farcical, albeit liberating, circumstances.

Filming of the real The film’s ‘maker’ makes nothing other than a making-real and a realization of the real: of a real that a respectful gaze makes possible. (Nancy 2001: 38)

Gomes’s remarks and considerations about Our Beloved Month of August undoubtedly shed light on the process of creation and production behind the film; they also reveal the ways in which this film can be understood as a 38

Our Beloved Month of August process of creation and production. This is also true of the relation between the film and its director with other works in Portuguese cinema that, in different historical contexts and diverse objectives, faced similar constraints, challenges and concerns, be it in terms of the process or in terms of the conditions of filming. Paulo Cunha’s discussion of Miguel Gomes’s cinephilia explores a set of striking conceptual and structural similarities between Our Beloved Month of August and both Manoel de Oliveira’s Acto da Primavera/Rite of Spring (1963) and Fernando Lopes’s Nós por Cá Todos Bem (1978) (see Cunha 2014: 110; 123). As is the case with Our Beloved Month of August, both Oliveira’s and Lopes’s films expose and simultaneously represent the conditions of production (its materiality), and both blur fiction and document, or render such distinctions irrelevant when faced with the reality that they film, present and represent. In Rite of Spring, Oliveira, with little access to funds during the Estado Novo (New State) dictatorship, came up with the ‘matrix’ of his work, in which he simultaneously addresses both representation and what is represented (Ramos 1989: 22) by filming the popular representations of a sixteenth century pageant (Auto da Paixão by Francisco Vaz de Guimarães) in a rural province (village of Curalha). Meanwhile, Lopes’s Nós por Cá Todos Bem, also filmed in the rural interior (Várzea dos Amarelos) but during the political revolutionary process (PREC) that followed the 1974 Carnation Revolution, marked an ‘instance of alterity’ to TV-influenced formats (Coelho 1983: 77) and expressed a ‘political dimension’ by giving voice and visibility to the marginalization of those whose concrete problems, and capability for political action, are far removed from the ‘revolutionary’ or ‘counter-revolutionary’ political decisions being taken in the urban centre (Coelho 1983: 78). In both films, the representation of the filming devices and crews on screen is an indubitable sign of artistic self-awareness which is amplified by the effect of estrangement carried out by the stylization inherent to, in the first case, a twentieth century representation of a sixteenth century pageant – this is felt particularly sharply in the final scenes in which actors read the newspapers’ headlines on worldwide conflicts and on the atomic bomb (let us bear in mind that the film was set during the claustrophobic environment of censorship, isolation and reclusion of the New State); in 39

Portugal’s Global Cinema the second case, the ironically highly stylized musical set pieces portraying the life of the director’s mother as a young housemaid in Lisbon exacerbate the mother’s (and the rural interior’s) distance in relation to the political discussions and events which were defining the course for Portugal post-New State and post-Carnation Revolution. Such an exercise of cinephile genealogy is particularly useful in order to situate Our Beloved Month of August’s political effects in its cinematographic commitment to what is filmed, namely the reiteration of an alternative instance to ethnographic or engaged visions of rurality (see Oliveira 2008; Baptista 2008:  219), resisting industry-tested genres and formats devised to be consumed by passive, standardized audiences. There is no doubt that Our Beloved Month of August flirts with the conventions and techniques of the ‘musical comedy’ genre, such as the shameless suspension of reality, the cultivation of artificiality and the projection through songs and musical acts of the characters’ thoughts (see Calcagno et al 2009; Pereira 2010: 163). Gomes grants great importance to music and to sound: in his view, sound editing and sound mixing are not a technical aspect – they are the film (Calcagno et al 2009). The epilogue, featuring a dialogue between the director (Miguel Gomes) and the sound director (Vasco Pimentel) confirms this importance of sound and music in the desire for cinema (Calcagno et al 2009). The discussion, in fairly comedic tones, concerns the possibility of recording sounds that are not there, are not ‘audible’ in reality, but which are nevertheless captured by the microphone. The sound director explains that this technical impossibility is possible, that it happens because he finds these sounds exist for him. He then confronts the film director when the latter tells him that there are no songs in nature; when he asks if the director does not hear a song in that moment, the audience – as well as the film director on screen – can hear one of the ‘pimba’ songs which have punctuated the two parts of the film. The ‘not-so-good music that they play and sing in this part of the country’ was not only part of the ‘original idea’ of a ‘melodrama with music’ but came to have a structuring role as songs heard during the shooting came to be incorporated in the film and in the script (Peranson). According to Tiago Baptista, the songs and performances ‘documented’ 40

Our Beloved Month of August in the first part of the film’s bipartite structure play an important role in the ‘fiction’, as the ‘particularities’ of the ‘documentary’ will grant to the second (‘fictional’) half and to the film as a whole ‘a cultural and sociological fairness/appropriateness [justeza]’ that neither a documentary nor a fictional work would be able to achieve on its own (Baptista 2008: 219). Luís Miguel Oliveira spells out the specific role and importance that music holds in this particular film by praising the film’s commitment to reality and Gomes’s efforts neither to poke fun at nor, alternatively, attempt to redeem low-culture ‘música pimba’ (2008). Oliveira sums up his opinion on the film’s treatment of popular songs, and of the real of which they are part, when he states that ‘[i]t all comes down to finding the fair/appropriate [justa] distance’ (Oliveira 2008). I am interested in the ambiguity of the adjective ‘justa’, which can derive from ‘justeza’ [fairness] (the word Baptista uses) but also from ‘justiça’[justice]. The specific terms which Oliveira and Baptista use to address Our Beloved Month of August’s particular treatment of reality echo, at least partially, the general point formulated, as aforementioned, in Rancière’s definition of politics in film as the ‘relation between a matter of justice [justice] and a practice of appropriateness / accuracy [justesse]’ (2011: 75). This is an ongoing negotiation that never occurs in a vacuum, that demands choices (one or the other; one and its other); on the contrary, it demands the justice of an engagement to the reality that is ‘there’, inseparable from the appropriateness of such a practice. To use a previous formulation, there is no just filming of reality dialogues without adjusting to the realities of filming: I filmed the people who were there in front of me, in the way that I could each day and there are some aspects which are more comical and others which are more moving, I had to have both things at once. (Augusto and Gomes 2013)

The productively ambiguous structure of Our Beloved Month of August calls into question Rancière’s distinction between fiction and documentary films, as it sets about ‘treating the real’ as both ‘an effect to be produced’ and ‘as a fact to be understood’ (Rancière 2006b: 158). The film articulates what Cyril Neyrat identifies as Portuguese cinema’s love for reality and disregard for genres (see Neyrat 2009) with a desire (to use the a word that Gomes

41

Portugal’s Global Cinema often convokes) to do justice – while constantly adjusting – to a reality that is never, as the sound director reminds us, simply just ‘there’, but can always be more than one thing at once.

Just so: love for reality, desire for cinema The only way to envision a new cinema is to have a greater regard for the spectator’s role. It’s necessary to envision an unfinished and incomplete cinema so that the spectator can intervene and fill the void, the lacks. (Abbas Kiarostami in Nancy 2001: 88)

The political dimension of Our Beloved Month of August may be clarified when, in the wake of Jacques Rancière, one understands politics in film as ‘not a simple strategy by which awareness and activism are elicited, using well-defined means’, but rather as ‘a complex assembly of several things: forms of sensibility, stances adopted towards the current world order, choices about the duration of a shot, where to place the camera, the ways in which the entities being filmed relate to the camera, and also choices about production, funding, equipment and so on’ (Duarte and Rancière 2011: 205). An articulation of forms, stances, choices – and I would add – needs or desires (in fiction and in reality, see Oliveira 2008):  Our Beloved Month of August, in this sense, is constituted through politics. Either wilfully or strategically, by accident or design, genres, formats and production frameworks are discarded or subverted. The film’s duplicitous depiction of Arganil’s communities and summer festivities, as well as the melodramatic relationship between the cousins Hélder and Tânia, calls into question the documental and the fictional as a matter of course. This goes beyond the placement of the camera on screen, the discussions between crew members, director and producer, or the appearance of the film crew on screen (see Figure 2.1) partying or playing games to avoid irritating aspiring cast members; it also goes beyond the notorious unreliability of Paulo Moleiro. The fusion and/or confusion between subjects (in the ‘documentary’) and characters (in the ‘fiction’) is far more revealing; it is often impossible to distinguish between what is presented and what is represented: this goes as much for events (music concerts, religious processions, the adventures and rituals of a small community of the rural interior) as it 42

Our Beloved Month of August

Figure 2.1 The film crew on screen: sound director Vasco Pimentel in Our Beloved Month of August

does for people. The question is not so much when does the feigning end but rather when does it begin. For instance, the first section of the film superimposes footage of Sónia and Fábio, who will come to play the roles of Tânia and Hélder – contrary to what the first, ‘documentary’ section had us believe, the casting for these roles took place before filming commenced in Arganil and the young woman who will become the actress playing Tânia is presented (see Peranson). The underlying duplicity is beautifully captured in the last shot of the film. This shot features Tânia breaking into laughter when she is crying after her cousin embarks on a coach back to France; whether the actress breaks out of, or remains in, character is left to the spectator’s interpretation. Gomes’s practice in this film fits Rancière’s theorization: the practices of appropriateness/fairness – both of these meanings are present in the French justesse and in the Portuguese words justeza or justo/justa – are inseparable from a question of justice. The ‘just/fair distance’ (between film and reality, film and spectator) is indeed a question of justice. Miguel Gomes has defined his decision to have every single crew member appear on screen, some emerging as characters, as a question of ‘social justice’: ‘[i]f we were asking the people in that area to represent characters, I thought the filming crew should do the same’ (cited in Calcagno et al 2009). The film 43

Portugal’s Global Cinema therefore features, as mentioned, among other things, an ironic representation of conflicts between director and producer, the struggle to produce a film and to capture reality, and a distracted film crew playing traditional games instead of working. Gomes established that the invasion of a reality (which exists before and will continue to exist after cinema) should be registered on film, and that ‘invaders’ and ‘invaded’ should be on the same level (Gomes and Gomes 2008). As he puts it in an interview: Gomes:

Scope: Gomes:

I had one golden rule. As we were invading this place, Arganil, so we should be in this film. Because we were demanding that the locals play characters, we had to do the same. And everything that was brought with us from Lisbon should be in the film. So every piece of equipment is in the film – the camera, the tripods – that was a rule. Why was this so important to you? The film is a clash between cinema and this part of the country, so us [sic.] and everything that was with us should appear. Normally there is behind the camera and in front of the camera, and this time I wanted to put everything in front of the camera, and even what’s in the middle should appear – which is the camera. (Peranson)

Gomes’s final remark reads as a programme for filming, a ‘strategy of an artistic approach’, which, as Gomes puts it in relation to João César Monteiro’s work, conceives of cinema as the ‘matter and modus operandi of the projection of a certain view’ (Gomes 2005: 565). In the clash between cinema and the real (‘this part of the country’), the suspension of reality and artificiality implied both by the musical sections of the film and by the presence of the filmmaker and the crew on screen (also a prominent feature of Oliveira’s Rite of Spring and Lopes’s Nós por Cá Todos Bem) creates a distance that, in itself, is illustrative of how far Our Beloved Month of August is from being an example of militant or engaged cinema. However, Miguel Gomes’s (and the critics’) remarks about the film’s struggle for justice and for effects of justesse act as a reminder that politics in film is also, as Rancière has noted, the ‘specific strategy of an artistic approach’ (2011: 75). In other words, this same distance, the justice and justesse (appropriateness/ fairness) of 44

Our Beloved Month of August such a distance between the real and cinema, which critics such as Oliveira (2008) and Baptista (2008: 219) have – as seen – hinted at, is the condition of possibility for politics in film. What Gomes said of João César Monteiro – whom he called a ‘structuring influence’, claiming his films were composed of ‘diverse and sometimes contradictory layers’ (Gomes 2005: 561–562) – can be applied to his own films: the process and practice of engagement with what is filmed goes hand in hand with a disrespect for cinematic solemnities and prescriptions in its struggle for an ‘appropriate/ fair [justo] and hygienic distance in relation to spectators’ (Gomes 2005: 565). The adjective ‘justo’, used by Gomes when referring to the cinematic praxis, reinforces the (Rancièrean) theory; but it also supplements it (and Oliveira’s and Baptista’s) by bringing the spectator into the fold.

Conclusion: the section which isn’t there Gomes not only acknowledges that the ‘documentary’ and ‘fictional’ sections of the film are infected by one another, but he also purports the existence of a third part ‘that exists only in the mind of the spectator, in his memory, a virtual part, in which the spectator retraces the links between the things he has seen in the first and second parts, but which exists only inside the spectator’ (cited in Santos Touza 2009). The presupposition of a ‘third part’, the creation of its possibility, bestows on the spectator a more active role. During a Q&A session at the New York Film Festival after the screening of volume 2 of Arabian Nights (O Desolado/The Desolate One, 2015), Gomes addressed the explicitly bi- (or multi-) partite structure of his films, and the role of the spectator, precisely as a question of justice, of what is a ‘fairer place for the viewer’: I think if you have these films that have segments with different sections and different rules it is more up to the viewer to put them together. I think that the viewer can participate on a film at a higher level. (…) The condition of a viewer is very passive and sometimes this can be a problem because sometimes films can be very pushy. So, how to give more power to the viewer? I think this is fair, that the viewer can have a little bit more power and so can participate in a not so passive way.

45

Portugal’s Global Cinema And for me, when we have a film with different parts it’s a little bit up to the viewer to do the ensemble, to collect the pieces and do the puzzle. And this seems to be a fairer place for the viewer. Some people think it’s too demanding; I’m also a viewer and I don’t agree with that. I think it’s better to be a viewer if you can be more active. (Gomes 2015)

In Our Beloved Month of August, the spectator must necessarily negotiate the articulation between film and the real, the duplicity of what is shot and filmed differently in both parts of the film. The approach by Gomes confronts the spectator with film as a modus operandi, one not concerned merely with representing unfair situations or injustice as a topic, but also with the fairness and justice of its approach, of its treatment of reality and the process and procedures of filmmaking. The justice and fairness in the approach that structure Gomes’s films imply an appropriate distancing, which is also the space for a just engagement with the filmed reality and the reality of filming. Gomes’s questioning of genres and conventions highlights the necessity of a conscious negotiation between film and reality, spectator and film. Our Beloved Month of August’s spectator will have to arrive at a working framework, however provisional and unstable, which allows for a comprehension of the diverse layers (meta-reflexive, fictional, documentary) at play in the film, which allows him/her to make sense, simultaneously, of each one, and of both of the parts that the film features. Structurally speaking (i.e., referring to the ways in which the film is produced, re-structured, organized), Our Beloved Month of August is a practice of fairness and justice in relation both to the reality which is filmed, and to the spectator who views the resulting filmed reality. Our Beloved Month of August is political:  it is the result  – as are so many films from Portuguese and so many other cinemas on the margin (to use Lemière’s wording)  – of a cinema that, beyond sociopolitical concerns and objectives, aims to develop procedures and processes with which to negotiate (accurately, appropriately and in fairness) the desire for cinema, on the one hand, and the constraints and challenges imposed by the contextual environment (relating to politics, society, the cinema industry or, most likely, to a combination of these), on the other.

46

3 Political Oliveira1 Randal Johnson

The cinema of Manoel de Oliveira is known, among other things, for its formal questioning, its theatricality, the emphasis given to language as an integral part of cinematic discourse, its cinematic adaptations of literary works and its exploration of themes such as frustrated love, the relationship between life and art, memory and identity, ageing and death, and the nature of evil. His films are not generally seen as political, although one could argue – and he himself has argued – that his cinema is about resistance, particularly with regard to the dominant aesthetic driven by commercial considerations.2 This may be due to the fact that his films never express an explicit political perspective, at least in strongly ideological or partisan terms, and that they at times raise uncomfortable questions and doubts instead of offering answers and certainties. Coming from the upper bourgeoisie of Porto, Oliveira suffered as much at the hands of the New State – he was arrested in 1963 and had a great deal of difficulty in obtaining public financing for his films until after 1974  – as he did under the movement that arose after the April Revolution, when the factory he had inherited from his father was occupied, resulting in his bankruptcy and the loss of his family home.3

47

Portugal’s Global Cinema Nevertheless, a politically-based undercurrent flows through many of Oliveira’s films and helps to portray him, if not as a political filmmaker, then at least as a deeply ethical director who recognizes the contradictions of the modern world, especially the gap between ideals – whether social, political or religious – and the reality of modern capitalist society, and who consistently positions himself against authoritarianism, against human oppression and against the harmful consequences of the expansionist or imperialist impulses, both political and religious, which have characterized the West for centuries. These concerns come to the surface, sometimes in a subtle manner, in films whose central focus generally lies elsewhere. For example, in his first film, Douro, Faina Fluvial/Labour on the Douro River (1931), a poetic avant-garde documentary that focuses on various aspects of the daily labour that occurs along the Douro River in Porto, a striking image appears of a policeman, framed against the sky from a low angle, as if he were omnipresent, watching over the workers’ affairs (see Figure 3.1).4 There is obviously no verbal commentary in this silent film, but the image

Figure 3.1 Labour on the Douro River

48

Political Oliveira in itself leaves no doubts with regard to its meaning, despite having no further elaboration or explanation. Oliveira’s first feature, Aniki-Bóbó (1942), based on the story ‘Meninos Milionários’/‘Millionaire Children’ by Rodrigo de Freitas, deals with a conflict between children (a love triangle, which is normally an adult theme), but is also an anti-authoritarian film, contrasting the freedom of the streets with the regimentation and oppression of institutions, and particularly those of family, school and the repressive apparatus represented by the police.5 The two initial sequences after the credits give the viewer a hint of this type of interpretation. In the fi rst, the mother of Carlitos  – the child ‘protagonist’ who falls in love with Teresinha, who is the target of Eduardinho’s attention  – helps him to get dressed for school. Carlitos is distracted, repeating the words of the nursery rhyme ‘Aniki-B óbó’, which determines who will play the roles of villain and police in games, as he toys with a small ceramic clown. His mother tells him to be quiet and accidentally pushes his arm against the clown, which falls to the floor and breaks into pieces. She then flicks him on the head, complaining about the noise it has made. Carlitos flees and runs out of the house. He heads off to school, but his mother calls him back. He returns, hesitant, perhaps afraid of getting flicked again. Actually, she called him because he had forgotten to take a book. She places the book in his bag, which becomes the focus of the shot. On the bag are the words ‘Segue sempre por bom caminho’ (‘Always stay on the right path’), in close-up, indicating the moral guidelines which presumably guide not only children, but society as a whole. These words can also be understood as ironic advice on how to survive under an authoritarian and repressive regime. In the next sequence, Oliveira offers a humorous response to this advice, revealing that it is not always easy to ‘stay on the right path’. When Carlitos runs off to school, he is almost hit by a truck. He stands in the middle of the street, looking at the truck, and is almost hit by a car. He begins to walk on the sidewalk, looking back, apparently at the car, and he bumps into a policeman. He keeps walking, looking back at the policeman, and bumps into a light post. In this comical scene, the truck, car, policeman and light post all represent obstacles to the ‘right path’ from the advice on the bag. 49

Portugal’s Global Cinema Human nature, among other things, impedes the perfect obedience that the New State regime would see as recommendable. With one exception – the owner of the Shop of Temptations – all of the ‘authority’ figures in the film, starting in Carlitos’s house, are represented in a negative fashion. The home appears infrequently in the film, and when it does it generally represents a space where the children are confined or punished. Significantly, the few adults who appear do not have names, and none of the children’s fathers are shown. They have been replaced by representatives of the State and the economy. The mothers who appear are not identified as such. The viewer does not even see the face of Carlitos’s mother, the only woman who appears more than once in the film. The school is an institutionalized space of restrictions, tedium and even cruelty. The teacher is stern, strict and humourless, prone to humiliating the students, whether by mocking their academic shortcomings or punishing them for arriving late. It is no coincidence that the boys tend to become distracted, staring out the window at the world of freedom that exists outside. Even when they are in the streets, their freedom is limited: they are always under the omnipresent gaze of the policeman, who seems incompetent, and the shop owner, who watches them while they walk to school. In contrast to the other adults, the shop owner is the only adult portrayed as wise and understanding. He is also the only one with a sense of humour. It is he who provides the information that leads to the final reconciliation and offers the final message on the futility of anger and conflict. Significantly, he is the only adult in a leading role who is not associated with the State. With all of these elements, Aniki-Bóbó lends itself to an allegorical interpretation that is political in nature. Nevertheless, this interpretation, while valid, would inevitably result in a reductionism that would be unable to account for the complexity and thematic richness of the film. It exists, but in a secondary position within the cinematic discourse, as in various other films by Manoel de Oliveira. In films such as Acto da Primavera/Rite of Spring (1963), O Passado e o Presente/Past and Present (1971) and Os Canibais/The Cannibals (1988), Oliveira takes an ironic look at the bourgeoisie and upper bourgeoisie. In the first, a re-presentation of a popular religious representation, taken, in turn, from the Auto da Paixão de Jesus Cristo (1559), by Francisco Vaz de 50

Political Oliveira Guimarães, a bourgeois family appears and condescendingly finds the play ‘nice’, in an attitude which contrasts with that of the director, who fully respects the popular view. The second, the first film of the so-called ‘tetralogy of frustrated love’, is a Buñuelesque satire of the hypocrisy of the upper bourgeoisie, and especially the institution of marriage and that which João César Monteiro calls the ‘contractual monstrosity of monogamous marriage’ (1974: 41). In The Cannibals, based on a short story by Álvaro de Carvalhal (1844– 1868), author of ‘sinister tales of cruelty, crime, animal realism, excessive and morbid fantasy’ (in Pita 1994: 45), Oliveira returns, in a sense, to the Buñuelian aspect of the 1971 film in the only opera he filmed. Most of the film takes the form of a gothic tragedy, following the endeavour of love between the young Margarida and the mysterious Viscount of Aveleda. She falls in love with the Viscount, unaware that he is not a complete human being, but a statue that is half human and half machine. Only his heart and his head are human. On their wedding night, the Viscount opens his robe, revealing the truth to her. Horrified, Margarida jumps out of the open window to her death. The Viscount’s torso sways and falls into the large fire burning in the fireplace, where he sings his last words. In the film’s final segment, which leans more toward farce than toward tragedy, the cannibalism implicit in the title takes place. Margarida’s father and brothers, who had attended the wedding the night before, wake up hungry. Margarida and the Viscount are nowhere to be found, and the father finds a large piece of meat roasting in the couple’s room. Thinking that it is a delicacy left by the Viscount, they serve themselves. After the meal, they discover the truth about their cannibalism, and believe that the only solution is suicide. However, the brother who is the magistrate points out that, with the death of the Viscount, they are the sole heirs to his vast fortune. Saved by money, which erases all crimes and aberrations, the father and the other brother ‘[pounce] on the magistrate, like starving mastiffs upon the tough skin of a Lamego ham’ (from Carvalhal’s novel, 2002 edition, p. 71). Oliveira portrays this key moment from Carvalhal’s narrative by transforming the magistrate brother into a pig, and the father and other brother into ravenous dogs. Unlike the story it is based upon, Oliveira extends 51

Portugal’s Global Cinema the final cannibalistic moment, making all the other characters – wedding guests, servants and even a priest – bare their fangs and join the feast, suggesting that all social relationships are based on essentially cannibalistic relationships. In this way, the film recalls that which Joaquim Pedro de Andrade wrote in relation to his work Macunaíma (1969): ‘Work relationships, as well as the relationships between people – social, political and economic – are still basically cannibalistic. Those who can, “eat” others through their consumption of products, or even more directly in sexual relationships. Cannibalism has merely institutionalized itself, cleverly disguised itself ’ (in Hollanda 1978: 118). I am not suggesting that Oliveira was influenced by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade or Macunaíma. In fact, the aesthetic, ideological and political stances are quite different. Oliveira’s film ultimately stays more at the level of satire of human behaviour, without delving into more openly political aspects, as in the case of Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. Oliveira frequently puts his characters into situations in which they fight against – or suffer the consequences of – a conservative and repressive society. This is the case, for example, of Benilde ou a Virgem-Mãe/Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1975), based on a play by José Régio, and Amor de Perdição/Doomed Love (1978), based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco. Benilde, for example, addresses the Immaculate Conception and the possibility of miracles. The young Alentejan Benilde becomes pregnant and sees this as a sign from God since, according to her, she has never been with a man. Her pregnancy triggers an entire network of social, religious and ethnic relationships that come into play when others – her father, her aunt, her fiancé, the priest and the doctor – become aware of her situation. In 1975, one year after the Carnation Revolution, the field of cinematography in Portugal was highly politicized. At the time, Oliveira was criticized for the fact that Benilde apparently had little do with the country’s political situation and was formally and thematically ‘outdated’, dealing with topics that were more metaphysical than political. Nevertheless, the film concerns a society riddled with certain social and moral values and, according to Oliveira, is a work that is ‘internally dialectical, and dialectical in its opposition to or contradiction with our time’ (in Manoel de Oliveira 1975:  no page). Indeed, the film portrays a set of attitudes that 52

Political Oliveira characterize a moralistic and repressive society, not too far from that fostered by the dictatorship since the late 1920s. João Bénard da Costa wrote, more recently, that the film can be legitimately seen as ‘a parable of the lost country we were and are, and the impossibility of quickly transforming it… It is a state of siege film. Of all that took place in Portugal, between the narrow-minded peace of Salazar and the spurious unrest of 1975, it is perhaps, for many strange reasons, the most profound portrait’ (1991: 153). Oftentimes, Oliveira’s critique of modern society and civilization has a religious background, as in Rite of Spring and Mon Cas/My Case (1986), pointing out, as previously indicated, the gap between utopian ideals and the contemporary social and political reality. At the end of Rite of Spring, Oliveira toggles images of violence and war – including images of Vietnam – with the martyrdom of Christ, and superimposes a mushroom cloud on his sorrowful face, contrasting the teachings of the Lord with the reality of the modern world, as if we were watching a descent into hell. Oliveira uses similar images in My Case, highlighting the gap between art’s sometimes petty concerns about violence and the cruelty of the modern world, and serving as a transition between the theatre of the absurd (the film is based in part on a play by José Régio) and a portrayal of the biblical story of Job in a devastated urban setting reminiscent of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). In both films, however, Oliveira points to the possibility of redemption. In the first, the atomic cloud gives way to flowering trees, and the sound of military jets to singing birds; in the second, after his suffering, Job finds himself in a setting reminiscent of an ideal city in the style of Piero della Francesca (see also Overhoff Ferreira in this volume).

Legacy of the empire In a filmography that includes nearly 30 feature-length films addressing a wide variety of topics, one set of four films – Le Soulier de Satin/The Satin Slipper (1985), Non, ou a Vã Glória de Mandar/No, or the Vain Glory of Command (1990), Um Filme Falado/A Talking Picture (2003) and O Quinto Império: Ontem como Hoje/The Fifth Empire (2004) – makes up a series of indignations related to imperial expansion and its impact, from the age-old conflict between Christianity and Islam to the colonial wars in Africa. As 53

Portugal’s Global Cinema always, Oliveira presents elements in these films that allow the viewer to form his or her own opinion regarding the events portrayed, without offering a straightforward answer to the questions raised. In The Satin Slipper, based on the eponymous play by Paul Claudel, Oliveira merely hints in this direction, as he generally stays quite faithful to the original text, only cutting parts of a few scenes in order to avoid overly extending the duration of the film (which is already almost seven hours long), and adding two scenes that do not appear in the play. The setting of The Satin Slipper is ‘the world’ at the end of the sixteenth century or the beginning of the seventeenth century, with scenes located in Lisbon, Prague, Cádiz, Mogador, Sicily, various places in the Americas, and on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The drama unfolds, however, in the period following King Sebastian’s disappearance while leading a disastrously ill-conceived campaign in northern Africa in an attempt to expand the Portuguese empire and the Catholic faith. The young King’s disappearance led to the humiliation of Portugal and its domination by Spain, and marked the end of the period of national greatness characterized by the discovery expeditions. It also produced one of the most important myths in the history of Portugal: Sebastianism, or the idea that one day Sebastian would reappear, emerging from the mist to restore Portugal’s central position in the world. In a more abstract and enduring way, the messianic myth of Sebastian involves the hope of national regeneration. Claudel’s play makes no mention of Sebastian, which is not the case with Oliveira’s film. Through a series of titles after the opening sequence and the two scenes added to Claudel’s play – which portray sermons preached in Lisbon in 1640 and 1641 that speak of the country’s humiliation and suffering under Spanish rule (see Overhoff Ferreira in this volume) – Oliveira explicitly anchors The Satin Slipper in the wake of Sebastian’s disastrous crusade against the Islamic world. In this sense, the conflict between Rodrigue and Camille, a renegade convert to Islam, gains a symbolic and historical dimension that it does not have in Claudel’s play. The question of the adverse effects of empire becomes more explicit in No, or the Vain Glory of Command, which revisits, in its very title, the admonition of the Old Man of Restelo at the end of the fourth canto of The Lusiads: 54

Political Oliveira O glory of command! O vain desire Of this mere vanity which we call fame! O fancy treacherous, which gathers fire From popular breath, usurping honour’s name! What justice and what castigation dire In the vain breast of which ye are the aim Ye work! what deaths and dangers, what distress And with that what cruelties do ye oppress! (IV, 95)6 Oliveira shifted the adjective ‘vain’ from the noun ‘desire’ to the ‘glory of command’ in order to create a variation of the warning of the Old Man of Restelo, adding the Latin word ‘Non’, taken from a sermon by the Jesuit António Vieira (1608–1697), to form the title of a film he had thought of making since the time of the Revolution of 1974. No is a film about the history of Portugal, and more specifically a few of the most important battles in that history. The novelty here is that it does not concern Portuguese victories, but rather defeats: the Lusitanians by the Romans (139 BC), King Afonso V by the Castilians in the Battle of Toro (1476), the failed attempt to unify the Iberian Peninsula through the marriage of Prince Afonso and Princess Isabella (1490), and the greatest defeat of all, the battle of Alcácer Quibir (1578), which led to the disappearance of the young King Sebastian and 60 years of Spanish rule. These historical events are narrated in a series of flashbacks starting from the present narrative, which involves a group of soldiers defending Portuguese colonialism in Africa shortly before the Revolution of 1974. In fact, the narration ends on 25 April 1974, the day of the Revolution. Oliveira has described his film as being the opposite of The Lusiads, with its exaltation of empire and the nation (1999: 183). In many ways, the film echoes the voice of the Old Man of Restelo, quoted above. The series of flashbacks resembles to some extent the actual structure of several cantos in the epic poem by Camões. The flashbacks begin just after one soldier asks another, ‘What are we doing here?’ The immediate responses are varied, but not surprising: because of patriotism, to defend the overseas provinces, the defence of the rights of the people, nation building, or, by contrast, the indirect defence of the political and economic interests of the great powers.

55

Portugal’s Global Cinema Oliveira’s film offers a broader and more historical perspective, which begins to take form when one of the soldiers, Alferes Cabrita (Luís Miguel Cintra) starts telling his comrades about episodes from Portuguese history (see Figure 3.2). Oliveira establishes continuity between the episodes by using the same actors in the different historic battles. Luís Miguel Cintra, for example, plays the roles of Alferes Cabrita in the war in Angola, the leader Viriatus, a soldier in the Battle of Toro, and Alexandre Moreira and Dom John of Portugal in Alcácer Quibir. The same occurs with the other main actors. Significantly, they do not appear in the two episodes that do not involve armed conflict: the marriage of Prince Afonso to Princess Isabella, and a portrayal of the Isle of Love from The Lusiads. The continuity, therefore, involves conquest by force of arms. The Isle of Love segment, which implicitly praises the discovery expeditions, seems to be in contradiction with the rest of the film, as the violence

Figure 3.2 Luís Miguel Cintra in No, or the Vain Glory of Command

56

Political Oliveira and conquest in the name of the nation and the Catholic Church form an inevitable part of these adventures. Nevertheless, Alferes Cabrita offers another perspective when he says the voyages are a gift that Portugal gave to the world, because they paved the way for other discoveries and for the development of human possibilities, just as space travel has done more recently. In this way, the discovery expeditions have a transcendental meaning. In Oliveira’s film, those who benefit from a moment of pleasure on the Isle of Love are the discoverers, not the warriors. As discussed, the actors who play soldiers do not appear in this episode. What is praised, therefore, is the gift of discovery and not the desire for conquest.7 Oliveira contextualizes the failure of Alcácer Quibir when Alferes Cabrita explains the myth of the Fifth Empire to the other soldiers, that is, the myth, spread by António Vieira among others, of an empire that would rule the whole world with a single monarchy and pope. As Cabrita explains, Vieira referred to the Fifth Empire as ‘the consummation of the Empire of Christ on Earth’, which would last a thousand years until the coming of the Antichrist. This messianic, mythical, universal and Catholic empire would convert heretics, Muslims, pagans and Jews, resulting in a world of peace and harmony. It was, in short, a utopian vision of world domination, a vision that is, according to Alferes Cabrita, ‘latent in the ambitions of the great powers, such as Russia and America.’ The last sequence of the film, which takes place in a military hospital in Angola after Alferes Cabrita is gravely wounded in a battle, draws a clear parallel between the disaster of Alcácer Quibir and the war in Angola. In his delirium, Alferes Cabrita speaks of the ‘unexplained ultimate meaning’ before the film cuts back to the Alcácer Quibir battlefield, where the same actor – Luís Miguel Cintra – plays the role of an also wounded Dom John of Portugal, who says that ‘we have paid dearly for this adventure’. Dom John’s words obviously refer both to the adventure of King Sebastian in northern Africa as well as to the colonial occupation of Angola and other African countries. In this moment a wounded Portuguese solider gets up and delivers a tenebrous speech that begins with the words of António Vieira that serve as the title of the film: ‘NON is a terrible word. It has neither front nor back. Whichever way you take it, it always has the same sound and meaning. Take it from beginning to end or from end to beginning, it is 57

Portugal’s Global Cinema always NON… It kills hope, which is Nature’s last remedy for all evils.’ The man then kills himself with his own sword. ‘NON’, an absolute negative, becomes the irredeemable symbol of violence and death, a symbol that extends to all of the colonial adventures. Cabrita continues in agony, unsure of exactly where he is. Suffering and in great pain, the doctor gives him a shot of morphine. Cabrita closes his eyes, and soft violin music begins to play. In an image from his subconscious, King Sebastian re-emerges from the mist beside the Tagus River in Lisbon, making the parallel between Alcácer Quibir and more recent colonialism even clearer. He draws his sword, turns it upside down and holds it close to his chest. After a brief shot of Cabrita, the camera focuses on Sebastian’s torso, which holds the blade of the inverted sword. Blood begins to flow from his hands and run over the blade, while the sword forms a cross in front of his chest. Cabrita starts to vomit blood and, despite the efforts of the doctor, he dies. We see a close-up of a medical record, upon which a hand holding a pen begins to write. As it writes, Manoel de Oliveira himself says in voiceover that Cabrita died on 25 April 1974, the day of the Revolution. The Carnation Revolution brings an end to the period of Portuguese colonial rule  – symbolized by King Sebastian’s disastrous crusade and inevitably marked by blood and death – and points to a different future. This, obviously, does not mean that ambitions of power and domination no longer exist among other nations, and this is an issue that Oliveira would address later in his career, particularly in A Talking Picture, in my view one of the best films made about the world after 11 September 2001. A Talking Picture is a reflection on the past, present and future of civilization, particularly within the context of the millennia of tension between Christianity and Islam. The narrative structure that Oliveira develops for this timely discussion is surprisingly simple: Rosa Maria (Leonor Silveira), a university History professor, takes her daughter Maria Joana (Filipa de Almeida) on a cruise to meet her husband in Bombay. Along the way, Rosa Maria explains the significance of the places they visit or pass by on the ship  – Ceuta, Marseille, Naples and Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, Suez and Aden – as well as the meaning of concepts such as ‘myth’, ‘legend’ and ‘civilization’. 58

Political Oliveira As the ship stops at various ports during the trip, three successful and well-known women of different nationalities come on board: French businesswoman Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) in Marseille, Italian model Francesca (Stefania Sandrelli) in Naples and Greek singer Helena (Irene Papas) in Athens. The first half of the film is dedicated to the educational tourism of Rosa Maria and Maria Joana; the second to multilingual conversations at the table of the ship captain, American John Walesa (John Malkovich). A Talking Picture opens with a shot of people on the pier in Lisbon, waving goodbye to others who are leaving on the ship. Metaphorically, their gestures could signify ‘goodbye’ to Western civilization as we know it today. As Yaniv Eyny and A. Zubatov wrote, ‘by the film’s end, we begin to realise that Oliveira’s reflections upon the past are actually reflections in a different sense: the film’s many reference points in our early history and in the present-day voyage… stand as mirror-imaged bookends at the extreme ends of a long shelf sinking at a centre no longer able to withstand the pressure of its weighty volumes and illustrious titles’ (2004). In Marseille, the first port of call, Rosa Maria and her daughter walk toward a dock near the city centre and see a small dog tied to a boat with a string. The motion of the waves pulls the dog close to the edge, and he struggles to keep from being dragged into the water. The dog’s Sisyphean efforts to avoid falling into the water are a perfect metaphor for the state of Western civilization. It is no coincidence that the one who unties and ‘saves’ the dog is a person associated with knowledge of history, and that the dog then joins the girl, upon whose shoulders the future lies. It is also no coincidence that the captain of the ship is American, a fact that is not exactly reassuring within the context of the film. A Talking Picture offers multiples layers of historical, political and cultural meanings through what may seem, at first glance, to be a type of tourism film. It is not surprising that the most immediate historical reference involves the discovery expeditions. When the ship leaves the port on the Tagus River in Lisbon, Rosa Maria points out, to her daughter, the Monument to the Discoveries, with the figure of Prince Henry at the front. In an allusion to the first verses of The Lusiads, she explains that the navigators had discovered new worlds, sailing seas that were once unknown. 59

Portugal’s Global Cinema She then points to the Belém Tower, built between 1515 and 1520 to commemorate Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India, which started in July of 1497, the same month of Rosa Maria and Maria Joana’s trip. Taking place in the same month, departing from the same city, and with the same destination, although following a different trajectory, the voyage in A Talking Picture is a modern echo of Vasco da Gama’s voyage, but with very different results. The film foreshadows the difference in this opening sequence through another historical reference. It is a slightly foggy day, and Rosa Maria tells her daughter that the fog reminds her of the myth of King Sebastian, who one day would emerge from the mist to restore the country to its rightful place in the world. She then gives a brief explanation of the story of Sebastian and his disappearance in northern Africa. Structuring the film from the start, therefore, are the old conflict between Christianity and Islam and the question of the imperialist expansion of Western civilization. When they pass by Ceuta, Rosa Maria explains that the Portuguese had taken the city from the Moors over 500 years earlier (in 1415, to be exact), although it no longer belongs to Portugal. In Marseille, a sign on the pavement commemorates the arrival of the Greeks in 600 BC, spreading their civilization. In its visit to Pompeii, the film contrasts political and religious conflicts with natural disasters over which humans have no control. In Istanbul, the focus is on the Hagia Sophia cathedral, built in 537 by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I and converted into a mosque in 1453. Inside, the camera focuses on Christian and Islamic iconography. Outside the church, which now functions as a museum, the focus is on a poster for a photography exhibition by Ahmed Ertug, Hagia Sophia:  A  vision for empires. In Suez, where they meet the actor Luís Miguel Cintra, they discuss the Europeans’ construction of the canal and the festivities which commemorated its inauguration. Passing through the Red Sea, Rosa Maria explains the Biblical origins of the Arabic people, descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham and the slave Hagar, and the subsequent formation of nation states through armed conflicts between nations. When the daughter asks why men are so evil, Rosa Maria explains that the desire for power leads to war, which is precisely the point that Oliveira explores in No, or the Vain Glory of Command. In Aden, Rosa Maria explains that the Portuguese had tried, unsuccessfully, 60

Political Oliveira to conquer the city in order to facilitate the sea route to Africa. In this sequence the film once again provides a visual contrast between cultures, especially in terms of clothing. During the trip, Delphine, Francesca, Helena and the captain participate in multilingual conversations at dinnertime around the dinner table. They speak, each one in his or her own language (French, Italian, Greek and English), about love, relationships, work, loneliness, art and theatre. None of the four have children, and Francesca and Helena express regret over this fact. In this sense, Maria Joana holds a privileged position. As Eyny and Zubatov (2004) write, ‘If the history lesson and the film are primarily hers, she is certainly burdened with an awesome responsibility as the single vessel capable of preserving the legacy of the past for the future’. Maria Joana, therefore, is much more than just a girl. The conversation then turns to other topics, such as languages, civilization and the relations between the West and the Arabic countries. They find it strange, but somehow natural, that all of them are speaking in their own languages and understanding each other perfectly. The American captain says that he knows bits and pieces of languages, but he really doesn’t need to use them because almost everyone speaks English. It is no coincidence, obviously, that the person in charge is American, and that English is described as ‘ruthless’. Helena notes that although Greece is the cradle of Western civilization, its language is spoken by few. Delphine agrees, and adds that the values of the French Revolution – liberty, equality and brotherhood – have also been largely forgotten, particularly in light of the conflict between the West and certain Islamic countries. The following night, the captain invites Rosa Maria and Maria Joana to sit at the table as well. He gives Maria Joana a gift that he had bought for her in Aden: an Arabic doll, with its face covered by a veil. After a short conversation, once again about languages and, implicitly, power, the captain asks Helena to sing for those present. She sings a nostalgic song about transformations that brings to mind a simpler time, reinforced by the drawing of a crop of grapes on the wall. However, the winds that blow do not blow softly, as the song says; they blow with fury. The last ten minutes of A Talking Picture transform it in such a way as to highlight, in horrific fashion, the clashes of civilizations described 61

Portugal’s Global Cinema throughout the entire journey. While Helena is singing, an official calls the captain and they leave the room. The captain returns a few minutes later and informs his guests that terrorists placed two time bombs on board in Aden. A  few minutes later the warning comes to abandon ship, and the passengers leave the dining room to put on their life vests. Rosa Maria and Maria Joana do the same, and begin to follow the other passengers to the deck. Suddenly, Maria Joana runs back to the cabin, where she had left her doll. Rosa Maria runs after her desperately, and when she arrives to the cabin, she sees Maria Joana kneeling at the side of the bed, talking to her doll: ‘Don’t be afraid, I’ll take care of you.’ When they finally arrive at the deck, all of the other passengers have already escaped the ship in lifeboats. From one of the boats the captain sees that they are still on the ship, and shouts for them to jump. Once again, it is too late. The film ends with a freeze frame of the captain’s horrified face, illuminated by the fire of the explosion. Many things in A Talking Picture can be understood allegorically: the waving of the people in Lisbon, the dog on the pier in Marseille, the fact that the majority of the characters in the film do not have children, the ship led by an American that ends in disaster. It should not be forgotten that the doll – perhaps an exotic object for some – is a gift from the captain. But the girl’s attempt to save and protect the doll at the end (which is obviously analogous to her mother’s role in relation to her), also involves contact between cultures that, as the film shows, have been in conflict for a very long time. As discussed, the doll is covered with a veil; Maria Joana is wearing the Arabic dress that her mother bought for her in Aden. At one level, this contact represents a visualization of Helena’s words during the dinner about the necessity for a convergence of values between the West and the Arabic world before it is too late. Oliveira associates the events of the film and recent acts of terrorism not only to the history of Western civilization, but also to the history of Portugal, which had a crucial role in Europe’s expansion to the Middle East and Asia. Behind the captain in the dining room is a portrait of Lisbon as it could have looked at the time of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India. When Maria Joana returns to the cabin to retrieve her doll, she and her mother pass by a large painting of Vasco da Gama three times. Each time 62

Political Oliveira they pass, the camera lingers a little on the painting. In No, or the Vain Glory of Command, Alferes Cabrita referred to the discovery expeditions as one of Portugal’s gifts to the world. From his perspective, they represented humanism in practice, if not in theory. The painting on the wall conveys optimism, with Vasco da Gama looking to the future and the rays of the sun forming a large cross over an island in the ocean. A Talking Picture shows how distant that hope is from the reality of the modern world. With The Fifth Empire, Oliveira revisits questions of history, utopia and empire that he had explored in various ways in his previous films, but this time examining personal motivations that had extremely harmful public repercussions. The film is based on the three-act play El-Rei Sebastião/ King Sebastian (1949), by José Régio. The change in title, however, points to an interpretation in light of the current circumstances, in which dreams of empire and utopia, sometimes based on a supposed predestination, involve age-old conflicts between cultures and religions. When the film was screened at the Venice Film Festival, some people associated Sebastian with George W.  Bush, and Oliveira himself said that Bush possessed a ‘Sebastianist’ tendency in his express desire to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world in his own version of the Fifth Empire (see for instance Câmara 2004; Dacosta 2005; Neto 2005). While in earlier films Oliveira had included sometimes extensive references to King Sebastian in narratives dealing with different historical and dramatic situations, the young king is the central focus of The Fifth Empire. The story takes place almost entirely in an antechamber of his castle, perhaps over the course of a single day and night, and involves conversations that the king has with his counsellors, his grandmother Queen Catherine, two court jesters, and, perhaps most importantly, with Simão Gomes, the ‘Holy Shoemaker’, a prophetic figure who is a friend of the shoemaker Gonçalo Anes, or Bandarra (1550–1556), whose prophecies inspired the utopian vision of António Vieira. Furthermore, in the style of Shakespeare, there are voices which some suspect belong to the spirits of the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, and his son Sancho I, while Simão tells Sebastian that the voices may very well be coming from inside himself. In its portrait of the young king (Ricardo Trêpa) in a moment when he is contemplating the disastrous imperialist crusade that culminated in the 63

Portugal’s Global Cinema Battle of Alcácer Quibir, The Fifth Empire focuses on the question of motivation. Why would Sebastian undertake this campaign against the advice of his grandmother the queen, his Council of State and the mysterious voices? The counsellors give multiple reasons not to do it:  the kingdom is poor, the people are tired and poorly clothed, the forces he has at his disposal are insufficient, their allies cannot provide additional soldiers, there are no funds to employ mercenaries, the nobility does not have the means to fund the adventure either, and even if he wins, which they see as unlikely, it would be impossible to maintain the occupation. Is it worth it, one of the counsellors asks, for him to lose the kingdom because of a personal fantasy? The answer offered to this question of motivation does not lie in rational political action, but in the King’s obsessive personality, which involves a significant element of megalomania, and particularly in Sebastian’s obsession with his place in Portuguese history and the myths around him, both in terms of his birth and his legacy. The grandson of King John III (1521– 1557), Sebastian became heir to the throne when his father, Prince John of Portugal, the sole surviving son of John III, died two weeks before his birth in 1554. Due to the fact that Sebastian’s birth was necessary for the continuity of the Avis dynasty, he was known as ‘O Desejado’ (‘The Desired’). When John II died in 1557, Sebastian, at three years of age, was proclaimed king under a regency initially led by his grandmother, Queen Catherine. He assumed power at age 14, and disappeared in Africa ten years later. After his death, he also became known as ‘O Encoberto’ (‘The Hidden One’), who would return one day to restore Portugal’s greatness. Sebastian’s obsession with his place in history becomes evident from the beginning of the film when he visits the tombs of past Portuguese monarchs, as well as in his almost fetishist fixation on the sword of the nation’s founder, Afonso Henriques, who in 1139 defeated five Moorish kings in the Battle of Ourique. Sebastian wants to join the heroic kings of the past and, if possible, surpass their achievements and conquests. This is undoubtedly the meaning of the dreamlike final scenes of the film, when statues of past monarchs come to life and surround the young king. But his desire for the glory of command is a vain glory, as Oliveira had shown in No, or the Vain Glory of Command.

64

Political Oliveira The Holy Shoemaker, Simão Gomes (Luís Miguel Cintra), is the only person Sebastian listens to, although he sometimes speaks in a prophetic voice that the king does not understand. Simão agrees with all those who have advised against the reckless adventurism against Islam, but shows the king the only path he can take to reconcile his historical role with the myths about him: follow his destiny and allow himself to be annihilated, or in other words, commit suicide. Only then can he attain the immortality he desires. If in No and A Talking Picture Oliveira reveals, in a broad sense, the terrible legacy of messianic tendencies and utopian desires like those of Sebastian, in The Fifth Empire he returns to its genesis in megalomania, obsession and irrationality. Manoel de Oliveira was not a political filmmaker in the strict sense. But when reflecting on the modern or historical world and the actions of the countries and human beings within this world, as he does in all of his films, in addition to philosophical, existential, religious, cultural and ethical concerns, the inclusion of an implicitly or explicitly political perspective is inevitable. The filmography of Manoel de Oliveira has such richness that it allows for approaches from many different angles in analyses that are only beginning. The objective of this chapter was merely to point out a few elements that lend themselves to a political interpretation and merit the deeper study that will certainly come.

Notes 1. This chapter has been previously published in Portuguese as ‘Oliveira Político’, in André Queiroz, Jorge Cruz, Leandro Mendonça and Paulo Flilipe Monteiro (eds), Aspectos do Cinema Português, Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro; SR-3; Edições LCV, 2010, pp. 23–48. Translation by Amber-Rose McCartney, 2016. 2. In Conversas com Manoel de Oliveira, the filmmaker says the following: ‘All of my films are about resistance. They are not films of an opposing ideology, nor are they films of attack, but films of resistance. The regime would not forgive me. They accused me of being a communist because they wanted to put a label on me. Indeed, I was seen even less favourably than the communists, because, for them, it was natural for the communists to be part of the opposition’ (1999: 152–3). The last sentence probably alludes to his upper class background

65

Portugal’s Global Cinema

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

and economically advantaged position. In other words, it would not necessarily be ‘natural’ for him to oppose the regime, which favoured the interests of his social class. Oliveira tells of this episode in Conversas com Manoel de Oliveira (1999: 32, 35). Speaking about the film, Oliveira says: ‘Douro is against military discipline, it is a criticism of the police, of power, of violence in Portugal at the time’ (in de Baecque and Parsi 1999: 95). In the long interview with de Baecque and Parsi, Oliveira points out that ‘AnikiBóbó was shot during the Salazar regime and during the war. The film has a pacifist spirit, although that was not a direct intention. It stood up against oppression. I  only put in a policeman because of the symbolic aspect of the film. It was an attack against the dictatorship. Police control, replacing an education that should come from civic practice, which did not exist in the system of Salazar’s Estado Novo’ (1999: 137). Taken from J.J. Aubertin’s 1878 translation, so as to preserve the parallel with the film’s title. Other translations do not use the phrases ‘glory of command’ and ‘vain desire’. This is essentially what Oliveira says in an interview that appears on the DVD version of the film, released by Atalanta Filmes in 2001. It is entirely possible to see a contradiction here, as it is difficult to separate the military element from the desire for knowledge that the voyages represented.

66

4 Portugal, Europe and the World: Geopolitics and the Human Condition in Manoel de Oliveira’s Films Carolin Overhoff Ferreira

The famous poem ‘The Castles’, an integral part of Fernando Pessoa’s Mensagem/Message (1934), closes with an image of the relationship between Europe and the New World that suggests Portugal’s leadership within the panorama of European dominance. Looking towards the Americas, Portugal stands out because of its visionary capacity, hinting at its role as a future geopolitical protagonist: Europe is lying propped upon her elbows: From East to West she lies, staring Out, reminiscent, – Greek eyes from the shelter Of romantic hair. Behind her back the left elbow is cast; The right has the angle place. That one says Italy in its repose; This one says England where, gathered apart, It holds the hand up to support the face.

67

Portugal’s Global Cinema She stares, her gaze doom-heavy, sphingical, Out at the West, the future of the past. The face with which she stares is Portugal. (Pessoa 2007: 14) This image of Portugal’s universalist calling converses with previous representations in Portuguese culture of the Lusitanian role in the ‘Discoveries’ and subsequent interconnection of the modern world created by Portugal’s most notorious visionaries:  Luís de Camões and Father António Vieira. As I  have argued elsewhere (Ferreira 2008), Manoel de Oliveira shows in some of his films, particularly those dealing with the maritime expansion  – Portuguese or European  – a perspective close to these canonical authors, including Pessoa. However, Oliveira formulates the expectation of leadership in the conditional tense, as he proves to be more critical of the ‘vain glory of command’ that characterizes his country’s past, and simultaneously more aware of Portugal’s contemporary geopolitical marginalization. In this chapter I expand my study of Oliveira’s universalist conception of Portugal by looking at the entire body of feature films by the Portuguese director. By doing so I take into account both his argument that Portuguese culture has something important to offer because it has preserved Western values and traditions throughout centuries, and his critique regarding the dehumanization of the modern world – manifested as much in the authoritarianism of traditional Portuguese bourgeoisie as in the status of Western civilization more generally. It should be noted that Oliveira’s geopolitical approach varies considerably in his extensive oeuvre, as does the director’s universalist method, which consists of using a particular situation to draw generalizing conclusions concerning the dilemmas of the human condition. The filmmaker’s universe is, nonetheless, always rooted in JudeoChristian culture, and deals, more often than not, with the tension between humankind’s inclination to sin and the former’s possible salvation. My main goal in this chapter is to understand how Oliveira has framed his universalist method regarding the human condition over the past 80 years with regard to the many geopolitical changes suffered by Portugal, Europe and the world. I focus my analysis on the relationship between his concern with humanity and the impact of the different and changing 68

Portugal, Europe and the World contexts in which he has filmed since 1931. The different scales to be considered are: regional (namely the Porto and Douro region), national (concerning the country’s identity), supranational (Portugal as member of the European Economic Community [EEC] since 1986), transnational (referring to Portugal’s colonial history) and global (as a result of the effects of globalization suffered since the 1990s, and in relation to which Portugal has always seen itself as vanguard, as Pessoa so eloquently put it).

Regional/National Oliveira’s first film, the short documentary Douro, Faina Fluvial/Labour on the Douro River (1931), originates in a local interest: Porto, the director’s hometown, and particularly its port. Aesthetically it embraces European avant-garde cinema; it is at the same time realistic, and underlines cinema’s specificity. Released during what Dudley Andrew has defined as cinema’s ‘cosmopolitan phase’ (2010: 62), referring to the international dimension of film language, Douro follows the model of city symphonies, but develops an unusual take that almost opposes the film to the ‘modernists odes’ (Martins 2010:  9)  on other major European cities. As many researchers note, in comparison with other examples  – especially Berlin-Symphonie einer Stadt/Berlin-A city symphony (1927) by Walter Ruttmann – the centrality of the human condition stands out in Oliveira’s film. Douro ‘never touches the border of the “abstract art” (and its dehumanization) that guides the German director’, claims José Manuel Costa (1999: 85). Although in the early twentieth century Portugal found itself at the margin of profound scientific and technological changes, the young director from the European periphery offers a more universal vision of his city and country by focusing on the conflict between technology and humanity in a world that is profoundly affected by industrialization. The film takes a stance against the utopia of modernization, as well as other types of ideology related to it (see also Johnson in this volume). The same intention of highlighting a universal problem in a local context is equally evident in Oliveira’s first feature film, Aniki-Bóbó (1942), however, by taking the national into account. The film, based on a tale by Rodrigo de Freitas, looks at the relationship between freedom and 69

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Figure 4.1 Teresinha and the doll in Aniki-Bóbó

repression in a group of children who live near the same port featured in Douro. By concentrating on the ethical trespassing that results from human desire, Aniki-Bóbó deals with concepts such as sin and punishment. The love triangle between Eduardinho, Carlitos and Teresinha triggers a critical reflection on wrongdoings in the name of passion: the theft of a doll by Carlitos to please Teresinha and an accident Eduardinho suffers due to the dispute between him and Carlitos (see Figure 4.1). The film challenges Christian morality  – the redemption of Carlitos’s theft when he returns the doll  – and can be seen as a critique of the political system – the Salazar dictatorship whose authoritarian characters, including Eduardinho, are disparaged (cf. Johnson 2005: 48). The universal conflict between desire and social constraints presents itself intertwined with a specifically national idiosyncrasy:  authoritarianism. Douro exposes the different levels of constraining human behaviour and reveals possible excess. In Aniki-Bóbó transgression and redemption are part of human life and need to be regulated by a moral sense that is articulated mainly through consciousness. However, extreme and repressive disciplinary 70

Portugal, Europe and the World measures (as taken by the teacher at school and the police) are, according to the film, never to be justified. In the context of a national if not nationalist film industry created by the New State dictatorship in 1931, the proto-neo-realist approach to the dilemma between transgression and punishment reveals how strongly Aniki-Bóbó distinguishes itself from the Portuguese films of the same era. Even though the film can be seen as an example of cinema’s ‘national phase’ (Andrew 2010: 65), which is internationally marked by the arrival of synchronous sound, Aniki-Bóbó’s universalist perspective on national and regional affairs makes the film transcend this definition. One could say that the film announces the following phase in cinema history according to Andrew, the ‘federated phase’ (2010: 69), in which national traditions and the renewal of aesthetics enlace. It is no surprise that Oliveira precipitated, aesthetically and thematically, what would be known as ‘new cinema’ in the 1950s, given that the repressive regime to which Aniki-Bóbó points its finger was already interfering in Portuguese cinema and restricting its development. Oliveira was one of the victims of the New State’s control of the national film industry, working at first in precarious conditions and then being forced to stop filming altogether. His subsequent film was only released 11 years later. It was one of his most controversial films, which, by expressing in an unprecedented way the relationship between the local and the universal, was falsely associated with the Catholic conservatism of the dictatorship. Acto da Primavera/Rite of Spring (1963) engages, as pointed out by Jacques Parsi (2001), with the problem of representing the sacred. Filming the performance of a sixteenth-century text, the Auto da Paixão [Passion Play], in the Portuguese back-lands, is used as a solution to this challenge, as Parsi explains: In Rite of Spring we never see the Passion [of Christ], but a representation of the Passion. Everything, the singing, the scenery, the people, the beards and moustaches, crudely put on or used (something inexistent in Pasolini [The Gospel according to Matthew], and this difference is important), the revealing of the act of representation in the prologue, all this prevents us from identification. … Behind the artificiality, the scenarios,

71

Portugal’s Global Cinema the masks, in short, there is something more, inexplicable or transcendent, as there is behind the iconostasis of the Orthodox churches. (Parsi 2001: 377–378)

The inexplicable and the transcendent not only arise from this representation, but are also related to the universal motif behind the Passion – the promise of redemption. In the epilogue, which follows Christ’s burial, there is a key moment of distanciation: a montage of images of some of the major wars of the twentieth century, including, for example, the famous mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb which is superimposed on Christ’s face. This ‘descent into hell’, which Christ suffered before his resurrection relates through the chosen images to the suffering of war victims. Hence, the montage is not only, as suggested by Johnson (2009: 93), a ‘commentary on Christian ideals and the modern world’, but, in fact, the representation of the possibility of the repetition of the miracle of the resurrection and, associated with it, the redemption of humanity in the midst of sin and the devastation of the contemporary world. The preservation of the true – and universal – Christian message in the interior of the country is juxtaposed with the perversions of high society that live in mansions in the capital or its countryside in films such as O Passado e o Presente/Past and Present (1972) – initiating a trilogy on frustrated love – to which Benilde ou a Virgem Mãe/Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1975), Amor de Perdição/Doomed Love (1978) and Francisca (1981) belong. Fausto Cruchinho (2008: 55) adds Os Canibais/The Cannibals (1988). They prove that Oliveira’s films are not in tune with the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but explore society’s moral restraints and retrograde conventions, dominating and preventing healthy love relationships. From Rite of Spring onwards canonical national writers begin to be the basis of many of Oliveira’s films that explore Portuguese society at the local and national level. The authors that Oliveira feeds on for the ‘tetralogy of frustrated love’ are Camilo Castelo Branco, José Régio and Agustina Bessa-Luís. Society’s negative effect on individuals was already present in Aniki-Bóbó. But in the tetralogy oppression hovers more acutely over the characters that seek to escape it by perverting their own feelings and even end up killing themselves (in Benilde, Doomed Love and Francisca).

72

Portugal, Europe and the World In these films the strong authoritarian roots of Portuguese society come to the forefront, and are seen as responsible for producing generations of young people willing to self-sacrifice – from Romanticism to the 1940s and 1970s. Society and the contamination of its moral code can be perceived as responsible, while in Past and Present and Benilde the involvement of the Catholic Church in the perversion of feelings is more noticeable. Aesthetically, the tetralogy fits into what has been labelled as the New Portuguese Cinema (Novo Cinema), and thus into the ‘federated phase’ of cinema, characterized by a cinematic language which spread through waves around the world. Oliveira’s intent to draw attention to the representational mode so as to unveil the construction of reality, either through the revelation of the cinematic apparatus or through the acting style, is, however, noticeable in all his films. Despite its international reverberation, Oliveira’s ostensive ‘federated cinema’ focused mainly on national struggles (Andrew 2010: 75); it not only reinvigorated cinematic language, but was also in tune with the renewal of social codes in the Portuguese context. The Oliveirian tetralogy can be considered an excellent example of the representation of specifically national issues in Portuguese cinema, namely the conflicts that stem from repressive social conduct.

Supranational/Transnational/Global When Portugal joined the EEC in 1986, the change in the country’s geopolitical condition manifested itself by widening Manoel de Oliveira’s horizons of production and thematic scope. From Le Soulier de Satin/The Satin Slipper (1985) onwards the director went beyond the local and the national and initiated a debate on the supranational and the transnational. As a Portuguese-German-French co-production The Satin Slipper reflects on the new European context by focusing on Portugal’s imperialist history in the first two centuries of its maritime expansion, and using it as an allegory of the contemporary era. The first contemplation of this new European context does not shy away from Portugal’s marginality at the time; however, it also points out that this position arises from the nation’s dual role as an agent and victim of expansion policies in the race for a division of the world. As

73

Portugal’s Global Cinema a result, the relationship between the human and the domestic condition is taken to another level. The film is based on the play by French Catholic Paul Claudel. The implications of using a non-Portuguese original text are complex: while the impossibility of an earthly love is again present, it now appears as an analogy of worldly desires for power, replacing as such the Portuguese microcosm and its perversions that had served as a background for the literary adaptations named before. The Satin Slipper not only censures ambitions of worldly power, evident in all major European nations portrayed in the film, but also questions imperialism more generally as a sequel of the discovery of the Americas and the conquests in North Africa, although ‘tempering the undeniably imperialist tenor of Claudel’s play’, as Randal Johnson (2007: 44) notes. So as to overcome the paradox of the human condition  – the vocation for domination and the search for love and spirituality – two paths are indicated: Rodrigue and Dona Prouhèze will be rewarded after their deaths, outside of history, since they abdicated from physical love, while Marie des Sept-Epees, the daughter of Prouhèze, joins the king of Austria in a religious project to fight the Muslim Turks, thus combining earthly love and service to God. In the context of the inability of a political union in Europe (that is against the Turkish invasion) due to the prevalence of national interests, the renunciation of power by Rodrigue makes him experience a similar situation to that of Portugal, which finds itself involuntarily under Spanish rule. But the fact that Portugal did not play any political role at that time (recalled in two short scenes that Oliveira adds to Claudel’s play), turns the country into a possible political alternative, much unlike the role the nation played in the tetralogy, which was tied to local authoritarianism. This alternative arises from its peripheral geopolitical situation and, paradoxically, makes Oliveira assume the perspective of Pessoa’s poem quoted above. Despite this critical and unusual vision of European colonialism, as well as its aesthetics, the great merit of the film was the international attention it achieved. Oliveira played a very active part in placing Portugal on the map of what will be called ‘world cinema’, which, according to Andrew (2010: 79), ‘gives expression to silenced cultures’. 74

Portugal, Europe and the World National inflections, even if subtle, are a major feature of world cinema. But the Pessoan love of one’s country present in The Satin Slipper is only fleetingly present in Oliveira’s films of the subsequent 15 years, during which the director begins to produce one film per year, often with the support of European film funding agencies and TV channels, particularly from France. A similar perspective appears only in Non, ou a Vã Glória de Mandar/No, or the Vain Glory of Command (1990), which combines it with a fierce critique of Portuguese imperialism (see Johnson in this volume), as well as in Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo/Journey to the Beginning of the World (1997), which deals with the tensions between individual and collective memory. The suggestion or discussion of positive elements in Portuguese culture are a steady feature in Oliveira’s work in the first decade of the twentieth century, namely in No, or the Vain Glory of Command, Palavra e Utopia/Word and Utopia (2000), Um Filme Falado/A Talking Picture (2003) (see Johnson in this volume), O Quinto Império: Ontem como Hoje/The Fifth Empire (2004) and Cristóvão Colombo, O Enigma/ Christopher Columbus, the Enigma (2007). Word and Utopia results from the celebrations of the ‘discovery’ of Brazil and is the director’s first production that accompanies the changing cinematographic world map. It is part of a group of films with high budgets, funded not only by European countries (Portugal, Spain, France) but also by Brazil within the context of ‘global cinema’, in which ‘the distinction appears less through the cinematic style, than by changes in production and distribution mechanisms’ (Andrew 2010: 80). In fact, Word and Utopia is one of the few ‘author’ films in the context of a co-production agreement with Brazil (cf. Ferreira 2012). Because of its theme, the film focuses its discourse on Portuguese transnationality, which Oliveira had also explored in No. Oliveira’s subsequent films have, however, a more comprehensive geopolitical momentum, since they discuss the division between East and West as a result of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. Although each film presents a different perspective, the overall discourse is similar to the one found in Rite of Spring and, more subtly, in The Satin Slipper. However, this is now contextualized within the new global order: Portugal serves as a model in terms of values such as 75

Portugal’s Global Cinema humanism, while its anti-modern identity in the industrialized world (the nation resists technological modernization that ignores the human condition) coincides with its historical transnational identity (according to Camões and Vieira’s idealization as a positive agent of globalization that enables different peoples to harmoniously embrace). In other words, entering the new millennium Oliveira reverses his method: instead of drawing general conclusions about the human condition from a particular context (authoritarianism or preservation of values in Portugal), when discussing the contemporary global geopolitics and Portugal’s place within it, he draws particular conclusions (Portugal’s values and their possible relevance) from the general context: the critique of the hegemony of the rich European countries and the USA. Paradoxically, in the films where the geopolitical perspective widens to the supranational, transnational and global, the director changes his perspective on what he presents as universal: from the human condition in the modern world, the films move to a focus on the legacy of the Portuguese people, that is, to Portugal’s universal vocation as imagined by Pessoa.

Universal/Local Before posing questions on the supranational, the transnational and the global, which are associated with a criticism of the national and inclined to affirmative positions on patrician values, the films from the mid-1980s until the end of the twentieth century are still dominated by themes regarding the investigation of the human condition. Without focusing on major geopolitical implications, these films raise ethical and religious questions (Mon Cas/My Case [1986], A Divina Comédia/The Divine Comedy [1991], O Convento/The Convent [1995], Inquietude/Restlessness [1998], Je Rentre à la Maison/I’m Going Home [2001], as well as social issues (A Caixa/The Box [1994]), while the paradigm of love as the favourite manifestation of social and human contradictions manifests itself again in the local context (The Cannibals, O Dia do Desespero/Day of Despair [1992], The Convent, Restlessness, Vale Abraão/Abraham’s Valley [1993], Party [1996]), or may involve the European context (A Carta/The Letter [1999], I’m Going Home), but lack the repressiveness of the 1970s. 76

Portugal, Europe and the World My Case, a Portuguese-French co-production, further develops the challenge of spirituality in Oliveira’s previous film, The Satin Slipper. Even though this is a transnational production, the film steps back from the supranational context to address the human condition in the most universal manner possible. Aesthetically, it represents another turning point: while the exposure of the filmic apparatus and fictionality had been a constant of Oliveira’s cinema since Rite of Spring through the use of literary texts in their entirety, My Case is a dialogue with or, as Flavia Maria Corradin and Francisco Maciel Silveira (2010: 14) put it, ‘a cinematic reinterpretation’ of the homonymous play by José Régio. A man, the Unknown, appears on stage just before the beginning of a boulevard play in order to tell the public his ‘case’. Although he argues that he is there due to divine inspiration, the man never gets to tell his story, because he is continually interrupted by other characters, who consider themselves of equal importance: the main actress, the doorman, the author and the spectator. Oliveira films the farce with allegorical dimension in three ways: first, using Régio’s entire text; second, like a silent movie with its typical broad gestures and a voiceover that reads Foirade II by Samuel Beckett; and finally the entire play once again, yet with the sound rotation reversed. Recalling the disclosure of Rite of Spring, the three repetitions end with a montage of ‘documentary films and TV news that expose crimes committed by humanity against itself and nature: wars, riots, shootings, ecological disasters, famine and genocide’ (Corradin and Silveira 2010: 16). The montage is followed by the staging of the Book of Job, whose happy ending – forgiveness by God – is ironically commented on, since the scenography in which Job and his wife encounter themselves is inspired by the Ideal City, a famous painting by Piero della Francesca. By leaving behind the geopolitical dimensions of various sorts, this approach to the human condition reflects the possibility of adhering to a larger community; identity issues are here anchored in the Judeo-Christian culture as a whole. While dealing with the same issue as Rite of Spring, two decades later My Case goes for the first time beyond national boundaries so as to speak of the metaphysical. Another difference consists in the ending already mentioned: Job is reborn as a new man at the end, but this revival is seen with caution and with the usual distance in Oliveira’s cinema. 77

Portugal’s Global Cinema The ironic take on the human condition links the film to The Satin Slipper and The Cannibals. Redemption does not mean that Job will become a better person; it simply indicates the existence of the divine. While in My Case Job recovers his connection with God, The Cannibals, which returns to the Portuguese bourgeois society of the nineteenth century, focuses on the willingness of human beings to turn away from the Almighty so as to live in an amoral and hedonistic way (see Johnson in this volume). Oliveira made only one other film in which geographical boundaries are of no importance and the human condition in the moulds of Christianity and Western culture is predominant:  The Divine Comedy, filmed shortly after No, or the Vain Glory of Command. While My Case focuses on the modern man and the incapacity of communication (nobody wants to hear the others’ ‘cases’) and religious ordeal (justice, love and wisdom of God, incomprehensible to human kind), The Divine Comedy takes up the predicament first explored in Aniki-Bóbó about the ‘volatile balance that separates the sinful from the natural in the religious sphere’ (Santurbano 2010: 3). As Andrea Santurbano puts it, ‘The first major question tackled, therefore, concerns Catholic moralism that takes into account the irresolute, except when it comes across in an unsatisfactory and dogmatic way – a dilemma that concerns reason and instinct, spirit and flesh’ (2010: 3). The intrinsic relationship between good and evil, sin and holiness is studied in a madhouse, where people who confuse themselves with illustrious characters from Western literature are confined: the Antichrist from Friedrich Nietzsche, the Prophet from José Régio, Sonia and Rascolnikov from Crime and Punishment and Ivan and Aliyoscha Karamazov, The Brothers Karamazov, both by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; as well as biblical characters from the Old and New Testament, including Adam and Eve, Jesus, Lazarus, Mary and Martha, and the Pharisee. The intertextuality goes further than in My Case, which leads Santurbano (2010: 211) to state that ‘the development of Oliveira’s cinema, twenty years after the return to fiction and literary adaptations, reaches its revolution’. Besides the factual aesthetic revolution, it is one of the director’s most complex and challenging films on the human condition: Always mixing tragedy and irony, this artwork is an invitation to unmask the illusion of freedom that governs human action, so that he can become free, especially from himself, by

78

Portugal, Europe and the World knowing how to face all the consequences. After all, reaffirming Oliveira’s own postulate, hell, purgatory and paradise belong to this earth: good and evil are intrinsic to man. And this is José Régio’s lesson. (Santurbano 2010: 215–216)

This lesson is developed throughout the 1990s by means of the love paradigm, which uses female protagonists. Focusing again on passion and its intricacies, the director returns to Portuguese society and its preclusion of healthy relationships. The reason for perversion is no longer found in archaic authoritarianism but in gender division. The life of Camilo Castelo Branco offers once again a testimony, but this time for the war between the sexes, while Day of Despair is an unprecedented approach to the question of representation and the dangers of musealization of this canonical author. The most emblematic female figure in Oliveira’s entire oeuvre is the mythical Ema in Abraham’s Valley. She breaks all conventions in order to challenge the social roles assigned to men and women, but ends up becoming a victim when attempting to abolish the binary opposition between them. With the intermission of a tale on the desires of the lower social classes in The Box, the gender question returns in The Convent and Party. As in the two previous films, released in 1995, The Convent is set in the Arrábida Convent, a place with a mystical dimension. The film challenges the binary oppositions established by Catholicism by using characters that tackle the union of female and masculine in the Greek myth of androgyny already present in The Divine Comedy and Abraham’s Valley. This time the issue is explored through the female characters, Hélène and Piedade, who present themselves as ‘two halves of a whole that does not hold, making the viewer feel unsafe in identifying them as the agents of good or evil’ (Cardoso 2010: 232). Based on an idea by Agustina Bessa-Luís, The Convent confirms in its ending the possibility of union in the reunion of the protagonist couple that leaves behind temptations of various sorts  – from Mephistophelian to biblical. The inclination of Portuguese culture towards the universal appears subtly by means of this couple that is visiting Portugal – the American researcher Michael Padovic and his French wife Hélène  – since the scholar seeks to prove that William Shakespeare was actually from Portuguese Jewish descent. 79

Portugal’s Global Cinema In Party, Oliveira explores gender oppositions by looking at the restrictions that women suffer in society, especially within the institution of marriage, reaffirming the female desire of sensuality, thwarted by men. Restlessness and The Letter follow a similar path, but focus on new aspects of women’s roles and their relationship with men. In Restlessness, Oliveira interprets the desire for immortality as being particularly masculine (as in I’m Going Home), while it is defined as an essential part of the female condition; whereas in The Letter the spiritual values a woman is capable of putting between herself and her desire are highlighted. In these five films (one could also include The Divine Comedy) women are however mysterious beings, which is, obviously, a mystification in itself. The characterization of the female character in Journey to the Beginning of the World is no exception, although the film is centred on another issue: migration through the prism of memory. Thus, Oliveira closes the decade returning to the national theme of No, but instead of being interested in historical expansion, he explores the individual story of an emigrant (a French actor whose desire to know his father’s village triggers off the journey of the film). Rather than questioning Portuguese identity so as to assert it in the end, the film offers two models of memory: individual and collective. Mauro Rovai (2008) compares the two: one is represented by the director’s memories (Oliveira’s alter ego), who is visiting the ruins of childhood places, while the other is based on how the inhabitants of Portugal’s countryside deal with the past. The author comes to the conclusion that there is no hierarchization involved: This does not imply that the village has a more human or correct way of dealing with the past; however, it confronts us with a different way of perceiving it. Instead of destroyed places and diseased time, the small village and its customs (how to behave at the table, the storing of nutriments, how to dress, what to wear for mourning and so forth) offer a different approach to how to deal with the passing of time. (Rovai 2008: 133)

Given its anachronism, this distinct way of dealing with time is not presented as an alternative. But it has a dignity that is contrary to the threats of modernity, which are interpreted as agents of destruction, dehumanization

80

Portugal, Europe and the World and war (especially the conflict in the former Yugoslavia). Nevertheless, Journey to the Beginning of the World presents similar contradictions to those identified in the other films on maritime expansion, as well as the analogous paradoxical elements found in them with regard to the love paradigm. Interestingly, despite the fact that all these films mystify women, they demonstrate, on the other hand, by means of references and evocations of the political situation in Europe and the wider world, a concern with the contemporary geopolitical situation that emanates from a humanist vision and the challenges faced by humanity in the modern world. Conversely, the perspective on the upper class remains equally critical, extending from the 1990s (Restlessness and The Letter) to the new millennium (O Princípio da Incerteza/The Uncertainty Principle [2002], Espelho Mágico/Magic Mirror [2005], Belle Toujours [2006] and Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura/Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl [2009]), as much in the local context as in the European (French). In the world of high society, life is claustrophobic due to the hypocrisy of conventions, borrowed from Catholic religion. Intertwined between films that seek to position Portugal in the new global order, Manoel de Oliveira focuses increasingly on the unmasking of the female condition within the binary oppositions of good and evil, holiness and sin, but does not really give up completely on mystification. In The Uncertainty Principle, based on a novel by Agustina BessaLuís, young Camila is still forced to marry in contemporary times, while a debauched Vanessa has the masculine right to manipulate and choose her partners. The same actresses reverse their position in society in Magic Mirror, also based on a book by Bessa-Luís. Alfreda is a sterile aristocrat, obsessed with the desire to see the Virgin Mary, while young manipulative Vicenta plays the Virgin in exchange for money. What is at stake is the fluidity of the features attributed to women, as Paola Poma explains: As a kind of holography, the various faces of the two women intervene and recompose in another order, which is not fixed, an intrinsic quality of film, but cross fictionality, memory and reality simultaneously. All women are present, as archetypes, and the uncertainty principle moves their desires. (Poma 2010: 241)

81

Portugal’s Global Cinema The question is where we can find a real woman in these films that does not serve as an example of an abstract female condition strongly tied to the Christian vision of the Portuguese director (cf. Cruchinho 2008). The growing division between the aesthetic refinement of Oliveira’s cinema and his paradoxical perspectives  – by highlighting Portuguese values as holding the possible solution to the plight of the contemporary world, or by discussing biblical ideas related to women – can be observed in two of his last films too: Christopher Columbus and Eccentricities. While unfolding the ambivalent suggestion that Columbus was Portuguese, the film about the Genoese navigator affirms, like no other film before, the universal vocation of the Portuguese people and its willingness to explore the unknown (cf. Ferreira 2010: 143). Eccentricities demonstrates, in turn, how a young man is led by appearances when falling in love with a beautiful young woman who is a kleptomaniac. For the first time we have a female character whose mystery is unravelled and proves to be empty, reducing her to a threat for men.

Conclusion Manoel de Oliveira’s entire filmography spans eight decades and covers more than 50 films (including short, medium and feature-length productions). It would be excessively ambitious to draw definitive conclusions on the relationship between the human condition and the geopolitical dimensions in relation to the entirety of his oeuvre. However, this study has revealed a number of key principles. At the beginning of his career, in 1931, the director uses in Douro the local as a platform from where to speak about universal issues, since they relate to the human condition in the modern world under industrialization. The universalist method contemplates the national reality, whose tendency towards repression is first revealed in 1942 in the local in AnikiBóbó. This is again seen in Rite of Spring, from 1963. Human transgression and redemption from sin persist in the indictment of the perversions of Portugal’s anachronistic upper class in the ‘tetralogy of frustrated loves’, filmed between 1972 and 1981.

82

Portugal, Europe and the World The question of power, explored through the representation of local gentry, is reframed when the political situation not only changes but reaches a new scale: the supranational in The Satin Slipper, filmed one year before Portugal joined the EEC in 1986. The transnational production mode takes the elite of European countries and their imperialist histories as its target, although the problem of love as humankind’s greatest weakness is maintained, but now understood as a trophy in the struggle between the mundane and the spiritual. After reaching this supranational dimension, and being able to count on a wider range of financial support schemes in this new geopolitical reality, Oliveira advances to the next level, which had been present until then only in his documentaries:  My Case from 1986 presents the modern man, however associated with Job, once again as main character. The filmmaker constructs a universal character that serves as a reference for all contemporary Western culture. Although situated in Portugal, the same occurs in The Cannibals, whose main character reveals the validity of this nineteenth-century parable for modern times. No changes the register by addressing the involvement of Portugal in European imperialism. While critical towards this history, the film alerts viewers to the fact that Portugal has indeed a universal vocation that distinguishes the country from other nations, since the ‘gift’ of the Discoveries is interpreted as a positive transnational momentum. The phase that engages with the possibilities and constraints of the supranational scale ends with The Divine Comedy, which addresses in the most complex and intertextual way possible how human beings deal with sin. The scale is the same as in The Satin Slipper and My Case: Western culture is, however, freed of any direct political implications, which makes the director reach the peak of his original universalist method with this film. With Portugal now on the world map as a country with a cinema with a unique vision, strongly associated with the filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, and after six decades of irregular activity, the director enters with this production from 1991 into his most prolific phase. From then on he explores from varying angles his main issues and deepens one in particular: the status of women and their relationship with the Christian binary oppositions of good and

83

Portugal’s Global Cinema evil, holiness and sin. As in his first films, the director returns to the local so as to contextualize female desire. Portugal still serves as a conservative background, as well as, depending on the chosen time, as a repressive context. When production mode permits it, Oliveira crosses borders: several times to France, once to Brazil and once to the USA. In the latter cases, he points out once again the universal vocation of his nation by assigning Portugal the potential of playing an important role in the new global order, namely in A Talking Picture and Christopher Columbus. The last turning point with regard to the relationship between the human condition and the geopolitical dimension appears with Journey to the Beginning of the World where Yugoslavia’s crisis serves as the film’s backdrop. But this film, from 1997, only briefly mentions contemporary geopolitical problems. It is after the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001 that they appear again more forcefully and positioned within a global context. It is, nonetheless, not the director’s sole concern, since the investigation of the female condition remains central. In the films with a geopolitical bias, the local and the national serve as starting points to criticize the hegemony of powerful nations – the European and the USA – as well as to mark the true Christian virtues, whose preservation in Portugal have been pointed out constantly since Rite of Spring. Following the desire to investigate the human condition through the key concepts of Christian ethics – sin and redemption – and developing an aesthetics that questions film’s ability to represent any truth, Oliveira incorporated the national (authoritarianism before and after the Salazar dictatorship), the supranational (after Portugal joined the EEC by means of a critical attitude towards its imperialism), the transnational (revealing the vain glory of command during the Portuguese empire together with the importance of the ‘Discoveries’), and gave visibility to Portuguese cinema in the global context and commented critically globalization and the new order resulting from it. The analysis of his films, which act on the most diverse and interconnected scales, leads me to conclude that the most compelling are those in which Oliveira follows without geopolitical concerns his universal method, which arises from his attempt to equate sin and redemption of man in the world modern, either on the local scale or without concrete reference. The 84

Portugal, Europe and the World films that comment more directly on Portugal’s, Europe’s and the world’s geopolitical situation are involuntarily paradoxical because they defend too strongly the virtues of his maritime nation and replace the interest in the human condition with Pessoa’s praise, among others, of Portugal’s universal vocation. This paradox also applies to those films on the female condition that challenge the female position in society as much as they remistify women as part of nature. Oliveira’s strength as a filmmaker lies in exploring the tensions between the male condition and the modern world, or those between modernity and the Judeo-Christian heritage, that is, his strongest films are those that relate to his most intimate dilemmas.

85

5 Amália (2008): Stories of a Singer and Tales of a National Cinema Anthony De Melo

Fado began for me as a song and ended as a way of life that I identified with. A strange way of life. Amália Rodrigues (cited in Santos 1987: 27)

Amália Rodrigues (1920–1999) fascinates in equal measures of adoration and disgust. Depending on who you are speaking with, she will be the greatest fadista, Portugal’s most treasured star, a cultural icon beloved and admired throughout the world. Or, perhaps, she’s an irrelevance, a symbol of Portugal that remains fixed in the stereotype of the melancholic ‘pobrete mas alegrete’ (poor but happy) people, and the voice of that most clichéd musical embarrassment pitched to the tourist trade.1 This binary emotional response to the famous fadista is dramatized in the opening scene of the biopic Amália (Carlos Coelho da Silva, 2008). Waiting backstage before a concert days after the 1974 revolution that ended the New State dictatorship, Amália (Sandra Barata Belo) stands before a full-length mirror clutching a doll. You might think that this is a ritual that the singer performs before all her shows, but very shortly the doll will come to represent a prop similar to the ‘rosebud’ sled in Citizen Kane

87

Portugal’s Global Cinema (Orson Welles, 1941), without the plot-driven mystery. This opening shows Amália in an innocent, solitary moment amidst the turbulent time of revolution. A woman offers her a drink in a cocktail glass, which she politely turns down. Amália hands the woman the doll and walks to the stage. The camera follows behind her and the film then cuts to the stage with the camera still positioned behind Amália as she walks to stand behind and between her two accompanying guitarists. Two bright spotlights shine directly on her, the frame bathed in light and dark, the audience, seated, facing the singer (see Figure 5.1). Thus far the opening is visually striking in its use of lighting, dark costumes and set-dressing, with a sombre mood that in light of this scene taking place after the end of decades of dictatorship, feels tense. There is no sense of a celebratory or triumphal mood, certainly not for Amália, who is depicted as quite reserved. Of course, for anyone familiar with the history of the revolution and Amália’s story, this time period was not a life nor a career highlight (more on that later). She raises the microphone to her mouth and a man stands up to shout, ‘fascista’ (fascist), resulting in more venomous shouts, prompting her family, friends and supporters to engage vocally and physically with the protesters. Amália and her guitarists begin

Figure 5.1 Amália: the protagonist on stage days after the 1974 revolution

88

Amália (2008) the first song and the commotion subsides, however, one man leaning over the balcony shouts, ‘voz do Salazar’ (Salazar’s voice), incriminating her as a ‘Salazarista’, a willing supporter of the dictator, who provided the totalitarian regime with the cover of a lovely voice – a charge that followed her for much of her career. Amália continues to sing, and the opening scene ends with her voice silencing the audience, but with no consensus of adoration toward her. As for myself, Amália represents, aside from academic interest, an aural trigger for some fond personal memories of growing up a first-generation Canadian son of Portuguese immigrants. I recall hot, humid summer evenings in Toronto, a gathering of family and friends on our porch in the city’s downtown Annex neighbourhood. Card games were played, stories were told, and Amália sang fado on the radio. As much as rock and pop songs were the soundtrack of my days, fado and Amália provided the soundtrack to my nights. Now that some of those family and friends are gone, that memory of my youth plays with Amália singing plaintively over the sepia toned images. Amália Rodrigues inspired a Portuguese cultural industry built around her as a national and international star. At the time of her death, the government declared three days of national mourning and suspended the general election campaign. She has been the subject of books, art installations, a stage musical, museum exhibits, film documentaries, one biopic and another feature film popularly perceived as biographical (Fado: História d’uma Cantadeira/Fado: Story of a Singer [Perdigão Queiroga, 1947]). You can argue that, almost two decades after her death, she still holds the unique position of Portugal’s most prominent cultural figure. In this chapter Amália is discussed in relation to the tradition of fado biographies that formed an integral discourse for legitimizing fado as a profession, and in relation to the tendency in female biopics to focus on suffering, also a key trope in fado. Amália is a tentative step toward engaging with mainstream cinema convention, especially after the ‘everyday fascism’ (Geada 1981: 66) of the films of the 1930s to 1950s, and the art cinema and auteurist backlash against those films since the 1960s. As such, the film will act as a leaping-off point for a discussion of other aspects of Portuguese cinema, such as the return of a popular genre to the national film industry. 89

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Amália and fado biographies I never said anything about the film because it had nothing to do with my life. (Amália Rodrigues, cited in Santos 1987: 81)

In a series of interviews with Vítor Pavão dos Santos (a noted journalist and theatre historian), that took place over many hours over two years, Amália made the above statement dispelling the popular notion that the 1947 film in which she starred, Fado: Story of a Singer, was in any way true to her life.2 So, while her family objected to the ‘lies’ and ‘slander’ that they believe are dramatized in the 2008 biopic, she allowed or just ignored that it was accepted as fact that the 1947 film was based on her life. This was understandable given the tradition of fado biographies which appeared in fado magazines and newspapers beginning in the 1920s. It was believed by fado aficionados that given the backlash and anxiety about a song whose origins lay in the margins of Portuguese society, there was a need to legitimize the song in some way, therefore allowing fado to be promoted as the national song. Before going on to discuss the impact of these biographies on the Amália biopic, a brief analysis of these fado biographies will follow. Fado biographies began appearing in the 1920s as a way to counter the claims that fado should not be celebrated as the national song due to its disreputable and transgressive associations. These biographical profiles of fadistas became important tools in the fight towards respectability by providing ‘biographical narratives … to reflect an attempt to fit in with a public image which would be recognised by the world of fado’ (Fradique and Jerónimo 1994:  91). The biographies, therefore, showed that the fadistas were fated to be singers of fado, born with this talent, worked diligently at their craft, and were of humble origins. In a sense, they turned the fadistas into characters that fit a narrative that directly addressed accusations of immorality, decadence and defeatism. As such, it was in the professional interest of the singers to allow the stories in the biographies to be circulated as fact: The most interesting aspect of the conversations with the fadistas was the way they defended and reproduced their biographical

90

Amália (2008) narratives in the same way these had already been made public. They regarded the published biographies as an interiorised version of their lives, re-telling them whenever the need arose. (Fradique and Jerónimo 1994: 93)

Over the years the biographies moved beyond the goal of deflecting negative criticism and became de facto marketing materials for the fadistas. The biographies tell of singers born with the gift to sing fado (a gift bestowed by God), who begin singing at community events, who may overcome social hardship via their gift (and divine providence) and who then go on to act as cultural missionaries bringing fado to the far-flung outposts of Portuguese emigration. These biographies followed a template along the lines of an innate talent flourishing via specific avenues to success (Fradique and Jerónimo 1994: 96). They included stories of the fadista’s precocious talent and of growing up in a traditional fado neighbourhood (Alfama or Mouraria, for example), of family objections, and the successful début singing in a fado house followed by obtaining a professional license and acting as ‘fado ambassadors’ performing nationally and internationally. In Amália it is established very early in the film that as a young girl Amália was drawn to singing. The film uses flashbacks after the 1974 concert opening to show us Amália in a New York hotel room in 1984 and then back to the late 1920s when she was left with her maternal grandparents in Lisbon. While in New York she learns that she has lung cancer and that the operation could mean the loss of her singing voice. In the hotel room, she contemplates suicide, standing on the ledge of the balcony. While on the ledge the first flashback shows the farewell scene on the train platform as a six year old Amália, in tears, rushes on to the train to be with her younger sister Celeste. After a brief shot of her on the ledge in New York, the sixyear-old Amália is sitting in church with her grandfather quietly singing along to a children’s choir. What follows is the adult Amália deciding not to jump from the balcony and more flashbacks of her singing as a young girl, entertaining neighbours in Alfama. The importance of singing in her life is very clear in these scenes. Her singing first of all is connected to God; the first instance of her singing as a child is shown in church. The talent is evident by those around her who enjoy hearing her sing.

91

Portugal’s Global Cinema Another key moment, both for the fado biographies and in the biopic, is the début performance in a fado venue. In the biographies these are overwhelming successes, leaving little doubt that the fadista is going to go on to have a remarkable career. Again, this is part of the project of establishing fado as a song that features performers of exceptional talent. The biographies claim that these singers are meant to be singing fado, that regardless of their lack of professional training, they will be discovered and their talent will be rewarded. Of course Amália’s début was a smash hit, and of course she went on to have a remarkable career, but what stands out in the biopic is exactly how she gets to that initial performance. While singing fado selling fruit, a man ‘discovers’ her. This nameless ‘angel’ who descends from a staircase as Amália sings fado in the rain, walking with her basket of fruit, tells her that she should be singing fado and offers her his business card to use as an introduction for an audition at the Retiro da Severa, one of Lisbon’s prominent fado venues. As Dennis Bingham (2010: 213) notes female biopics often depict their female protagonists as being unable to discover their own destiny. While Amália has shown a desire to sing professionally, it is not until a man confirms her talent that she goes on to sing in a fado house, a début that is shown to be so spectacular that her rise to stardom is swift, which in fact it was. As mentioned, she was always singing as a child and showed that this was something she thought about pursuing. What complicates this goal, as depicted in the film, is the relationship with her mother, shown to be somewhat strained. Her mother is reluctant to provide the permission for Amália to sing at the local theatre and is shown to have a dislike of singing, almost that there is some personal motivating factor that causes her to be anxious about it, even to have a physical negative reaction to singing itself. Amália, however, continues singing for herself, singing as she sells fruit from a basket around the dockside of Lisbon. Family conflict is a narrative feature of the fado biographies. Initially reluctant to value fado as a worthy pursuit, the family acts as a dramatic obstacle to the fadista’s story. Though this conflict is part of the discourse of fado as it pertains to expectations of a fadista’s story, it is one that is vehemently denied by Amália’s family. The family launched a court injunction to prevent the biopic from being released, citing the troubled relationship with her mother as a major inaccuracy (Cardoso and Coelho 2008). There 92

Amália (2008) is truth to their objection as Amália stated that she loved to sing with her mother, and there is a lovely scene in the documentary, The Art of Amália (Bruno de Almeida, 2000), where she sings with her mother, Amália sitting on the arm of a deckchair where her ageing mother sits and sings with a frail voice. Regardless of the truth behind these scenes, the history of these fado biographies places the biopic well within that tradition.

Between Hollywood melodrama and national Portuguese cinema Above all else, Amália’s life is presented as a series of great moments of success punctuated by moments of incredible suffering, a warts-andall melodrama typical of the biopic genre. It has been noted that a common feature of female biopics is the trope of suffering. Dennis Bingham (2010: 10) writes that ‘[b]iopics of women … are weighted down by myths of suffering, victimization, and failure.’ Raphaëlle Moine (2014:  62)  has observed that the Hollywood model of a melodrama is particularly suited to presenting biographical narratives where suffering features prominently: The melodramatic Hollywood [warts-and-all] formula is a good vehicle for depicting more modern figures who aspire to independence, while enclosing their ambition within a circle of sufferings:  exceptional women, to a greater extent than men, pay a high price for their talent and ambition in the form of spectacular sufferings, whether of mind or body.

Amália adheres to this generic convention of focusing on a successful woman’s failure at romantic love and personal trauma. Pedro Marta Santos, co-screenwriter of the biopic, outlines in the press kit what became the key motivations for tackling the script: Her outward personality always searched for joy and almost always found loneliness; Amália’s popular dimension constituted, in many ways, an escape from an inner life marked by isolation; and, finally, Amália the woman was solar and alive, always having a ready answer, although she inevitably ended up “looking for love in all the wrong places”. (Amália Press Kit 2008: 11)

93

Portugal’s Global Cinema This parallels fado’s affective emotionality, particularly as it applies to its singers. Common assumptions of fado address the song’s emotionality often only referenced to its melancholia, signalled semantically by the plangent lyrics, musically via the preponderance of minor melodies and sorrowful voices expressing lived experiences, and visually by the dark clothing and chiaroscuro Lisbon streets. These assumptions, forming much of the song’s critical discourse, are often highly impressionistic – fado as representative of the Portuguese ‘soul’. Fadistas symbolically embody abandonment, loss, pain and suffering as part of their performance practice. In a conversation with a recording engineer, fado scholar Lila Ellen Grey (2013: 161) was told that the ‘female voice, to be the voice of fado must be a punished voice, punished by the life of fado, of the fado houses, of smoke, of drink, of late nights.’ This has become a popularly accepted trope of fado, a vital ingredient to the expectations of an audience and those professionally invested in the song. Add to this the iconography of Amália’s performing style, one that became the standard for all female fadistas and visually representative of fado’s melancholy, with her dressed all in black, eyes closed, head tilted back, a posture suggesting the voice physically attempting to reach up to the heavens and the hands occasionally coming together as if in prayer. In the biopic, Amália, aside from her talent as a singer and performer, is shown to be a volatile personality, deeply melancholic and prone to depression and suicide attempts. She endures the deaths of a beloved younger sister to tuberculosis and the man she truly loves to a weak heart. The film shows Amália and married banker Ricardo Espírito Santo enjoying a platonic relationship, but suggests that they were very much in love. At the moment that she makes the decision to tell him that she loves him, he dies, and she is once again shown as having suffered greatly. She secretly attends his funeral, hiding behind a gravestone, rain streaming down on her, eventually burying the lavish earrings he gave her in the wet dirt. A montage of Amália’s many sufferings follows this scene while the song ‘Aranjuez mon amour’ is heard. The song was one of many non-fado songs that Amália sang, displaying her diversity as a singer, and in this context aurally expresses the film’s over-arching theme that Amália never attained 94

Amália (2008) romantic true love and that her expressive emotionality as a singer derived from a life of suffering. This extends to the ridicule she faced as a supposed supporter of António Salazar and his New State dictatorship. These accusations arose because of her status as the great star of fado and of the propaganda efforts of the regime to monopolize on her success and on fado’s popularity. Take, for example, that Amália was the only actress to have won three best-actress awards from the propaganda ministry, which Patrícia Vieira (2015: 6) notes is a result of the regime’s efforts to exploit her popularity. A telling event in her life was the deportation of her songwriting collaborator, Alain Oulman, for alleged leftist activities. Oulman is credited with broadening Amália’s repertoire, introducing new musical influences to fado songwriting, as well as adapting the poetry of Luís de Camões and other revered Portuguese writers. In the biopic his relationship with Amália is used to counter the accusations of Amália’s compliance with the regime. She is shown arguing with government ministers, appealing to them to stop their investigation and harassment, and then meeting him in the middle of the night as he is being deported, an emotional scene showing her as a vulnerable woman caught in a dramatic political situation beyond her control. In her biography with Vítor Pavão dos Santos (1987:  182–183) she addresses these accusations declaring that she never was a member of the regime, never held a political position, and that she defended Oulman. It is important to note that at no time does she state what her political bias is, leaving supporters and detractors to carry on the debate. Amália is also a departure of sorts from contemporary Portuguese films. Portuguese cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s was characterized by genres of comedy, popular folklore and historical/literary costume dramas. As a cinema of genres, it differed little from the films of the earlier silent decades that also poached from Portuguese literature, theatre, and historical narratives of Portugal’s expansionist past. The continuity of these genres lasted virtually uncontested until the 1960s, and with the emergence of a group of young filmmakers inspired by the world-wide phenomenon of ‘new’ film movements, genre films gave way to auteurist art cinema. The Novo Cinema Português (New Portuguese Cinema) was led by producer António da Cunha Telles, and directors Paulo Rocha, Fernando Lopes and António Macedo. These were university-educated young men, trained in 95

Portugal’s Global Cinema Paris and London (Macedo the exception), who sought to engage with young film movements emerging in other countries. After years of isolation from international film festivals, the filmmakers of New Portuguese Cinema were eager to take part in cinema trends and debate. They turned to European art cinema and other world art cinema, rather than the traditions of genre in the Portuguese cinema, for their films. They would receive financial and institutional support in 1968, which shifted the focus of Portuguese cinema from genre to an auteur-centred national industry. Amália, while not shunning the art cinema focus of contemporary Portuguese cinema, more closely adheres to the more mainstream Hollywood and international prestige biopic that has recently become a bankable and award-laden genre (Vidal 2014:  2). Amália fits rather comfortably alongside such films as, Ray (Taylor Hackford, USA, 2004), Walk the Line (James Mangold, USA, 2005) and La Môme/La Vie en Rose (Olivier Dahan, 2007). In fact, it was the Edith Piaf biopic which initially inspired the making of Amália. The film’s producer, Manuel S.  Fonseca, attended a screening of La Vie en Rose, and was struck by the applause and standing ovation that occurred at the end of that screening. It was that moment that, according to Fonseca, made it clear to him that ‘Amália had, much like Piaf, and as much as Piaf, the right to receive that applause’ (Amália Press Kit 2008: 7). Given the task of producing the first film of a new production company, VC Filmes, Fonseca set out to make a prestige mainstream film. Amália is a bold step in the direction of lavish prestige filmmaking in Portugal.3 The film’s release coincided with its parent company releasing new digitally mastered compact discs of Amália’s discography, a production synergy across various platforms that is not common in Portuguese cinema.4 The film had a budget of €3.5 million, a staggering amount for a Portuguese film. The film opened in 66 cinemas in Portugal and was distributed in countries such as, Brazil, China, Holland, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. However, the film failed to reach the audience numbers the company hoped for, amassing a box-office in Portugal of only €929,000, and thus demonstrating that the financial reality of contemporary Portuguese cinema is still very much a precarious proposition. The goal of VC Filmes, as set out by Manuel S. Fonseca, of a return to narrative cinema, while paying respect to the auteurist tradition (Amália Press 96

Amália (2008) Kit 2008: 7), is evident in Amália, though it is skewed in the direction of mainstream cinema. The focus on her love life, the suffering depicted in her failed attempts at romantic attachment, though cause for anger by some (her family, notably), is a common trope of the biopic genre, specifically the story of the successful woman who only seeks that one perfect love. This focus places less significance on her contribution to fado, especially on how she dramatically altered the performance style of the fadista, instead opting to sentimentalize her as a heroine at the mercy of love and fate. It is lavish and spectacular, and the performance of Sandra Barata Belo is worthy of praise and further discussion. The biopic certainly has a place among the many cultural products that focus on the life and career of Amália Rodrigues. It may not satisfy supporters or detractors of the great singer, but then again, that debate seems a very long way from having a resolution, if one is ever reached. The biographical accounts of the lives and careers of the fadistas contributed significantly to fado’s enduring myths and iconography. The biographies cemented, both in reality and in falsehoods, fado’s claim to legitimacy as national song and emotional signifier of the Portuguese soul. They reveal a need on the part of the song’s admirers to position the song at the centre of national culture. Thus, the fadista portrays all the hallmarks of a life devoted to fado, a life that was born to sing fado, a life rooted in the emotionality of the song. Even though the filmmakers focused their narrative on her romantic life, the enduring legacy of those biographies, cemented in the foundation of fado history, demonstrate the durability of the literary and oral tradition of the fado biography.

Notes 1. Anthropologist Mattijs van de Port writes that her friends in Portugal laugh when they hear fado, are annoyed by the attention paid to Amália and fado, and that her final televised appearance was embarrassing with her ‘staggering in front of the microphone, shouting “I’m not drunk, I’m not drunk” ’ (1999: 15). 2. Those interviews would be compiled in book form, released in 1987 under the title, Amália: uma biografia, and much later form the basis for the film script of Amália.

97

Portugal’s Global Cinema 3. At the time of writing, I would speculate that this would not be a production model that will be followed by other Portuguese producers, given that the film failed in achieving box-office success, as referenced in this chapter. However, this does not discount the producer’s stated goal of continuing to produce prestige-budget films, and given that the production and marketing of the film clearly set out to stack a claim on this as an economic, as well as generic strategy, the film does signal an attempt, at least, at more mainstream film production. It is worth noting that VC Filmes’s follow-up to the Amália biopic was A Vida Privada de Salazar (2009), a 2-part television series, also released as a feature film in cinemas, about a supposed love affair between António Salazar and the French journalist, Christine Garnier, signalling the company’s interest in the biopic genre. 4. Grupo Valentim de Carvalho is a multimedia conglomerate that began as a recording company in 1914, became Amália’s record label, and who continue to own the rights to the singer’s recordings.

98

6 La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage: A Franco-Portuguese Comedy of Integration Ginette Vincendeau

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage was one of the surprise French hits of 2013, with 1.17 million spectators,1 garnering several prizes, including the European Film Award for that year. The film’s success was all the more surprising in that although the two lead actors, Rita Blanco and Joaquim de Almeida, were major names in Portugal (Almeida has also appeared in US TV series and action films), they were unknown to French audiences. Nor was the director Ruben Alves, a French actor of Portuguese descent, a household name. Thus we can assume that the success of the film in France, at least initially, had more to do with the genre, comedy, and the topic, integration, than the cast. As much is suggested by the film’s poster which, in the tradition of the French ensemble film, features the principal actors in a group pose, happy faces beaming at the camera; the scene is bathed in golden light, with colour coding to suggest both the Portuguese and the French flags (see Figure 6.1). The Gilded Cage places the experience of people torn between two countries and two cultures squarely at the centre of its narrative. Maria (Blanco) and José (Almeida) Ribeiro, a Portuguese couple in their early 50s, have been working in Paris for 30 years, she as a concierge (caretaker) in a wellheeled block of flats, he as a builder. Both are exceptionally hard working,

99

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Figure 6.1 Poster of The Gilded Cage

eager to please, and well integrated at work (with predominantly French colleagues and clients) and among (predominantly Portuguese) friends and family. When José unexpectedly inherits the family house and vineyard in the Douro valley on his brother’s death, the Ribeiros are confronted with the possibility of going back to Portugal, as the will stipulates they must live there. They hesitate for fear of letting down those around them. But when 100

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage they find out about the inheritance, José’s boss Francis (Roland Giraud), Maria’s sister Lourdes (Jacqueline Corado) who wants to start a restaurant with her, and the inhabitants of the building all plot to keep them in France for fear of losing such talented and accommodating workers. Meanwhile, Maria and José’s children, raised in Paris, consider themselves French: the adolescent Pedro (Alex Alves Pereira) is still at school and Paula (Barbara Cabrita), a young lawyer, is in love with Charles Caillaux (Lannick Gautry), the son of her father’s boss, Francis. Paula’s pregnancy as an unmarried woman causes a rift with her father, but after various twists and turns, harmony is restored. The pregnant Paula and Charles move to Portugal to manage the vineyard while Maria and José stay in Paris with Pedro. The film ends on a gloriously happy reunion of the two families and their friends in the Portuguese house, magically dissolving national and class divisions. Echoing Thomas Sotinel in Le Monde, the French press saluted The Gilded Cage as a consensual comedy, dealing in stereotypes and yet marked by emotional finesse and subtlety as well as authenticity (Sotinel 2013). Portuguese reviewers followed suit, almost universally praising a comedy ‘mocking stereotypes, but never ridiculing the figure of the Portuguese’ and ‘achieving a great balance between comedy and melodrama’ (Ramos 2013). Unsurprisingly, all emphasized the excellence of the Portuguese actors, especially Blanco, as well as Maria Vieira’s comic turn as Rosa, the Caillaux’s maid. With very few dissenting voices, then, The Gilded Cage was liked and admired for its amusing yet sensitive and accurate representation of the Portuguese community in France, as a portrayal ‘created from within’ (Mourinha 2013). It may be tempting to consider this charming, feel-good comedy as a one-off utopian fantasy, an interpretation reinforced by the film’s autobiographical dimension. Alves dedicates the film to his parents, and one of the supplements on the Pathé 2013 DVD edition of the film features a short interview with them as real-life Maria and José – respectively concierge and construction worker – and both appear fleetingly on screen in uncredited cameos in the final celebratory meal. Yet The Gilded Cage transcends the narrow confines of an isolated case study, as the film touches on wider issues of hyphenated national identity. Notwithstanding its specific cultural and personal anchorage, The Gilded Cage is also part of a buoyant 101

Portugal’s Global Cinema sub-genre of French comedy, the ‘comedy of integration’, and it needs to be seen in relation to it. This chapter considers in what ways The Gilded Cage both explores the construction of identity among Portuguese immigrants in France and fits within a wider sub-genre of French cinema.

French comedy of integration It is worth pausing briefly on this group of films as their proliferation and popularity has not been matched by scholarly interest. Instead, work on immigration in cinema has tended to focus on dramatic, mostly auteur, films that highlight the plight of migrants as well as issues of racism and displacement (Naficy 2001; Berger and Komori 2010; Berghahn and Sternberg 2010; Loshitzky 2010; Ballesteros 2015). Comedy is historically the most popular genre in French cinema, with a multitude of sub-genres, ranging from broad comedy aimed at the family (such as the Camping series), to romantic comedy (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain/Amelie, Hors de Prix/Priceless), auteur comedy (Le Goût des Autres/The Taste of Others, On Connaît la Chanson/Same Old Song) and ironic ‘post-modern’ comedy (OSS117, Le Caire Nid d’Espions/OSS117, Cairo, Nest of Spies, The Artist).2 Across the board, emphasis is placed on the observation of social mores. This can take the form of regional difference (Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis/Welcome to the Sticks), the mocking of history (Les Visiteurs) or the political class (Quai d’Orsay/The French Minister).3 Highly significant, including to The Gilded Cage, is the focus on the family, with frequent recourse to children as agents of narrative resolution. Recent examples include Le Prénom/What’s in a Name?, L’Oncle Charles, Lolo and Retour Chez ma Mère/Back to Mom’s.4 The French comedy of integration is a variant of what Olivier Mongin calls ‘identity comedy’ (comique identitaire) (Mongin 2007; Quemener 2014; Lanzoni 2014:  184–198; Vincendeau 2015). Its aim is positive and constructive rather than focusing on conflict or exclusion. In these films, typically, ethnic identity is affirmed and exaggerated, as are tensions and conflicts, and then all is resolved in a consensual tale of social and familial harmony. As the authors of a recent survey put it, ‘All the films use the same device of caricaturing gently an archetype, mocking a community, 102

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage a minority, without offending them, ensuring a happy ending’ (Béglé and Sebag 2014). Key films include:  La Vérité Si Je Mens!/Would I Lie to You? (followed by two sequels), Chouchou, Mauvaise Foi/Bad Faith, Neuilly Sa Mère!/Neuilly Yo Mama!, Tout Ce qui Brille/All That Glitters, L’Italien, Intouchables/The Untouchables, Mohamed Dubois, and Qu’Est-ce qu’on a Fait au Bon Dieu?/Serial (Bad) Weddings. A further sub-group, including Né Quelque Part/Homeland and Paris à Tout Prix,5 features a return to the country of origin while highlighting the second generation’s uneasy distance from it, until a narrative solution is found to reconcile ethnic roots with France, usually through romance. The comedies of integration typically showcase two or three central male protagonists, usually ethnically mixed, many of them played by former stand-up and TV comics (Vincendeau 2015). Directors and producers also frequently include members of the community depicted. Thus while the films largely aim at a mainstream French audience, a fact intrinsically linked to their consensual format, they do so from an insider’s perspective, a feature true of The Gilded Cage. Before taking a closer look at the film, I look briefly at three emblematic comedies of integration – Bad Faith, The Untouchables and Serial (Bad) Weddings – which illustrate basic tropes and strategies of the genre relevant to an analysis of The Gilded Cage. Bad Faith pits Jewish and Arab communities against each other via the romantic affairs of its central couple. Ismaël (Roschdy Zem, also the film’s director) is an upwardly mobile professional from a working-class Muslim family and Clara (Cécile de France) is from a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family. Both are highly integrated in French culture and have lived happily together for three years, until Clara’s pregnancy triggers both a meeting with each other’s family and an exacerbation of Ismaël and Clara’s differences through religion (hitherto absent from their lives). After an ellipse following Clara’s threatened abortion, resolution takes place through children: two years later the united Jewish and Arab grandmothers fuss over a baby and a toddler. The couple’s stated aim is to be, as Clara puts it, ‘not Muslim nor Jewish, but French’, and in Carrie Tarr’s words, ‘the film’s project is to establish the viability of harmonious co-existence between French citizens of different faiths’ (2014:  522). The Untouchables, one of the most successful films of all times at the French box-office,6 features the 103

Portugal’s Global Cinema encounter between a rich white aristocrat, Philippe (François Cluzet), paralysed after an accident and the unemployed, black Driss (Omar Sy), hired to care for him. The beginning of the film portrays Driss as a stereotypical, semi-delinquent, banlieue youth. Driss and Philippe are worlds apart, and the narrative exacerbates their widely polarized tastes in art and music. The two men become bosom pals, however, and what is presented as common humanity erases class and cultural differences. Also hugely successful,7 Serial (Bad) Weddings moves away from a simple Jewish vs. Muslim or white vs. black opposition, to present France as a cultural mosaic. An upper middle-class Catholic couple, Claude (Christian Clavier) and Marie (Chantal Lauby) Verneuil, has to come to terms with young men from a range of backgrounds (Jewish, Arab, Chinese and black African) marrying their four daughters. At first horrified, they end up embracing their rainbow family. While the ethnic diversity of the family is evidently exaggerated, integration through ethnically mixed marriage corresponds to a French social trend (Tribalat 2009: 203–214). These films illustrate the three main strategies French comedies of integration deploy to advocate national cohesion. First, they endorse the French secular model of citizenship through avoidance or minimizing of religion, a feature that promotes what Julien Gaertner calls ‘appeasement’ (2008). Second, the family acts as a national microcosm, with mixed marriages providing the cement for cohesion. Third, class differences are significantly downplayed – ignored or magically resolved. The Gilded Cage, as we will see, follows these patterns, while it adds Portuguese cultural specificity, including the arguably ‘very Portuguese’ feeling of nostalgia.

Negotiating Portuguese stereotypes By making its central couple a concierge and a builder, The Gilded Cage corresponds to an observable social reality. In the case of the concierge the profession as a whole has largely disappeared in the twenty-first century (Main 2011; Moine 2017), although a number of Portuguese women in France still work in related positions, such as cleaners. Meanwhile the building trade continues to be a major source of employment for Portuguese men. But this choice of professions also recycles major stereotypes. As one interviewee 104

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage in an ethnographic study of Portuguese immigrants to France put it, ‘My mother is a concierge, my father is a builder, how stereotypical!’ (Dos Santos 2010: 233). To illustrate how persistently the stereotype extends to casting choices, we should note that shortly before The Gilded Cage, Rita Blanco appeared as a concierge in Amour (Michael Haneke, France, 2012), as well as, earlier, in João Canijo’s Ganhar a Vida/Get a Life (2001), two films set respectively in Paris and in a Parisian banlieue. Mass Portuguese immigration to France began in the 1960s, first for political reasons, to escape the Salazar dictatorship and colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique (see Liz in this volume). The flow continued for economic reasons. As a result, the largest Portuguese community settled in Paris and its suburbs, including in a notorious shantytown in Champignysur-Marne, south-east of Paris, in the 1960s, in which up to 14,000 people lived in appalling conditions, gradually alleviated through the efforts of the local Communist mayor. By 2011, 1.2 million Portuguese made up the third largest national immigrant group in France, after Algerians and Moroccans (Tribalat 2015: 8–9). Champigny-sur-Marne remains an important centre for the community, and this is no doubt why the alfresco lunch in The Gilded Cage takes place there, with the location being made explicit in a longer version of the scene available on the DVD supplements (Pathé 2013). As white Christian Europeans, Portuguese migrants in France benefited from measures that illustrated ‘cultural preference for European immigration’ (Dos Santos 2010: 216), and suffered less from overt racism than their North African and African counterparts; they have also been by comparison more successful in terms of education and access to employment (Silberman and Fournier 2006) and thus constitute a relatively effective form of integration. Nevertheless the perception of prominent cultural traits has given rise to stereotypes, albeit positive ones. A widespread view of the Portuguese in France presents them as ‘a community reputed for being tight-knit and hard-working’ (Schwartz 2013), composed of wellbehaved, resourceful immigrants with a low crime rate, an image historically constructed as a foil to more ‘problematic’ migrants from North Africa. This positive image however ‘has had as a corollary the “invisibility” of the Portuguese in French public space’ (Dos Santos 2010: 217– 218). Even today, people of Portuguese descent do not feature among the 105

Portugal’s Global Cinema French media and political class on a par with those of Maghrebi, African or Spanish origins, and their representation is certainly not commensurate with their share of the population. One exception is the singer Linda de Suza, who built an important career in France in the 1980s and 1990s singing popular ballads inspired by fado, an experience she recounted in her 1984 bestselling autobiography, La Valise en Carton (‘the cardboard suitcase’). De Suza was able to reach a wide audience as fado was already popular in the country thanks to Amália Rodrigues, a major star there in the 1950s and 1960s (see De Melo in this volume). Both singers are duly referenced in The Gilded Cage, providing the oral ambience to emotional scenes I shall return to. As well as fado, familiar Portuguese totems such as salt cod and football are explicitly woven into the narrative. Most conspicuous however is the way the Maria-José couple emblematizes the values of hard work, family cohesion and conformity that supposedly characterize the community. The Gilded Cage is highly self-conscious in recycling these stereotypes, as signalled by a number of mises-en-abyme. First is a brief scene that involves Miguel, a Portuguese comic performer played by Ruben Alves, the film’s director. As Paula and Charles talk to him after the show (he turns out to be her ex-boyfriend), she accuses his act of ‘verging on caricature’, to which he replies, ‘no, it’s called humour’. Similarly, in a double irony, Pedro’s school friend Cassiopée (Alice Isaaz), believing him to be rich, chides another friend for thinking that typical Portuguese people have ‘a father who is a builder, a mother who is a concierge – how clichéd can you be!’. Maria and José’s hard-working nature is magnified into comic submissiveness: Maria attends to the inhabitants of the building beyond the call of duty, while José does odd jobs for free; they never take holidays, disagree or complain. As a result they are mocked, in Lourdes’s words, as ‘trop bons, trop cons’ (‘too nice, too naïve’) and reprimanded by Paula who tells them: ‘to be well considered, to be inconspicuous, to be exploited without protesting, that’s what you’re best at… one might think you like it!’ As mentioned, the majority of French and Portuguese critics judged the film to transcend these stereotypes through sensitivity, authenticity and humour, a view largely duplicated in the internet reactions to the film on the French website allocine.fr.8 So how does The Gilded Cage both exploit and rise above stereotypes? The film’s strategy is to deflect them through 106

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage performance: Blanco and Almeida play their extravagantly clichéd parts in naturalist mode, channelled through minimalist gestures and nuanced facial expressions. Their sobriety, in turn, is underlined by contrast with the gallery of broad comics in the secondary parts that surrounds them, particularly Vieira as Rosa and Corado as Lourdes, whose performances throughout are as hyperbolic as their characters are underdeveloped. The contrast is further highlighted through the parallel between Maria and José on the one hand and Lourdes and her husband Carlos (Jean-Pierre Martins) on the other: the modest Maria is a brilliant cook, her sister is hopeless yet wants to open a restaurant; José is a model worker, Carlos is a slacker. As a result, while they embody the most extreme national stereotypes, Maria and José emerge as the most authentic characters. The Gilded Cage further deflates Portuguese stereotypes by offering a parodic ‘Portuguese vision’9 of the French. This includes Maria’s snobbish employer Madame Reichert (Nicole Croisille) and the absurdly grand hotel where the Ribeiros spend one brief night, Maria exclaiming ‘It looks like Versailles!’. But particularly targeted (and funny) is Solange Caillaux, who merrily displays her ignorance of Portuguese history and culture. Among other malapropisms, she talks of the dictatorship of ‘General Alcazar’ and of ‘your beautiful tulip revolution’, and systematically confuses Portuguese and Spanish language and food. The entirely comic couple Solange forms with her husband Francis, like that of Lourdes and Carlos, therefore functions as a foil to the more complex, and thus more ‘realistic’ Ribeiros. It is also noticeable that apart from Maria and José, the only characters to escape broad caricature are the Ribeiro children, thus confirming that the film’s ultimate point of view is that of the hyphenated, Franco-Portuguese second generation, which is of course that of the film’s director.

Music, nostalgia, modernity Although ostensibly a contemporary film, The Gilded Cage is built on a time lapse. As the filmmaker comments on his parents’ generation, the narrative mixes events, objects, music and language that are plausibly of 2013 with others that belong to a period closer to the director’s childhood in the 1980s, not to mention earlier. This discrepancy shows in a number of ways, relating 107

Portugal’s Global Cinema first of all to social change: the gradual disappearance of concierges means that their prominence in the story is less plausible today than it would have been 30 or 40 years ago (by contrast Les Femmes du 6e Étage/The Women on the 6th Floor [Philippe Le Guay, 2010] firmly embeds its story of Spanish maids in 1960s Paris). The Gilded Cage also blurs events and attitudes across the decades in terms of gender and family life and the wider topic of immigration and national identity. The film in fact shifts from social comment to nostalgia, history to memory. Paula and Charles’s affair illuminates different attitudes towards sexuality, women’s virginity, mixed marriage and parenthood between the French and Portuguese communities, but also between now and earlier times. This is evident in José and Maria’s initial shock when they find out about the young couple’s sexual relationship that Solange and Francis merely laugh about, and then their gradual acceptance of it. In this respect the film follows the findings of a study of attitudes towards the family in North-African and Portuguese communities in France that concluded, ‘the general tendency is of a shift among immigrants towards the French family model (which they call “modernist”)’ (Camilleri 1992: 133–134). There is also a common gender divide between (stricter) men and (more lenient) women (Dos Santos 2010: 252), illustrated by the slap José gives Paula when she confronts him, to Maria’s chagrin. Finally, Paula and Charles’s Franco-Portuguese couple exemplifies the fact that in the community at large ‘endogamy is increasingly threatened’ (Camilleri 1992: 139). Thus the narrative trajectory endorses a move towards liberal sexual mores, ethnic hybridity and urban modernity. It is therefore surprising, at first, that a reverse movement takes place in the film’s resolution, when Paula and Charles give up their Parisian jobs to move to rural Portugal, have a baby and run the winery. This appears all the more surprising, as Paula is the most integrated member of the Ribeiro family, with a modern, non-stereotypical profession (a lawyer for a presumably French firm) and a French boyfriend. Yet in this respect, the apparently nostalgic move registers a contemporary shift from immigration to transnationalism. Paula’s trajectory from immigrant child to Parisian lawyer and then Portuguese winemaker is barely sketched out in terms of explicit narrative (since the accent is on Maria), but it is implied and ‘justified’ by the use of fado, which insistently connects the nation with women and the 108

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage past. In this respect The Gilded Cage deploys fado in a conventional sense, as an archetypally Portuguese, highly emotional and nostalgic musical form, generally connoting sadness, loss and longing (saudade) (see Elliott 2010; see also De Melo in this volume). It has been argued that fado also embodies a view of Portugal as ‘a feminine society valuing human relationships over task achievement’ and ‘traditional gender roles.’ (Nielsen et al 2009: 301) This is borne out in the film in the exclusive connection that is made between fado, women and the nation, both in terms of characters (Maria, Paula, Rosa) and singers (Amália Rodrigues, Linda de Suza, and the fadista played by Catarina Wallenstein). The soundtrack of The Gilded Cage is redolent with Portuguese-themed music and it includes short bursts of upbeat songs such as ‘Ó Malhão Malhão’ (performed by Linda de Suza) and ‘Bacalhau à Portuguesa’ sung by Quim Barreiros, an exponent of the comic ‘pimba’ genre. But by far the most prominent role goes to female singers in the fado tradition. The alfresco lunch in Champigny-sur-Marne near the beginning of the film starts with a few bars from the classic ‘Uma Casa Portuguesa’ (‘a Portuguese house’) sung by Amália Rodrigues, a celebration of the warmth and simplicity of a Portuguese home, and by extension Portugal. It recurs briefly in the comic scene in the luxury hotel where Paula sends Maria and José for their wedding anniversary. The pretension of the palatial hotel, in terms of décor and food, is signalled by the use of opera on the soundtrack, replaced by ‘Uma Casa Portuguesa’ as soon as Maria serves José her own – Portuguese – food, instead of the French haute cuisine he dislikes. The song finally triumphs in an extended version, still sung by Rodrigues, over the final meal that gathers the extended families and friends in the Ribeiros’s Portuguese home, bleeding over the end credits, and thus completing the theme of communal gathering, food sharing and rejoicing. While Rodrigues’s emblematic oral presence is reinforced visually in her large portrait visible on the wall above the Ribeiros’s sofa-bed, two other female singers performing in the more melancholic fado tradition – Linda de Suza and Catarina Wallenstein – make a particularly strong impact over two scenes, linked respectively to Maria and Paula. After a (comically) disastrous dinner in which Maria tries to impress the Caillaux, which ends with Paula announcing her pregnancy and then 109

Portugal’s Global Cinema storming out, Maria, desperately sad at the rift in her family, and herself torn between going back to Portugal and staying in Paris, looks at herself in the mirror as she removes her make-up. The first bars of Linda de Suza’s ‘L’Étrangère’ (‘The Foreigner’) begin softly; as the song gathers in volume, we cut to a close-up of Maria, in a more old-fashioned hairstyle. As the camera pulls back we see she is sitting in an armchair, wearing her work apron and holding a duster, yet in a garden in bright sunshine. Soon Paula, Pedro and José appear, joyously harvesting grapes in what turns out to be their – at this point fantasized – Portuguese property overlooking the Douro valley. De Suza’s song laments her lost country and her past (‘She has kept a postcard of her village in Portugal, her memories hurt’), and it has the power to transport Maria to a fantasy powerful enough to convince her to go to Portugal despite her earlier reservations. The nostalgic appeal of the song is confirmed by the fact that she is playing it on a record player, jarring with the surrounding contemporary clothes, language and décor of the film. Given de Suza’s identity and the fact that ‘L’Étrangère’ is sung in French, Maria is orally linked through fado to the figure of the migrant woman who left Portugal for France. Paula by contrast is connected, through fado, to the return journey to Portugal. When Charles takes her to the ‘Vasco de Gama’ restaurant, he claims, jokingly, that he is ‘more Portuguese than her’ and reveals that he is taking Portuguese lessons. The fact that he was first taken there by Rosa, his parents’ Portuguese maid, is significant, confirming the myth of fado’s proletarian origins. There they hear a young singer, played by Catarina Wallenstein, sing ‘Prece’ (‘Prayer’), another classic fado song, recorded among others by Amália Rodrigues. In this highly emotional song, a woman prays that she be allowed to die in Portugal: whether on the beach, in the streets, behind bars or in bed, but ‘From God’s hands I accept everything, as long as I die in Portugal’. Dramatically lit in the small, dark restaurant/cabaret, Wallenstein, despite her youth, follows the age-old rules of fado performance. She stands framed by two male guitar players sitting on chairs on either side of her, and obeys the tradition according to which ‘female singers tend to wear dark clothes and shawls’ and ‘throw their heads back in postures that suggest strength and defiance in the face of adversity’ (Nielsen et al 2009: 297–298). 110

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage Throughout the scene we cut from Wallenstein’s performance to Paula watching and listening in raptures, but also to a sad, lonely Maria (after a row with José over the return to Portugal), seen through the bars of her apartment’s window, in her ‘gilded cage’ (see Figure 6.2), to José rebuilding a wall with Pedro, Francis and Carlos and to the reconciliation between Maria and her sister, after the issue of the inheritance had estranged them. Thus the song links Maria’s longing for the past to José building the future amid a unified Franco-Portuguese community. Importantly, in this pivotal narrative moment, Paula, visibly moved to tears, in front of our eyes reconnects with her Portuguese identity, presented by the song as rooted in poverty, the land and religion, in other words the opposite of her current affluent, urban and as far as one can see, religion-free life. The ideological operation that enables this transformation is that of heritage culture. Beyond its autobiographical dimension, The Gilded Cage’s recourse to nostalgia is contemporary with the promotion, and institutionalization, of the memory of immigration both in France and Portugal10 as well as the celebration of the countryside and rural activities (such as winemaking) in European culture at large. These in turn connote a new era in which movements across Europe are no longer dictated solely by political or economic necessity. Paradoxically, then, the heritage culture suggested

Figure 6.2 Maria in her ‘gilded cage’

111

Portugal’s Global Cinema by Paula and Charles’s decision is proof of a different kind of European modernity. Portugal joined the EU on 1 January 1986, making it easier for the second generation to feel both part of a hyphenated French-Portuguese identity, and of Europe. This new era is symbolized in the film by Pedro Miguel Pauleta, a Portuguese star football player who appears briefly at the end of the film. His cameo works both as a jokey allusion to the stereotype of the Portuguese love of football, and a hint at a different way of being Portuguese in Europe. All other things being equal, Paula and Charles, like Pauleta (and the film’s director), represent a more affluent, cosmopolitan Portuguese-European elite.

Conclusion The ending of The Gilded Cage takes us back to the comedy of integration as Paula’s trajectory and more generally the film’s resolution are possible, as in the vast majority of films within the genre, through the marginalization, if not denial, of not only religion, but also class. Although we are never told how Paula and Charles met in the first place, we can infer that it was through Rosa and Maria. This concurs with the fact that women have traditionally played an integrating role in Portuguese immigration to France as domestic work puts them in everyday contact with middle-class French families, while men tend to stay among themselves on building sites (Dos Santos 2010: 237–38). Similarly, Pedro socializing with bourgeois friends can be explained by the fact that Maria’s building is in a wealthy area of Paris where state schools are open equally to the children of concierges and those of rich apartment dwellers (a form of social climbing that evidently the film director benefitted from). Still, the presentation of the easy friendship between the Ribeiros and the Caillaux belongs to the utopian slant of the genre, as the ensuing erasure of class difference conveniently sidesteps racism. Given that racial antagonism is more likely to erupt among less privileged backgrounds, comedies of integration frequently eschew the problem by taking place among the well-off, or contrive to make class irrelevant. As the reviewer in Le Monde put it, The Gilded Cage ‘will no doubt disappoint the partisans of the class struggle’ (Sotinel 2013). 112

La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage The celebration of upward mobility and the depoliticized, harmonious resolution of The Gilded Cage place the film firmly within popular French film rather than a more politically incisive social cinema. For director Ruben Alves, this marks a clear departure from the path followed by prominent Portuguese filmmakers working in France today, such as the producer Paulo Branco or the actress Maria de Medeiros, or in the past (Manoel de Oliveira), who all privilege auteur cinema. Alves’s choice has entailed relative critical obscurity, given the low status afforded to comedy, but has meant gratifying audience figures. As mentioned earlier, French ticket sales for The Gilded Cage were impressive (1.2  million). Similarly, and perhaps more surprisingly, box-office results in Portugal were excellent: the film took in €3.8 million (by comparison, the Amália Rodrigues biopic Amália [Carlos Coelho da Silva, 2008], only achieved takings of €929,000; see De Melo in this volume). This could be due to different production values:  Amália’s budget was €3.5 million, compared to €7 million for The Gilded Cage. But it may also relate to the optimistic, forward-looking, European image offered by the film of the Portuguese diaspora in France and elsewhere, as an increasingly transnational demographic. As Alves put it to L’Express, ‘I do not see The Gilded Cage as a community film’ (Chèze 2013). The Gilded Cage steers clear both of the social realism of depictions turned towards the traumatic past, either in documentary (Cardoso-Marques 2002) or fiction (Get a Life), and of the culturally prestigious auteur cinema aimed at a restricted festival circuit. In its consensual way, however, it succeeds in articulating complex issues of cultural identity in an accessible format for a wide audience.

Notes 1. The Gilded Cage was released on 24 April 2013 in France; cumulative box-office figures: http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-109860/box-office/ (accessed 13 January 2017). 2. Camping (Fabien Onteniente, 2006); by the same director: Camping 2 (2010); Camping 3 (2016); Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain/Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001); Hors de prix/Priceless (Pierre Salvadori, 2006), Le Goût des autres/ The Taste of Others (Agnès Jaoui, 2000); On connaît la chanson/Same Old Song (Alain Resnais, 1997); OSS117, Le Caire nid d’espions/OSS117, Cairo, Nest of Spies (Michel Hazanavicius, 2006); The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011).

113

Portugal’s Global Cinema 3. Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis/Welcome to the Sticks (Dany Boon, 2008); Les Visiteurs (Jean-Marie Poiré, 1993); Quai d’Orsay/The French Minister (Bertrand Tavernier, 2013) 4. Le Prénom/What’s in a Name? (Alexandre de la Patellière, 2012); L’Oncle Charles (Étienne Chatiliez, 2012); Lolo (Julie Delpy, 2015); Retour chez ma mere/Back to Mom’s (Eric Lavaine, 2016) 5. La Vérité si je mens!/Would I Lie to You? (Thomas Gilou, 1997); by the same director La Vérité si je mens! 2/Would I  Lie to You? 2 (2001); La Vérité si je mens! 3/Would I  Lie to You? 3 (2012), Chouchou (Merzak Allouache, 2003), Mauvaise foi/Bad Faith (Roschdy Zem, 2006), Neuilly sa mère!/Neuilly Yo Mama! (Gabriel Julien-Laferrière, 2009), Tout ce qui brille/All that Glitters (Hervé Mimran and Géraldine Nakache, 2009), L’Italien (Olivier Baroux, 2010), The Intouchables/ Untouchables (Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano, 2011), Mohamed Dubois (Ernesto Oña, 2013), and Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon dieu?/Serial (Bad) Weddings (Philippe de Chauveron, 2014); Né quelque part/ Homeland (Mohamed Hamidi, 2013); Paris à tout prix (Reem Kherici, 2013). 6. The Untouchables was released on 2 November 2011; cumulative box-office figures: 19.2m, http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-182745/box-office/ (accessed 13 January 2017). 7. Serial (Bad) Weddings was released on 16 April 2014; cumulative box-office figures: 12m, http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-222259/box-office/ (accessed 13 January 2017). 8. Sixty-five per cent of spectators allocated 4 and 5 stars to the film, 20 per cent 3 stars and 15 per cent 2 and 1 stars. A recurring opinion was, as for film critics, the authenticity and sensitivity of the film. http://www.allocine.fr/film/ fichefilm-109860/critiques/spectateurs/ (accessed July 2016). 9. According to Alves, in ‘À l’intérieur de La Cage dorée’, DVD supplement (Pathé 2013). 10. In France, the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration (CNHI) opened in 2007, while a similar exhibition was held in Setúbal in Portugal a few months earlier.

114

7 Cinema and the City in European Portugal Mariana Liz

‘Portugal is not a small country’, claimed a 1935 propaganda map produced by the New State dictatorial regime (1933–1974). The ingenious superimposition of Portugal’s colonies in Asia and Africa side by side with the nation’s actual geographical territory in a European map testifies to the importance that the ‘overseas provinces’ (as they were officially called) had in the nation’s self-understanding during the dictatorship. After the fall of the regime marked by the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 and the subsequent independence of Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde, among other formerly occupied countries, a big gap was left in Portugal’s selfimage. The nation’s inability to conceive of itself as limited to its 92,300km2 territory in Western Europe, partly justified by a history of 500 years of maritime expansion and over four decades of an imperialist regime, meant new spheres of identification had to be found beyond national borders. As the 1935 map also demonstrates, Europe was an obvious substitute. After 1974, Portugal found in the ‘old Continent’ not only a new external territory to incorporate into and on to which project its national image, but also, in line with the European integration process, a chance for reform through modernity, freedom and democracy.

115

Portugal’s Global Cinema The rapprochement with Europe in the mid-1970s was illustrated by the immediate start of the decolonization process, together with accession talks with the European Union (EU), at the time European Economic Community (EEC). This was matched by a cultural transformation, which is best observed in the films produced in Portugal in the last decades of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century. This chapter is concerned with the extent to which Portuguese cinema of this period positions itself and, by consequence, the country, as European. In particular, it examines two films produced to celebrate Portuguese cities that were chosen as European capitals of culture: Lisbon Story (Wim Wenders, 1994) and Porto da Minha Infância/Porto of My Childhood (Manoel de Oliveira, 2001). My focus is on what European vision of Portugal these films project, as well as what consequences such a vision has for the national and international perception of the country and its cinema. The chapter explores the changing relationship between Portugal and Europe in two films that privilege urban space as the key sphere for the creation of cultural meaning. It is centred on the European Capital of Culture initiative as a prime example of the nation’s ambiguous links to Europe, and of Portugal’s complex association of the continent with the notions of newness, freedom and modernity. Against the backdrop of increasing globalization and expanding scholarship on the transnational, these films constitute a particularly fruitful case study for the study of how small European nations are transformed in a post-colonial context.

The complex relationship between Portugal and Europe The end of colonialism had a dramatic effect on Portuguese national identity. Scholars have looked at the political and cultural implications of the unsystematic decolonization process Portugal conducted in Africa. After 1974, Portugal’s situation was ‘characterized by a complex of unstable relationships, changing objectives and uncertain rapprochements with the former territories which have been as much psychological as political’ (MacQueen 2003:  182). A  deep ‘sense of loss’ (Overhoff Ferreira 2012:  19)  invaded the nation, which was swept over by a humiliating 116

Cinema and the City in European Portugal aftertaste that highlighted its failure both as a colonial power and as a postcolonial authority. As Eduardo Lourenço argues, ‘joining Europe meant healing the wound caused by the liquidation of the [nation’s] colonial heritage’ (2005: 111). ‘Europe’ came to signify the association of Portugal with change, openness and innovation; it not only replaced the space left vacant by the colonies, but also became a much more positive sphere for transnational identification. Europe had always been an important referent for Portugal, even during the dictatorship. Choosing not to participate in World War II, the New State took a typically ambiguous stance during the conflict. The regime adopted what historian Fernando Rosas has described as ‘belligerent neutrality’ (Rosas 2010), granting ‘some economic concessions to Germany’ (2010: 280) on the one hand, and turning a blind eye to the large numbers of Jewish immigrants who travelled to Portugal to flee to safety mostly to the USA on the other.1 In the aftermath of the war, Portugal was increasingly isolated. The last European nation to grant independence to its ‘overseas territories’, Portugal’s peripheral position was deepened by the regime’s insistence on maintaining its colonies. Equated with the necessary end of exploitation, as well as of the colonial war, Europe became incompatible with the political programme developed by the regime (see Leitão 2007). At the same time, however, Europe was perceived in highly positive terms by a large number of Portuguese citizens, especially those in opposition to the regime. During Salazar’s rule (followed by Caetano’s, between 1968 and 1974), many left the country, looking for a better life. From the 1960s onwards, and peaking in the early 1970s, the number of Portuguese migrants leaving for France, Switzerland and the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), especially, grew significantly. These numbers are perhaps only paralleled by those registered since the start of the euro-zone debt crisis in 2008 (Campos 2015). Although these two migratory waves are often compared, the motivations behind them are somewhat different. In the 1960s, as today, the main reason for people leaving Portugal had to do with the country’s financial problems. But in the 1960s, this was added to by the oppression conducted by the New State, and the will to escape being drafted to the bloody colonial war. In addition to political exiles, for whom Europe meant freedom, emancipation and a new life, 117

Portugal’s Global Cinema European nations also attracted those looking for educational and artistic liberty. This was the case of Fernando Lopes and Paulo Rocha, among other filmmakers of the Portuguese New Cinema, who, for instance, studied at the London Film School and at the IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques) in Paris, respectively. Although political ties to Europe were precarious, Europe was not altogether ignored. Portugal had been an EFTA member since the 1960s and signed an important financial agreement with the EEC in 1972 (Costa Lobo and Magalhães 2011:  83). Culturally, Europe’s significance was comparatively highlighted, and particularly used to project ideas of what Portugal was not. For Lourenço, until the 1970s, Europe ‘was outside of us and we were outside of it’ (2005: 105; original emphasis). Carolin Overhoff Ferreira makes a similar argument, as she argues that ‘Portugal’s self-image … has always stressed the country’s difference from other European countries’ (2012:  17). During the New State years, for those positively interested in the European space and in European culture, it was Portugal that was framed in a negative way. Hence, in an urgent need for change, and reacting to the ongoing devaluation of the nation’s image, post-dictatorship Portugal was immediately attracted to Europe. Negotiations for Portuguese EEC membership began in 1977, just two years after the first parliamentary elections in 50 years (see Trindade in this volume). Throughout the 1980s and the following decade, the ‘European’ theme was omnipresent in all spheres on Portuguese life. As Lourenço puts it, by then, ‘everyone wanted to be in Europe, to be part of it, everything was spoken and written in European’ (2005: 110; original emphasis). At that point in time, enthusiasm for European integration was not exclusively felt in Portugal. After the signing of the Schengen Agreement and the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, there was a widespread sense of Euro-optimism across the continent. But Portugal’s turn to Europe was particularly underpinned by a vibrant sense of newness. The country’s proEuropeanism stemmed from a conscious and desired break with the (dictatorial) past, more than from a thorough understanding of what Europe actually meant. In fact, the terms of EEC membership were not thought through, and critics have looked back on what is perceived as a rushed integration process. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, for instance, notes 118

Cinema and the City in European Portugal Portugal ‘joined the EEC in 1986 without a national project for development’ (2002: 25). For him, despite having engaged in a series of structural changes towards democratization and modernization, Portugal remains a ‘semi-peripheral nation’ (2002:  9). Maria Filomena Mónica describes Portugal as ‘a poor country in a rich continent’ (2006: 15). The approximation to Europe might have temporarily filled the emptied colonial space, but it has not answered all identity anxieties, and has rather highlighted new issues. The national perception of Europe and of European Portugal is truly ambivalent and often framed by negative perceptions of the country.2 As hinted, the relationship between Portugal and Europe is not confined to the realm of politics. The arts and cultural sectors have been deeply involved in such debates, exploring the idea of ‘European Portugal’. Isabel Moutinho (2008) argues Portuguese literature has essentially ignored Europe. This has not been the case with cinema, as concrete links have been drawn between Portugal and Europe through new European funds in support of the audiovisual sector, as well as through co-production agreements with national cinematographies across the continent (see for instance Overhoff Ferreira 2013). According to Jacques Lemière (2006), the turn to Europe has caused a split in the Portuguese film community. While for some Europe represents an opportunity to profit from filmmaking and producing activities, and to integrate cinema within the developing landscape of international media, for others, it means an unwanted openness to the laws of neoliberalism, as well as the following of a market logic that demands the conflation of film with the wider audiovisual sphere. A turn to Europe has allowed for a larger number of films by Portuguese auteurs to be financed, screened and celebrated in cinemas and festivals across the continent. Although generally unsuccessful in commercial and critical terms, there have also been attempts to re-launch Portuguese popular cinema with a wider international market in mind. This was, for instance, the idea behind the production of Portuguese films partially or entirely shot in English, including Pesadelo Cor-de-Rosa/Sweet Nightmare (Fernando Fragata, 1998) and Second Life (Alexandre Valente, 2009). As this chapter shows contemporary Portuguese films have also addressed Europe as a topic. In addition to the films here examined in detail, Manoel de Oliveira’s A Caixa/The Box (1994), for instance, ends with a group of 119

Portugal’s Global Cinema young ballerinas recreating the European flag, while João Canijo’s Ganhar a Vida/Get a Life (2001) depicts the life of Portuguese immigrants in a Parisian suburb. More or less explicitly, in financial and in thematic terms, Portuguese films of the 1990s and 2000s contribute to the negotiation of the nation’s European identity. Peaks of enthusiasm (i.e. joining the EU in the mid1980s, the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in the 1990s, and the adherence to the euro in the 2000s) have generally been followed by moments of crisis (particularly visible after the euro-zone debt crisis and the introduction of a series of austerity measures, and represented in films such as Miguel Gomes’s As Mil e Uma Noites/Arabian Nights [2015]). Despite this, contemporary Portuguese cinema shows not so much a variation in attitudes towards Europe, but more the continuous opposition between the positive realization of effectively being European and the doubtful consciousness of being (at) Europe’s periphery, if not outside of Europe altogether – between an interest in, and a rejection of what Europe stands for.

Lisbon Story and European postcards Portugal’s nomination to hold the European Capital of Culture initiative in Lisbon in 1994 can be seen as the culmination of a rapprochement with Europe that was both political and cultural. In January 1992, Portugal assumed the presidency of the EU. In office until June, the nation’s European government was symbolically responsible for momentous events in the history of European integration, including the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in February of the same year. As a fully-fledged European nation since the mid-1980s, Portugal had been benefitting from a series of EU schemes and funds, including support for the arts and culture. Initiatives such as the Council of Europe’s Eurimages and the EU’s MEDIA Programme (Creative Europe, since 2014), for instance, significantly contributed to the development of Portugal’s film industry, having financed international co-productions and supported the distribution and exhibition of a series of Portuguese films beyond national borders. The European Capital of Culture initiative was launched by the EEC in 1985. In the past 30 years, the programme has sponsored cultural activities 120

Cinema and the City in European Portugal in over 50 cities. This initiative aims to ‘Highlight the richness and diversity of cultures in Europe’; ‘Celebrate the cultural features Europeans share’; ‘Increase European citizens’ sense of belonging to a common cultural area’ and ‘Foster the contribution of culture to the development of cities’ (European Commission website). At the time of writing, Portugal has held the event three times: in Lisbon in 1994, in Porto in 2001 and in Guimarães in 2012. The willingness to take part in a programme that so clearly insists on the development of European culture and on the necessary approximation of the nation to other European states demonstrates Portugal’s wish for Europeanization not just immediately after the democratic transition, but also in the decades that have followed. The 1994 celebration of the European Capital of Culture simultaneously promoted the material development of Lisbon and funded artistic representations of its transitional status as a city under expansion. The initiative’s programme highlighted Lisbon’s transformation from a dictatorial to a democratic capital (coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the New State regime), at the same time as it branded the city as a European space. Lisbon’s urban development took place throughout the 1990s. While some major construction and renewal works preceded the European Capital of Culture celebration (matching the arrival of the first European funds), others were only developed a few years later. A  large part of the city, for instance, was rebuilt for the world exhibition Expo’98 hosted in Portugal in 1998. During the 1994 celebration, the material development of Lisbon was mostly restricted to the construction or renewal of cultural infrastructures, including the national theatres of S.  Carlos and D.  Maria II, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chiado and the multi-event arena Coliseu dos Recreios. As one critic argues, in 1994 Lisbon underwent a dramatic ‘costume change’ (Holton 1998: 173). To appear modern was a key step in becoming modern, and the look of these spaces was crucial for the promotion of a ‘new Lisbon’. The venues that were given a fresh face also held most of the main events that composed the programme of the European Capital of Culture festival. ‘Imagine one capital; and Europe within it; imagine one Europe; and all of Europe’s culture; Lisbon invites you’ was the official slogan of Lisbon 121

Portugal’s Global Cinema European Capital of Culture. So how was this capital, which contained Europe, imagined? And how was Europe, and all of its culture, imagined? Even though only 10 per cent of the festival’s budget was allocated to cinema and video, film is a particularly useful art form to observe this transformation. A focus on film allows us to simultaneously gauge the material development of urban space and its national and international projection as a cultural idea, as the cinema produced within the ECC uses the cities celebrated as both physical locations and as themes: these are films shot in capitals of culture and about capitals of culture. This section is centred on Lisbon Story, one of the films commissioned by the event’s organizers to promote the city in Portugal and abroad. As I will show, the film is in line with the objectives of European Capital of Culture initiative, as listed by the European Commission, yet seemingly undermines the main aims of the programme. Lisbon Story is centred on sound engineer Phillip Winter (Rüdiger Vogler), who travels to Lisbon to help his friend, the filmmaker Friedrich Monroe (Patrick Bauchau). Both are familiar faces, previously seen in earlier Wenders’s films. Lisbon Story has been widely discussed in relation to the filmmaker’s career and authorial features (see for instance Graf 2002). The film has also been singled out as a key example of the European roadmovie (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2006). After receiving Friedrich’s invitation, Phillip drives from Frankfurt to Lisbon, via France and Spain. On the one hand, the film depicts ‘postcard’, ‘touristic’ visions of Lisbon; on the other, it highlights the apparently undeveloped state of the city, by focusing on a series of empty and neglected spaces. Portugal’s capital emerges as simultaneously modern and European and as old and national. The film highlights a series of tensions that become visible as urban renewal and transformation proceed. One of the first images of the film is in fact a postcard from Lisbon – one that Phillip receives in Frankfurt, when Friedrich asks for his help, and invites him to travel to Portugal. The first images of the Portuguese capital continue this arguably stereotypical vision of Lisbon by focusing on the city’s old town. The house where Friedrich lives, and where Phillip stays for the duration of the film, is also an old Lisbon villa, with characteristic panels of blue painted tiles (azulejos) and a stunning view of the Tagus River (see Figure 7.1). This ‘postcard’ iconography is 122

Cinema and the City in European Portugal

Figure 7.1 Postcard iconography in Lisbon Story

joined by images that problematically reinforce Lisbon’s ‘village’ appearance (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2006:  205), and in particular, the city’s traditional, humble and under-developed status. Washing lines, a knifegrinder and fado are cultural symbols featured in Lisbon Story and deeply associated with the New State regime. The dictatorship perpetuated the iconography of these and other ‘old and simple’ activities and cultural forms as part of a nation that was ‘poor but happy’ (see also De Melo in this volume), that was taught not to question or demand anything, but to enjoy the little they had. This is an ideology that the film seems to replicate at least in part – and that is in stark contrast with the vision of ‘European Portugal’ the organizers of Lisbon European Capital of Culture wished to put forward. Even before Phillip reaches Lisbon, Portugal as a whole is seen as ‘backward’. Close to the border with Spain, Phillip stops to observe carts pulled by donkeys – in an image that vividly contrasts with the modern German and French motorways he had been seeing through the window before. When his car breaks down, Phillip convinces a truck driver to take him to Lisbon in exchange for his car (once fixed), on the basis that it has a ‘cassette player’  – a ‘novelty’ unlikely to be perceived as new or exciting 123

Portugal’s Global Cinema by the film’s international audience when it was released in 1994. The tension between tradition and modernity, which seems to be equated with the national and the transnational, respectively, is also conveyed through the group Madredeus, to some extent the stars of the film (Elliott 2010). Although playing a modern version of fado  – the Portuguese ‘national song’ (see Holton 2006) – and projecting a new vision of Portugal on an international stage, the group relies on a traditional and clichéd iconography. Some of the songs played in the film, for example, are entitled ‘Guitar’ and ‘Alfama’ (a traditional, working-class, neighbourhood) – key symbols of Lisbon. Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006) dismiss Lisbon Story as a touristic and stereotypical representation of the Portuguese capital. The film is not ‘unrealistic’; the old trams, for instance, not only existed in 1994, but are also still in use. However, and while partial views of spaces emerge in all films, by giving prominence to the touristic vision of Lisbon, the film does lock the city in a temporal sphere that was not in tune with the programme of events of the Lisbon 1994 festival. The ‘Europeanness’ of Lisbon Story is immediately evident as this is a film made by a German filmmaker, with German, French and Portuguese funding, and a German and Portuguese cast. European integration and European culture are also key themes in the film. ‘Europe has no borders’, says Phillip while driving from Germany to Portugal. Later, he claims:  ‘I realize that Europe is becoming one nation’. The soundtrack features German, French, Spanish and Portuguese language – to begin with, on the radio. The issue of language is important as most of the people Phillip meets in Lisbon speak English, in what seems to be a nod to a new European generation. For Phillip, ‘the landscape speaks the same language’ too. However, it is in spatial terms that Portugal emerges as particularly distinct to the rest of Europe. Although Lisbon Story is clearly in part about Europe, it does not position Portugal as a European nation, but as one in a traditional, older and seemingly lower rank. The film stresses this by shooting a series of vast, empty or under construction spaces. When Phillip finally finds Friedrich, we see half-destroyed posters for the 1994 European Parliament elections, which underline the contrast between the European project and the peripheral position Portugal occupies within it, and echo Sousa Santos’s analysis of

124

Cinema and the City in European Portugal the nation’s status vis-à-vis the continent (2002). The European Capital of Culture initiative aimed to modernize and at the same time put forward a modern vision of Portugal. But although the turn to Europe after the dictatorship was founded on a desire for newness and a clear break with the past, the nation is here framed as old and traditional, first through tourism, and then through the realization that Europe is still a distant dream. Related to the development of digital technology and to the history of cinema, ‘time’ emerges as a key theme in Lisbon Story. Time is also a key element in the assessment of the film’s European character. What separates Wenders’s European vision from the one desired by the organizers of the European Capital of Culture festival is the association of Europe with a different temporal sphere. There is a strong mismatch between old European Portugal as seen in the film, and new European Portugal as desired by politicians and institutions. The film hints at the city’s urban development only to show how incomplete it is. It also privileges a form of tourism essentially based on history and heritage. History is recurrently put forward by European institutions as one of the elements that bring Europeans together. First, stereotypical images of European nations, such as recognizable images of Lisbon, lead to an easier identification; as such, they are essential in allowing others to relate to the city, and the country more generally. Second, European identity is also often seen as being about oldness (see for instance Steiner 2006). From the Nobel Peace Prize received by the EU in 2012 to the commemoration of the centenary of World War I in 2014, the achievements of European integration are essentially measured in relation to the past. Similarly, EU initiatives in support of culture have in recent years been especially concerned with history and the past, as testified by the creation of the European Heritage Label in 2011. Hence, the presentation of Portugal as such an ‘old’ nation, and of Lisbon as such a traditional city, might actually make them ‘more European’. A  focus on heritage, particularly through tourism, has paradoxically been key in the modernization of the city and the country since 1994; this is a modernization that many perceive as Europeanization too.

125

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Portugal, Europe and heritage in Porto of My Childhood The connection between the idea of Europe and history is also clear in Manoel de Oliveira’s Porto of My Childhood (from here onwards, POMC), a film produced for the celebration of Porto as European Capital of Culture in 2001. Manoel de Oliveira, the most international of all Portuguese directors, is famous beyond national borders because, as the cliché went until 2015, the year of his death, he was the oldest active filmmaker in the world. His last film, O Velho do Restelo/The Old Man of Belém (2014), came out when he was 105 years old. Oliveira was incredibly prolific throughout a career that spanned over 80 years, and during which he completed over 50 films. In addition to quantity, critics and scholars have noted the ‘quality’ of his films, that is, what they perceive to be an original interest in exploring the language of cinema – a refreshing and committed ‘cinematic creativity’, to put it in Randal Johnson’s terms (2007: 2). When approached to make a film about Porto, the city where he grew up and lived all his life, Oliveira, then aged 93, unsurprisingly chose to stress the changes the city had undergone, adopting a nostalgic look and centering his narrative on his childhood memories. As the title of the film indicates, in POMC Oliveira talks about growing up and living in the Portuguese northern city; he remembers spaces and places (for instance, the house where he was born), people and key figures (including his friends and members of his family). POMC mixes archival images, such as clips from some of his earlier films  – including Douro, Faina Fluvial/ Labour on the Douro River (1931) and Aniki-Bobó (1942) – and newsreels with a series of fictionalized sketches, in an attempt to reconstruct the filmmaker’s memories. This is a film at the crossroads between the avant-garde and the documentary, a film that rethinks subjectivity, realism and narrative, and that as such clearly fits the ‘essay film’ definition put forward by Timothy Corrigan (2010). As Johnson puts it, the film offers a personal view of Porto, ‘filtered through the director’s memory and through brief contrasts with today’s city, which is very different from where Oliveira grew up’ (2007: 119). POMC adopts, in several sequences, a narrative strategy of ‘before and after’. For

126

Cinema and the City in European Portugal instance, using archival images (pictures and newsreels) and contemporary footage, Oliveira shows how neighbourhood small shops have been turned into high street clothes chains. And where the old picture house High-Life used to be based, a new cinema, Batalha, was built – at the time of the film’s release, a protected venue for art cinema, managed by the city council. The visual comparisons between past and present, together with Oliveira’s comments on such changes, in the voice-over, generally attribute greater value to the Porto the director used to know. The city where the filmmaker lived in 2001 is often presented as less unique and less authentic. This has consequences not just for the vision of contemporary Porto – with the city’s character arguably becoming dissolved in a more general idea of the European and global metropolis, and Porto being presented as just any other city in the world – but also for the vision of history and the past, which are here framed in very positive terms. POMC includes a series of reconstruction scenes that illustrate past events narrated by Oliveira, and often evoke an aura of a golden era. For instance, Oliveira tells the viewer about his memories of going to the opera and theatre, and we see a fictional reconstruction of a performance of Carmen, followed by a dramatization of the operetta Miss Diabo, featuring Maria de Medeiros and Oliveira himself as the actors on stage. The sequence ends with Oliveira’s character (a thief) performing a fado song. With a humorous tone, not only does this constitute another example of Oliveira’s insistence on his personal identification with the stories told in the film, it also alludes to Oliveira’s conception of cinema as very close to the language of theatre (see for instance Johnson 2007: 2–4). Played by Oliveira’s grandson Jorge Trêpa, the director as a teenager is later seen in the film leaning against a window and melancholically remembering the sweets (pastéis) he used to eat at Confeitaria Oliveira, another commercial venue that no longer exists. Framed doubly by Oliveira’s camera and the actual window frame (see Figure 7.2), and narrated by two voices, Oliveira’s and that of his grandson, this sequence is a key example of the way in which different stages of memory and historical periods are brought together through editing to convey the richness of the director’s memories and the varied character of the city they focus on. 127

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Figure 7.2 Jorge Trêpa as a teenage Manoel de Oliveira, dreaming of pastéis

Replaced with a sense of blandness and uniformity in the present, Porto’s diversity is to be found in the city’s past. This sequence is also a vivid example of the extent to which POMC indulges in nostalgic editing. On the one hand, Oliveira remembers this old Porto, its spaces and customs, with a clear sense of fondness. This is highlighted by the serene tone of his voice and the softness of the lighting used. On the other, by showing the differences between past and present, and highlighting the extent to which the city has been transformed, POMC also puts forward a very strong sense of loss. Although many of the film’s sequences are accompanied by music in the soundtrack, there is at this point, a focus on dialogue, and in several moments, silence, with the absence of music and voice denouncing the non-existence of something that was. In addition to showcasing the cultural heritage of Porto, the film presents the city as a form of heritage too. By demonstrating the city has not been protected, POMC seems to launch a call for preservation. While Lisbon Story is set in the present but is focused on Lisbon and on Portugal’s past, which compromises the city and the nation’s European character, POMC insists on the value of history and cultural heritage to highlight Porto’s European feel. If Portugal as a European nation was the theme of Wenders’s film, Porto as a European city is the theme of Oliveira’s cinematic essay. Whereas 128

Cinema and the City in European Portugal the organizers of Lisbon European Capital of Culture stressed the idea of ‘European Portugal’, the commission leading Porto 2001 placed a much greater emphasis on local development. This can be partly explained by the fact that, 20 years into the Portuguese membership of the EU, enthusiasm for European integration had started to dwindle. At the same time, more than 200km away from the nation’s capital, and considered to be Portugal’s secondcity, it is unsurprising Porto did not appear as such an obvious synecdoche as Lisbon had been for the country and its culture. Supported by European Capital of Culture funds, major urban regeneration works took place in Porto around 2001, namely the setting up of a new Metro network and the restoration of the funicular connection in Guindais, as well as the rehabilitation of a series of very central public spaces, including Praça da Batalha and Praça D.  João I.  A  number of cultural venues reopened, while new infrastructures were built. These include Casa da Música, by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas – perhaps the most important project of Porto 2001, and a lasting symbol of the city’s transformation (see for instance Marmelo 2011). After premiering at Teatro Rivoli in Porto and being screened in Lisbon and across the country, POMC was showed in film festivals around the world, including Rotterdam, Thessaloniki and Buenos Aires. Throughout, POMC refers to Portugal’s history, as well as to the country’s artistic legacy. For example, a sequence discusses the New State regime and the impact censorship had on Oliveira’s work (see for instance Rapfogel 2008). Local artists are mentioned, including Agustina Bessa-Luís (a writer who collaborated with Oliveira in several of his films), Agostinho da Silva (a philosopher from Porto) and Adolfo Casais Monteiro (a poet who died in forced exile in Brazil because of its opposition to the dictatorship). Even though the film’s focus is on local culture and on personal memories, its art cinema language has allowed it to transcend these seemingly limited spheres. POMC testifies to the ways in which European filmmakers continue to investigate the past and to use cinema to do so. However, the ‘bad press’ generally associated with heritage cinema (Vidal 2012: 1) is here replaced by a quality stamp provided by Oliveira, an auteur at the highest rankings of the European art cinema canon (see for instance Rosenbaum 2008). The most obvious way in which Europe as a theme features in POMC is in a sequence about Casais Monteiro. Over images of O Desterrado, – a 129

Portugal’s Global Cinema sculpture by António Soares dos Reis (another artist from Porto) – a maestro we had seen at the start of the film, and reconstructed period scenes of the banks of the Douro River, Oliveira reads, in voice-over, Casais Monteiro’s poem Europa. Broadcast by the BBC in 1945, this is a text that mirrors the continent’s mood in the post-war era. Reflecting on the horrors of the war and on the memory of the Holocaust, Casais Monteiro speaks of his desire for greater solidarity and peace between nations, thus directly referencing the dream of European integration (‘Europa, sonho futuro, / se algum dia há-de ser!’). While this relatively long sequence marks Europe as a topic in Oliveira’s film, it demonstrates a European consciousness among an international group of intellectuals, more than it comments on the city or the country’s relationship with Europe. The European feel of Porto comes across more vividly in sequences that highlight the city’s cosmopolitan character. Unlike the provincial Portugal featured in Lisbon Story, in POMC Porto’s bohemian feel is presented side by side with its highbrow circuits. Oliveira remembers and identifies with both: the cafés, salons and operetta performances; the world of season tickets for the opera and the literary and art circles mentioned before. Unlike Wenders, essentially a tourist in Lisbon, Oliveira has access to these memories, local figures and spaces because he lived in Porto most of his life. His access is also to do with class: Oliveira was from a privileged family, with an interest in high culture. The culture and artistic forms valued by Oliveira are ‘old’ too; unlike the new shops presented, they have a legacy and belong to an artistic heritage. Europe is simultaneously associated with history and the past and with high culture – and these are the main traits that frame Porto as a European city too. In the eyes of Oliveira, the modernization of Porto makes the city less special. This is a position very similar to the one adopted by Wim Wenders, for whom the appeal of Lisbon lay precisely in its ‘oldness’, which seemingly distinguished it from the rest of Europe, yet made it appealing to Europe through a connection between tourism and heritage. These two films highlight important issues at the core of the European Capital of Culture initiative, which emerges here mostly as a makeover and marketing venture, often centred on images and appearances, but not always supported by real transformation. An analysis of Lisbon Story and POMC shows 130

Cinema and the City in European Portugal that the European Capital of Culture uses cinema to promote an image of the spaces celebrated  – an image that is debatable and often challenged, at national and international level. Both films also show the importance of history and culture for the formation of an idea of Europe. These are universal aspects of the places represented that allow for links with other nations, particularly because the aspects of history and culture presented here are not only selective, but also uncontentious. The continent’s gruesome history of war, prosecution and destruction, highlighted for instance in Casais Monteiro’s poem, is left aside in these films’ representation of the idea of Europe. These films use consensual visions of Europe, to do with culture, art and space; they focus on Europe’s history, but only on positive, nostalgic moments of the past.

Conclusion It is unsurprising that Lisbon Story and POMC, as films produced as part of the European Capital of Culture initiative, have a clear European strand. However, a discourse on Europe is not present in films made for other cities holding the title – as for instance Terence Davies’s homage to Liverpool, Of Time and the City (2008). Even if the construction of Europe is also a recurrent theme in Wim Wenders’s work (considering for instance his engagement with the initiative ‘A Soul for Europe’ [Wenders 2006]), and Oliveira’s filmography has often reflected on the development of the Western World (see Johnson in Chapter 3), this confirms the centrality that the European theme has had in contemporary Portugal. Further research into Portuguese cinema of this period would stress the interest in Europe as a theme and as an opportunity for economic support and cultural expansion. The European vision of Portugal Lisbon Story and POMC project is centred on the opposition between history and modernization, on an association of the past with the arts and on the representation of culture as a key feature of the cosmopolitan character of the spaces represented. By associating European Portugal with oldness, these films seem to contradict the impetus for newness the country placed with European integration. However, this is a specific past. Either related to tourism (and therefore with positive commercial associations) or with the world of 131

Portugal’s Global Cinema high culture (and thus prestigious), history contributes to a new vision of this small, peripheral nation. It is no coincidence that films produced as part of the European Capital of Culture initiative recruit some of the most important directors in contemporary European film, as these highprofile auteurs favorably position Portuguese cinema within global artistic circuits. The organizers of Guimarães, European Capital of Culture in 2012  – a small city on the north of Portugal with c.  50.000 inhabitants – for instance, commissioned films by directors including Manoel de Oliveira, Pedro Costa and João Botelho, Victor Erice, Aki Kaurismäki and Jean-Luc Godard. The two films examined in this chapter partially match the goals of the European Capital of Culture. While they highlight the richness and diversity of cultures in Europe, and foster the contribution of culture to the development of cities, it is less clear whether they celebrate cultural features shared by Europeans or increase Portugal’s sense of belonging to a common cultural area. Lisbon Story seems to distance Lisbon from the rest of Europe, by showing how different Portugal was to, for instance, France and Germany, at the time of the film’s release. POMC dismisses contemporary Europe as a cultural project that aims for unification, and instead locates Porto’s more valuable transnational feel in the past. The films confirm the tension between a nation that recognizes its peripheral status, and that is at the same time attracted to Europe, but rejects part of its signification. Europe as a topic is formulated in relation to cinematic space and time, but these are varied and under transformation. Lisbon emerges as both quaint and in construction; Porto used to be a city of leisure and culture, and is being changed into a post-modern space for consumption. A small nation producing a no longer peripheral cinema has found in its association with Europe, history and culture, an opportunity to break away from a claustrophobic, inward-looking past, and to instead position itself as positively exceptional in the world scene. This opportunity, however, came at a cost; and its exceptionality is edged by the constraints of European integration. The openness to Europe has meant an identification of Portugal with concepts such as heritage, tradition and high culture. The association with Europe acts almost as a new colonizing force – this time one oppressing

132

Cinema and the City in European Portugal the nation – with cultural and economic consequences for the understanding of Portugal within national borders and beyond. At the same time that these films testify to the fascination Portugal experienced with Europe after the turn to democracy, they also demonstrate the extent to which the colonial issue was brushed aside, and essentially disregarded from then on. Films on the colonial trauma have emerged in recent years (see Overhoff Ferreira 2012). For example, Pedro Costa’s contribution to Centro Histórico/Historic Centre (Aki Kaurismäki, Victor Erice, Pedro Costa and Manoel de Oliveira, 2012), one of the films produced for Guimarães European Capital of Culture in 2012, stages, in the figure of Ventura, an explicit encounter between the April Revolution and the former colonies – a topic then further explored in Costa’s Cavalo Dinheiro/ Horse Money (2014). These films highlight the possibility of a simultaneous interest in the European idea and the development of a post-colonial investigation into the past and present of power and relationships between continents, nations and individuals. In the same way that Europe’s history should not be limited to an account of past glories and heroes, but critically reflect on the continent’s traumas, suffered and inflicted, so must the Portuguese turn to Europe challenge not only Europe’s own meaning, but also the silences and visual gaps in the nation and the continent’s cinema and culture with regard to their post-colonial status. The new European Portuguese cinema should allow for a double examination of post-colonial forces in global cultural encounters: between Portugal and the Lusophone world on the one hand, and between Portugal and Europe as a source of neoliberal repression on the other.

Notes 1. Portugal’s relationship with World War II refugees has also been depicted on screen, namely in Fantasia Lusitana/Lusitania Illusion (João Canijo, 2010). 2. For a historical account of Portugal’s pro-European stance and the development of Euroscepticism in the country see for instance Costa Lobo and Magalhães (2011).

133

8 Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking Nuno Barradas Jorge

Since the late 1990s, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa has constructed a particular thematic universe characterized in equal terms by aesthetic minimalism and the use of digital video. The relationship between technology and aesthetics is central to Costa’s films as analysed, for example, by Richard Suchenski (2009), Àngel Quintana (2009) and Volker Pantenburg (2010). These authors discuss the impact of technology in Costa’s ‘aesthetics of poverty’ (Quintana 2009: 24), assigning digital video’s visual quality as inherent to the filmmaker’s filmic style. However, Costa’s filmmaking practice is not just bound to the particular visual quality of low-budget digital video, but also to its constraints and freedoms, which significantly mark the production of his films. The use of digital technology has allowed Costa to maintain what can be considered a frugal filmmaking style, centred in personal and professional agency, and partially freed from the role of the producer and from budget constraints that are often inherent to shooting procedures. Dissatisfied with the routines and the apparatus of filmmaking used in his earlier films, soon after his third feature film, Ossos/Bones (1997), Costa turned to a practice detached from normative processes. Since then, the filmmaker has come to rely on working practices that do not strictly follow

135

Portugal’s Global Cinema division of labour, professional hierarchies and technical apparatus in professional film production. Instead, Costa has since then used affordable digital video technology, reduced (and in some cases, intermittent) film crews and small budgets, and has dispensed with professional routines related, for example, with film script planning or shooting schedules. However, this practice is not completely removed from film industrial relations and its different stages of production, post-production, funding and distribution. Costa’s films still rely on the employment and coordination of technical staff, the undertaking of administrative decisions, and negotiations with public and private institutions. Thus, it is worth discussing how the use of digital video potentiated the formation of this production framework and how Costa has successfully been able to create and maintain a filmmaking practice that mediates between these processes. Working under this premise, this chapter first contextualizes this frugal framework in terms of how it reflects contemporary global filmmaking practices utilizing the possibilities provided by the use of digital technology. It also looks at how these relate to national specificities, focusing on Costa as a Portuguese filmmaker. Secondly, this chapter examines the making of No Quarto de Vanda/In Vanda’s Room (2000) as a blueprint that reflects Costa’s sparing film practice, understood as a mode of filmmaking that tries to be as autonomous as possible from professional processes and production structures. This chapter concludes by analysing this frugal film practice as part of the filmmaker’s overall ethos, discussing the evolution of the production process started with In Vanda’s Room and continued in the filmmaker’s subsequent films.

Digital cinema as a (low-budget) production paradigm The use of digital video in contemporary art film has been framed as part of cinema’s continuous technological development. The access to affordable technology allows for particular discourses about artistic freedom, as consumer goods enable cheaper production and editing practices. Academic discussions concerned with national and regional examples of this relationship have flourished in recent years. Examples of such discussions can be found, for 136

Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking example, in Geoff King (2014), who looks at contemporary American independent filmmaking, and Maria San Fillipo (2011), who provides a related debate concerning the sub-genre mumblecore; Chris Berry et al (2010) and Luke Robinson (2013) have discussed the rise of the independent Chinese documentary under the use of digital video, and May Adadol Ingawanij and Benjamin McKay (2012) have analysed similar filmmaking practices in South-East Asia. In this sense, digital video renews the possibilities in terms of access to the means of directing and producing cinema independently of – or in conjunction with – any cinema industry formation.1 Encapsulated in terms such as ‘independent’, ‘autonomous’ or ‘austere’, these discussions explore relational dichotomies between ‘individual’ and ‘professional’ agency (Robinson 2013: 21–22), ‘artisanal practices’ and ‘negotiated dependencies’ (Ingawanij and McKay 2012: 4), as well as industrial and economic dialogues between ‘pared-down production mode[s]’ and ‘alternative forms of distribution’ (San Fillipo 2011). These terms underlay forms of filmmaking that may offer deviation (in manifold and diverse degrees) from production practices and labour divisions that have hitherto been understood as intrinsic to art cinema. Likewise, Hamid Naficy (2001) has discussed interdependent forms of filmmaking as part of interstitial production practices within particular cultural, social and economic constraints. Naficy considers these practices in relation to what he posits as a cinema made by international filmmakers who reflect an intrinsic exilic ethos. According to Naficy, filmmakers with particular cultural ‘accents’ sustain their working practices by participating in an interstitial mode of production, dependent on small pockets of public and private funding and on the ‘multiplication or accumulation of labour’, working between artisanal and professional practices (2001: 48). Arguably, similar artisanal filmmaking and interstitial modes of production are observed in a more extensive number of contemporary filmmaking practices, in which global as well as national specificities are relevant. As discussed by Anne Jäckel, the structural downsizing of the European cinema industries observed since the late-1990s reveals similar interstitial qualities, driven by both financial and technological pragmatism and creative autonomy (2003: 38–9; see also Elsaesser 2005: 69, 505). In the case of Portuguese cinema this interstitial framework gains particular relevance when observing the constraints and dynamisms that 137

Portugal’s Global Cinema characterize its national filmmaking industry. Rooted in a small-scale production model vulnerable to financial (and political) changes, and with limited domestic exhibition and circulation, Portuguese cinema remains considerably dependent on institutional support and international funding and relies on the exposure and cultural legitimation created by the international film festival circuit (see de Pina 1986:  214–215; da Costa 1996:  110). In this scenario, Portuguese cinema has been marked by an austere production ethos, reflecting its lack of domestic financial and production structures. Such an ethos can be framed, for example, in auteur currents visible throughout the 1970s and 1980s, such as the artisanal and ‘humble’ filmmaking of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro (Lim 2012; see also Moutinho and Lobo 1997), the ‘militant dissidence’ of some filmmakers commonly categorized under the so-called ‘Portuguese School’ (Baptista 2010: 12; also Grilo 2006: 37–38), or the ‘intransigent’ cinema of João César Monteiro (Monteiro 1995: 796). These examples are positioned against mainstream cinema, both aesthetically and in terms of production, epitomizing a discourse of frugal film aesthetics maintained by artisanal and low-budget values that have defined the work of several generations of Portuguese filmmakers. In contemporary Portuguese cinema, interstitial modes of production and artisanal filmmaking have gained further relevance with the possibilities offered by digital video. As Daniel Ribas argues, digital video became part of a ‘production paradigm’ that helped ease film costs, which in turn propagated a multiplicity of filmmaking practices and formats, such as the short film (2009: 95). In similar terms, Tiago Baptista pointed out the flourishing of the documentary film, propelled by ‘the latest technological developments in digital video shooting and editing equipment’, and new public funding programmes dedicated exclusively to this format (2010:  15). The role of digital technology allowed some contemporary Portuguese filmmakers to solve technical and financial problems caused by a lack of institutional support and by a recent political disinvestment in cinema. This production paradigm helped propel a plurality of forms of filmmaking, both cinematically and thematically, and allowed for technical and production options not strictly tied to professional norms. 138

Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking

Filmmaking at the interstices While sustaining discourses related to independent cinema practices, filmmaking under this framework is understood as a matter of choice, as much as a necessity. In the Portuguese context, and while allowing substantial freedom from professional and budget restrictions, the use of digital video reflects the struggles filmmakers face within a limited national industry. Pedro Costa’s cinema represents a singular example of how this duality is negotiated, by sustaining a frugal filmmaking practice while retaining characteristics of an interstitial mode of production that negotiate the possibilities offered by co-production agreements. Detached from normative filmmaking practices, Costa has created a substantial body of work that, nevertheless, still participates in professional norms of production and circulation processes. The initial impulse that originated this detachment was instigated during the working process of Costa’s second feature film Casa de Lava/Down to Earth (1994). Shot mostly in Cape Verde and produced by Paulo Branco, Down to Earth had an international cast and crew; the film was financially supported by Portugal, France and Germany. With a troublesome shooting, Down to Earth was marked by a difficult adaptation to location constraints and beset by constant personal conflicts and numerous incidents on the set, aggravated by Costa’s decision to revise previous production and script arrangements (see Jorge 2014: 6; see also Owen in this volume). During the shooting process, Costa steered away from the script’s guidelines and relied on constant improvisation; similarly, the shooting process came to accommodate his incessant varying perceptions of the film’s setting and the personal stories of the non-professional actors who were recruited on location. Soon after the completion of the film, Costa became an intermediary between these local Cape Verdean participants in the film and the numerous immigrants from the archipelago living in Lisbon’s suburbs and surrounding cities. Delivering ‘bags full of letters, presents, coffee, tobacco’ to family members and friends, the filmmaker was particularly welcomed at Fontaínhas, a multicultural shantytown dependent on illegal and informal economies and portrayed by the Portuguese news media as commonly associated with some of Lisbon’s most violent criminality (Costa 2012).

139

Portugal’s Global Cinema The increasing proximity to this neighbourhood served to influence the substantial number of works that constitutes Costa’s oeuvre to date. These include the already mentioned Bones and In Vanda’s Room, as well as Juventude em Marcha/Colossal Youth (2006), Cavalo Dinheiro/Horse Money (2014), and several short films:  Tarrafal and Caça ao Coelho com Pau/The Rabbit Hunters from 2007, O Nosso Homem/Our Man (2010) and Sweet Exorcism (also known as Sweet Exorcism-Lamento da Vida Jovem, 2012). Pedro Costa’s films since Down to Earth became focused on depictions of the ‘other’ in Portuguese society, reflecting the social reality of a country in constant structural development, while at the same time presenting a fragmented identity marked by its postcolonial condition and the increase of generational issues (Ferreira 2007: 224). While not explicitly presented, these issues reflect the political, social and economic changes of contemporary Portugal, propelled by the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, which ended more than four decades of dictatorship, and prompted the start of the country’s democratic transition during the late 1970s and early 1980s (see Trindade’s chapter in this volume). These depictions of the social ‘other’ are done in an increasingly realistic tone, a characteristic shared by other Portuguese filmmakers from the 1990s onwards (see Baptista 2010: 14; Bello 2009: 3). Bones, to date Costa’s last film shot in 35mm, delivers a realistic portrait of disenfranchized young characters living in adverse settings in Lisbon’s suburbs. The film marks the filmmaker’s transition between the professional framework and a more artisanal approach to filmmaking, using digital video. Following a ‘routine of European art film’ (Neyrat 2010: 11), the film’s heavy technical apparatus and numerous filming crew imposed a considerable strain on the location and its residents, which added to Costa’s dissatisfaction with professional film shooting routines. Increasingly frustrated with the lack of approximation to the location imposed by the shooting apparatus, soon after the completion of the film, Costa returned to Fontaínhas by himself and observed the neighbourhood’s routines. The filmmaker has said that Vanda Duarte, who was part of the casting of Bones, suggested shooting another film about Fontaínhas, this time without an intrusive and heavy shooting framework (Costa 2012; see also da Costa 2001: 56). From this collaboration with Vanda Duarte emerged In Vanda’s Room (see Figure 8.1). 140

Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking

Figure 8.1 Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room

In Vanda’s Room, Costa’s first film starring an entirely non-professional cast and filmed using digital video, presents a similar depiction of the social ‘other’, centred on the figures of Vanda Duarte, her family and several drug users inhabiting Fontaínhas. While the thematic similarity to Bones is clear, the film’s style reflects the non-intrusive and low-budget qualities of digital video, marked by a ‘powerfully realized fusion of sustained observation and stylistic austerity’ (Suchenski 2010: 271). Costa’s patient work method during the shooting at Fontaínhas relied on ‘slowness’, understood as both an aesthetic proposition (observed in the austere and minimal textual qualities of the film, as well as in the pace of its narrative) and as a particular mode of filmmaking (see Jorge 2016). Using a digital camera, Costa shot an abundant amount of material for approximately two years, without a script or rigorous film planning, while establishing a close rapport with the non-professional actors featured in the film.2 As explained by the filmmaker, the shooting process was conducted under a continuous and, at times, stoic daily routine and by the use of a reduced filming kit. In practical terms, Costa dispensed with most of the 141

Portugal’s Global Cinema filming apparatus, using instead a Panasonic DX 100, at the time a new, middle-range digital camera, and portable equipment including microphones and improvised reflectors made of polystyrene sheets or domestic mirrors (Costa 2012; see also APORDOC 2002:  80). Equally, Costa did not have a film crew on location, and only intermittently relied on the collaboration of technicians. One of these technicians, filmmaker Cláudia Tomaz (who at the time was also using digital video in her first feature film Noites/Nights [2001]), recalls that the people involved in the process were ‘not the normal film crew at all’, with Costa doing the camera work while a small number of people would assist the filmmaker, even in activities out the remit of filmmaking (Tomaz 2013). These crew activities also extended to, for example, occasional collaborations, such as the one with sound technician Philippe Morel, who would join the production team intermittently during work breaks from other productions (Costa et  al 2012: 104). This collective effort, characterized by Costa’s direct agency, reflects an artisanal shooting disconnected from the normative steps of (industrial) filmmaking, with proficiency in low-tech and low-budget methods, considerable merging of individual and professional agency, and a reformulation of standard professional methods and roles. However, as film critic Emmanuel Burdeau argues in a Cahiers du Cinéma article describing his visit to the film’s set, In Vanda’s Room is a ‘film “like the others” [even if] without the normal [filmmaking] apparatus’ (1999:  62). While participating in a ‘desacralization’ of cinema’s processes (as termed by Burdeau [1999]), In Vanda’s Room is still confined by procedures that inevitably draw a comparison with other practices common in art cinema co-production. At the same time as it enjoyed generous creative leeway, Costa’s approach to filmmaking was still dependent on particular funding and distribution mechanisms observed in the co-production model. Produced by Francisco Villa-Lobos (Contracosta Produções), the film relied on post-production and financial processes that can be considered standard in contemporary art cinema. As with Costa’s previous works, the film is clearly under the traditional model of European art cinema co-production: ‘25% of the financing’ came from Portuguese sources, including funding from the Portuguese Film Institute, henceforth ICA (Villa-Lobos cited in Martins 142

Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking 2001: 9). The rest of the film’s budget was financed by different institutions and producers from Germany, Switzerland and Italy. These arrangements reveal a dynamic process that complies with complementing ‘convergent’ interests of ‘variegated film industries’ (Jäckel 2003: 25) which form a network composed of small-scale production, and post-production, units and pan-European, national and regional public institutions and funding initiatives. Revealing these convergent interests, the funding process took into consideration particular technical tasks, negotiated individually by the film producer with the different funding institutions, which then allocated resources to particular production and post-production processes. With ICA funding covering the initial shooting process, Villa-Lobos negotiated other sources of financing that would cover subsequent production and post-production stages. Later funding came in 1998 from German TV channel ZDF, under the financing scheme of the programme Das Kleine Fernsehspiel. According to ZDF producer Jörg Schneider, the low-budget characteristics of the project were in accordance with the ethos of the programme, initially created to support filmmakers working on low budget fiction and documentary works (Schneider 2013). While the shooting process of Costa’s films is characterized by a frugal approach, the post-production of his films stretch for considerable periods of time and are assisted by a considerable number of film professionals, as well as enjoying substantial technical and budget support. Aiming for a carefully, technically assisted, post-production process, other arrangements were made by Villa-Lobos in order to assure the post-production of the film. In collaboration with Karl Baumgartner (Pandora Films), the producer covered costs related to image post-production and subsequent sound editing over a nine-month period. As pointed out by Patrícia Saramago, who edited In Vanda’s Room with Dominique Auvray, while the shooting of the film was determined by the use of an affordable video camera, the post-production process highlighted the careful filmic artistry that permeates all of Costa’s oeuvre. This process allowed the filmmaker to enhance ‘the formal image and sound’ aspect of the film, which minimized deficiencies inherent to the technology used (Saramago 2013). Convergent interests were also observed in the final post-production process, particularly when the digital master had to be converted to the 35mm film exhibition 143

Portugal’s Global Cinema format. The transfer to film was made by Swiss Effects, in collaboration with Ventura Films. According to the film’s producer, this arrangement had the direct endorsement of the artistic director of the Locarno International Film Festival, where the film premiered in 2000 (Villa-Lobos 2013). The production process described above leads to an understanding of Costa’s filmmaking as characterized by a creative freedom in which an artisanal attitude is present, while concurrently observing an interstitial work model which, nevertheless, continues to work under normative technical circumstances inherent to professional cinema production.

Authorship renegotiated Reformulating the docufiction style of In Vanda’s Room, Costa’s subsequent feature film, Colossal Youth, portrays the transition between Fontaínhas (whose progressive demolition was documented in In Vanda’s Room) and the estate of Casal da Boba, situated in Amadora, north-west of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. The film consolidates the interstitial production and digital video filmmaking framework observed in In Vanda’s Room, while enjoying an increasingly larger budget from different European sources, and upgrading the digital technology previously used in In Vanda’s Room. Establishing a link with Down to Earth, particularly focused on the immigration of Cape Verdeans and Portugal’s historical and political past, the narrative of Colossal Youth combines the personal story of Ventura – a Cape Verdean former builder who became handicapped because of an accident at a Lisbon construction site – with the historical moment of 25 April 1974 and the revolution’s immediate aftermath (see Figure 8.2). These biographical and historical facts are used as part of the narrative, reflecting the understated and often latent political contours of the film’s context. While opaque, the political theme underlined in the film impacts considerably on its narrative flow, with flashbacks constantly moving between (historical) past and the present everyday lives of its characters. Simultaneously, the film re-visits some of the participants/actors in In Vanda’s Room (some now relocated to the Casal da Boba estate), creating intertextual connections between the different films in Costa’s oeuvre. These intertextual connections transmit intercessions between Costa’s 144

Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking

Figure 8.2 Colossal Youth

agency as a filmmaker and a collective textual authorship, reflecting the lives of these non-professional actors. Strengthening these collaborative filmmaking practices with some of the Fontaínhas residents who participated in In Vanda’s Room, the filmmaker observed a similar shooting routine in Colossal Youth, supported by a non-professional cast and professional crew members. However, relevant technical changes in the shooting unit were also made. From the beginning of the shooting process Costa relied on a larger and steady number of film professionals, such as Leonardo Simões (cinematography) and Olivier Blanc (sound). This compact team was complemented by the presence of the producer and collaboration with direction assistants  – a crew arrangement that remained similar throughout Costa’s subsequent films, as explained by Patrícia Saramago (2013). This technical support facilitated the shooting process, minimizing technical issues experienced in Costa’s previous film, while maintaining a small-scale, unobtrusive 145

Portugal’s Global Cinema framework apparatus. Similarly, the production operations remained to some extent similar to the ones observed in In Vanda’s Room, even with a significant increase in the allocated budget. Colossal Youth was also produced by Contracosta, with Portuguese public funding provided by ICA and the Portuguese public TV channel RTP. The film received additional production support through the company Les Films de l’Étranger (setup by Villa-Lobos in order to gather French public funding) and of French-German TV channel ARTE (with which Costa had previously collaborated in 2001, directing the documentary Où Gît Votre Sourire Enfoui? [‘Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?’], commissioned for the series Cinéma, de Notre Temps [1988-]). While still negotiating conditions related to the co-production model, the small-scale shooting apparatus and the interstitial production framework started in In Vanda’s Room and partially maintained in Colossal Youth also potentiated Costa’s involvement in several commissioned works. The versatility of filming with digital video allowed for a significant amount of material to be shot for the two feature films, material which became partially re-used in a series of video installation works. Examples of these video installation works are the ones included in the exhibition [based upon] TRUE STORIES (January-March 2003, commissioned by the Witte de With, Rotterdam) and in Fora! (Out!), an exhibition held at the Fundação de Serralves (Porto, October 2005–January 2006), made in collaboration with Portuguese artist Rui Chafes – a collaboration subsequently carried through other initiatives, such as the exhibition MU (‘Nothing’, 2012–2013, at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, in Japan) or, more recently, through the book Família Aeminium (Pierre von Kleist Éditions, 2016). More than just parallel to Costa’s filmic works for theatrical release, these works produced for the gallery space complement and/or renegotiate the textual qualities and narrative lineages presented in the filmmaker’s feature films. Costa’s work for the white cube is in direct dialogue with his oeuvre for the black box, further generating contextual and intertextual qualities between filmic formats. While still working on Colossal Youth, Costa started the production of two short films: Tarrafal (included in Olhar o Estado do Mundo/State of the World, 2007, produced by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal) and The Rabbit Hunters (included in the Jeonju Digital Project 2007, an 146

Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking initiative of the Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea). These two short films unravel the thematic universe directly connected with the characters linked to Fontaínhas and Casal da Boba, and follow the low-budget digital filmmaking routines started in In Vanda’s Room and consolidated in Colossal Youth. These commissioned works allow for a further understanding of the possibilities generated by the interstitial production framework conducted by Costa. Furthermore, these films and video installations also reveal an increasing tension between the roles of the filmmaker/director and producer in film authorship. As Villa-Lobos (2013) points out, in all these commissioned works Costa was willing to assume control of the process, dealing directly with the producers of these projects and the institutions that potentiated and supported these particular works. By the end of the post-production process of Colossal Youth, divergences between Costa and Villa-Lobos led to the end of the partnership with Contracosta, propelling additional detachment from normative production processes. The tensions between the filmmaker and producer that marked the final production stages of Colossal Youth demonstrate the problematic relationship between Costa and successive producers (observed since Down to Earth) – a relation that Costa is not shy to point out. The short films Our Man and Sweet Exorcism (the latter included in the omnibus Centro Histórico/Historic Centre, commissioned under the Guimarães European Capital of Culture, 2012), and the feature film Horse Money, reflect this detachment from the role of the producer. These works were produced in partnership with the Portuguese company Sociedade Óptica Técnica (OPTEC), which currently provides technical support to the filmmaker’s work. This partnership marks a new phase in the filmmaker’s increasingly changing relationship with the artistic and production processes of film authorship. Also produced by OPTEC, Costa’s latest feature film, Horse Money, gave primacy to a production paradigm centred on the importance of several technological steps inherent to digital filmmaking, while subduing processes commonly attributed to the role of the producer. Apart from his first feature film, this is Costa’s only work exclusively produced with Portuguese financial and technical support revealing, perhaps, the beginning of an increasingly self-sustained production framework. 147

Portugal’s Global Cinema Costa’s agency as a filmmaker informs not just the creative and production processes of his films, but also extends to exhibition and circulation practices. Partaking in the dynamics of contemporary art cinema circulation and consumption, Costa has been able to actively promote his oeuvre, expanding its circulation beyond the art-house and film festival circuit. Currently, Costa’s works enjoy considerable circulation through international special screenings and retrospectives, the international art gallery circuit, as well as recent DVD releases targeting global markets.3 These multifaceted forms of circulation and consumption bring forth considerations about the state of art cinema’s current aesthetic, production and circulation practices, as well as the possible permutations of the art filmmaker – not just as an author or director, but also as a producer, an artist and a figure of commerce.

Conclusion In the production processes discussed, there is a noticeable evolution in the way Costa has renegotiated a digital filmmaking paradigm. This evolution is characterized by an autonomous production process rooted in digital technologies. Arguably, this autonomy offers a partial answer to the structural difficulties observed in Portuguese cinema, which can also be contextualized by the challenges faced by European cinema industries. However, this digital mode of production has also become a wide-ranging filmmaking practice, visible in the works of contemporary practitioners who adopt digital video to resolve problems related to production costs, and who search for technical autonomy and aesthetic freedom outside industrial filmmaking practices. In the case of Costa, this attitude suggests an extensive process of affirmation of authorship that stages the figure of the filmmaker as not just a creative practitioner, but also an active linking agent present in all aspects of production and circulation. This authorial attitude highlights constant tensions between artistic creation, convening notions of individual expression, and of cinema production, understood as a collaborative practice. On the one hand, Costa’s films balance between individual expression and creative interactions with both his non-professional actors and professional collaborators; on the other, these films obey to industrial and economic normative procedures, 148

Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking operated by several film professionals. Carrying a pragmatic approach, Costa’s filmmaking practice reveals a ‘narrative of production’ – an evolving and ongoing working process adapting to different contexts, emphasizing the importance of labour mechanisms and the constraints and freedoms that allow his films to be made. While understood as a working process, this narrative also acquires discursive contours, expressed publicly by the filmmaker, in which his films’ means of production are tied to an ascetic filmic style that supports the filmmaker’s thematic universe. This frugal digital framework has come to characterize the material expression of Pedro Costa’s filmmaking, a practice intersecting individual and collective artistic modes and constantly negotiating its means of production and circulation.

Notes 1. Adrian Martin illustrates this dialogue between technological possibilities and industrial formations in his analysis of the use of digital video in contemporary Australian low-budget cinema (2006: 1–5). 2. It is estimated that the amount of material shot surpasses the 120 hours, with the film’s editor Patrícia Saramago indicating a number close to 200 hours. 3. Examples of this agency can be observed, for example, in the complete touring retrospective Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa (2007–2008), held in Canada and in the USA cinematheques and university-related institutes, as well as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The Films of Pedro Costa, held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York, July 2015), or in the filmmaker’s active role in supervising the process of the DVD releases of Blood (Second Run, 2009), Letters from Fontainhas (Criterion Collection, 2010), Colossal Youth (Masters of Cinema, 2011), Casa de Lava (Second Run, 2012), as well as the supervision of the 2016 British and American Blu-ray releases of Horse Money (by Second Run and Cinema Guild, respectively).

149

9 Broken Links: The Cinema of Teresa Villaverde Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin

Teresa Villaverde (born 1966) is a filmmaker whose work has been recognized and acclaimed within Portugal’s cinephile culture and at film festivals around the world, but it has yet to receive the serious, dedicated attention it deserves from critics and scholars internationally. As she enters production on her seventh feature, Colo (2016)1, we look back in this chapter over her films, using three overlapping perspectives in an attempt to knit together their deep logic of form and content relations. First, we take a thematic approach, drawing together recurring situations and character configurations in the films. Second, we embark on a formal analysis of the unique narrative and stylistic strategies that form such a powerful ‘voice’ for her art. Lastly, we focus on the broader figures and tropes that articulate her films, and the particular types of emotion they evoke and elicit.

The holy family Family is at once the most cherished and the most fragile structure in the cinema of Villaverde. Her debut feature, A Idade Maior/Alex (1991), begins with the representation of the traumatic effects of a broken family. In a darkened image, young Alex (Ricardo Colares) stands, with his back to the camera, in front of a tree. An off-screen female voice – which begins over

151

Portugal’s Global Cinema the blank screen that is part of the opening credits – asks him: ‘Alex, do you remember your father?’ He answers, his back still turned, ‘No’. The voice returns: ‘Your mother?’ Now Alex quickly swivels around, pauses thoughtfully, revealing the tears rolling down his cheeks, and replies with a strange softness: ‘No’. Cut to the film’s title. After this truly inaugural moment – a concentrated fragment of a scene, but entirely self-sufficient, as so many of Villaverde’s scenes are – all of her films have focused, from one angle or another, on the disintegration of the family. Três Irmãos/Two Brothers, My Sister (1994), simultaneously the most melodramatic and the most Bressonian of Villaverde’s features, looks at a family unit which is both dysfunctional and emotionally intense  – especially in the relationship of the ever-suffering, put-upon Maria (Maria de Medeiros) with her two brothers, Mário (Marcello Urgeghe) and João (Evgeniy Sidikhin), which reaches moments of rather incestuous perversity. The father of this family (Fernando Reis, Jr) is a literally blind, violent figure, full of inexplicable rage; the mother (Olimpia Carlisi) is sad and suicidal – character traits she duly passes down to her daughter. It is the least lyrical and most unrelenting of Villaverde’s films, ticking off the ‘stations’ of abuse, victimization (at work and in social situations, as well as at home) and interpersonal disconnection until it arrives at its insistently signalled, bleak ending. In Os Mutantes/The Mutants (1998), the protagonists are kids living in social welfare institutions, abandoned or given up for care by their parents. The heroine, Andreia (Ana Moreira), decides to carry on with her pregnancy; but, after she gives birth alone, without help, in a gas station bathroom, we see that the child is instantly condemned to the same lackfilled destiny as her own. Água e Sal/Water and Salt (2001) tells the story of a woman, Ana (Galatea Ranzi), in the process of marital separation. The anxiety she feels when her unnamed husband (Joaquim de Almeida), takes their daughter (Clara Jost, the director’s own child) on a holiday to Milan, is followed by panic and breakdown, once father and daughter do not arrive at the airport on the designated return date. This film also interweaves a subplot involving a girl, Emília (Ana Moreira), locked in a room, whose baby has been stolen and sold. She refuses to eat, while her obsessive, teenage boyfriend, Alexandre 152

Broken Links (Alexandre Pinto), waits outside on the street, forlorn and powerless, forbidden to visit her. At the end, there is an intervention that gives freedom back to Emília and reveals the mystery around the stolen child. Ana becomes an accomplice in these events, and has to decide whether to speak out or not. Sonia (Ana Moreira), the heroine of Transe/Trance (2006), has also been separated from her child. This dispossession is partly what drives her to abandon Russia in search of better fortune. In Cisne/Swan (2011), Pablo (Miguel Nunes), the driver of Vera (Beatriz Batarda), was also once abandoned by his mother; now that he has tracked her down, he fantasizes about their reunion, and becomes entirely obsessed with this prospect. In this film, as in Water and Salt, the heroine will be again faced with a crime that is in some way an act of justice, when a little boy, Alce (Sérgio Fernandes), murders an adult abuser. Instead of going to the police, Vera decides to protect the boy. The final scene of Swan is strikingly beautiful (see Figure  9.1). The camera shows us Alce in a room, reading Vera’s book; the sound of wood being chopped makes him stand up and approach the window. Through the glass, we see a painterly reflection of Sam (Israel Pimenta) chopping outside, while Vera sleeps on the couch with a dog lying on her chest; while

Figure 9.1 Alce (Sérgio Fernandes) in the final scene of Swan

153

Portugal’s Global Cinema she dreams, she smiles. It took Villaverde six fiction features built on the theme of the broken family to achieve this image of peace and happiness. (There is a preview or anticipation of it in Alex, when Alex is called to the window to witness, from inside the family home, the unexpected reappearance of his father, standing next to the mother.) It is, however, a fragile image, one that has the aura of a fantasy or dream: heightened music plays, the images swim in glass reflections and – if we look very closely – we can see that Vera’s initial position and orientation in the room have been radically shifted to allow the particular cinematographic qualities of the final shot, with its play of reflections. Nonetheless, this portrait of the reconstitution of a family seems to be the matrixial image that Villaverde has been driving toward, across all her films. What seems impossible is the thing most desired by her characters, and by the films themselves: a close-knit nuclear family. Experience of the difficulties of family life does not breed, here, a radical rejection of this social structure, its critique or rethinking: paradoxically, it heightens the yearning for its ungraspable, idyllic image. The ideal family is ‘only a motion away’ – a cinematic movement or projection – as Paul Simon sang in ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ (a deeply Villaverdean title). The intensity of this primal ‘broken link’ in Villaverde’s work is comparable to the motor of Philippe Garrel’s cinema as analysed by Saad Chakali (2014), with particular reference to its condensation in La Jalousie/Jealousy (2013). Here, what each child witnesses to be the sudden, primal, inexplicable ‘unlove’ (désamour) between mother and father, cruel testament to the inconstancy of intimate commitment through time and the unstoppable whirlwind of shifting passions, collides with the absolute, eternal love that passes between parent and child – giving rise to the charged but internally unstable ‘Holy Family’ iconography that we find in the work of both these auteurs. But there is a crucial difference between Villaverde and Garrel in this regard:  where Garrel’s young heroes and heroines may rebel against the society or the state, but almost never, on an individual level, against their biological parents, Villaverde’s adult characters are, from the outset, more afflicted and conflicted; something mysterious and hard to name, some

154

Broken Links illness or neurosis or existential malaise forbids them from forming eternal bonds with others (even, at times, their own children), except in torment. In Alex, for instance, the fact that the father (Joaquim de Almeida), once returned from army duty in Africa, feels unable to go home (and instead lives, in secret, for months just nearby) is the central, psychological mystery of the narrative, quickly taking on ominous proportions. In fact, this strain of melancholia in Villaverde’s work tends more toward the complex that Nouri Gana has dubbed (in relation to Shakespeare’s Hamlet) melanxiety: ‘a composite emotional current that yokes together a melancholic fixation on the past and an anxious prescience of the future’ (Gana 2004: 62) – and always tied, in its manifestations and symptoms, to an insistent repetition that freezes or fixes the present in the type of tense, ‘strange and mournful’ stasis (to quote Paul Simon again) we know well from all of Villaverde’s films.

Forms and transformations If we look only at the superficial subject matter of most of Villaverde’s films, we could assume that they are linked with ‘social issue’ cinema: the desperate lives of street kids in The Mutants; domestic abuse in Two Brothers, My Sister; sex trafficking in Trance; and so on. In particular, it would be easy enough to link her films to the recent category of a ‘cinema of precarity’ (see Berlant 2011; Mazierska 2013), which has emerged both in documentary (Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse/The Gleaners and I [2000]) and fiction films (the work of Laurent Cantet, the Dardennes and Leonardo Di Costanzo, among others). One needs to be careful, however, to not reduce films – especially those as formally rich as Villaverde’s  – to their purely anecdotal, referential or sociological levels (as happens too often in discussions of the depiction of precarity), a process which ends up flattening them (whatever the radical intention of the critical-political discourse) into mirror-reflections of realities and topics outside cinema. If Villaverde’s films teach us anything, it is that their fragile space of transformation – affective, imaginative and aesthetic – takes place within cinema and its particular powers.

155

Portugal’s Global Cinema Both the cinematic style and the narrative construction of Villaverde’s work violate the most typical principles of what we conventionally take to be the realism of social issue films. In this chapter, we discuss three major levels of Villaverde’s formal work: the predominance of subjectivity; dysnarrative and dysnarration; and a specific fracturing of mise-en-scène strategies in her staging and editing. First, Villaverde’s cinema is eminently subjective, centred on what happens inside the characters, and the way they feel and experience the world around them. In The Mutants, many shots show the perspective of the protagonists, or communicate their visual and aural sensations  – such as a fairground ride tilted in the frame as seen by the characters when they awake on the ground; or an upside-down frame which is the vision of a boy idling in the water. This interiority is reinforced by solitude, and by the reigning distances between characters, often staged literally in the miseen-scène’s rigorous spacing and separation of bodies. In this regard, we especially note that anything resembling a conventionally erotic or tender sex scene, one not associated with rape, prostitution or some gesture of violent coercion, is strikingly absent from Villaverde’s oeuvre. Even authentic love, when it figures in the unfolding or resolution of events, is a matter of absence and distances: witness the relationship of Vera and Sam in Swan, which seems to draw its lasting power from moments of separation and apparent disconnection that, in fact, allow room for these individuals to ‘breathe’ and see what their love is really made of. The second major aspect of Villaverde’s cinema that militates against realism is its very particular approach to telling stories. A  somewhat neglected idea from film theory is useful in trying to get a grip on this: the idea of dysnarrative and its corresponding dynamic of dysnarration. The term originated with Alain Robbe-Grillet’s literary theory (1989) arising from his involvement with the nouveau roman of the 1950s and 1960s. For him, dysnarrative does not indicate a total rejection or smashing of narrative; nor an entirely non-narrative, plotless approach. Rather, it works on what he called the suspension of narrative, of its conventionally driving motor forces and mechanisms of spectator identification. The panoply of elements that compose a typical fictional world – characters, situations, hints of various binding intrigues – was not ejected from this 156

Broken Links type of new narrative. Instead, characters were abstracted into types or figures; locations became charged, expressionistic environments or ‘containers’ of action; and intrigues entered into a rondo of circular reprise, repetition, variation and transformation. Film theorist Francis Vanoye’s elaboration of Robbe-Grillet’s ideas at the end of the 1970s (2005) was timely, because in the 1980s a new type of dysnarrative evolved among a group of filmmakers working quite autonomously. This was the case for Jean-Luc Godard’s features of the decade; Leos Carax’s first major works, including Boy Meets Girl (1984) and Mauvais Sang/The Night is Young (1986); and at the end of the decade, of Pedro Costa’s striking debut O Sangue/Blood (1989) (see Martin 2013). All these directors are influences on Villaverde, as we see most clearly in her first two features, Alex and Two Brothers, My Sister. But she has fully reinvented for herself this discontinuous line of dysnarrative experiment by the time of The Mutants. In the same period that she has been making films, her closest neighbour, on all the formal levels we are describing, is Claire Denis – a reference we expand below. What does it mean to call Villaverde’s films dysnarrative – what unique characteristics of her method can this help reveal to us? Fiction – even, as we have indicated, taken to the point of outright melodrama – is hardly absent from her work; there are always central characters whom we follow along the path of a particular journey, no matter how fraught, mysterious or uncertain that journey may be. Moreover, her films (like Carax’s) are full of strong, sudden, violent events: murder, death, assault, abandonment and catastrophe, among others. Where an intricate process of dysnarration congeals is in the presentation of each block of the story, piece by piece – each shot and each scene. In Villaverde’s films, we find a radical version of what has been theorized (in relation to Denis) as the archipelago method of story-formation. Here, images are not composed to illustrate a pre-given plot; rather, the narrative emerges from the unstable succession or montage of block-like image-events and sound-events placed in an associative chain. Chakali (2005) explains this concept of the archipelago narrative, noting that: ‘the shots come first, [they] are the “original” material, and from there the narrative arrives in Denis, never the reverse: in her work, the diegesis does not pre-exist the shots, it is produced in a strictly cinematic way’. 157

Portugal’s Global Cinema Villaverde, too, produces the diegesis ‘in a strictly cinematic way’. Ellipsis, fragmentation, indirection, partial vision and hearing – the pervasive sense that we are never receiving the whole of any given event, only its shards – are paramount in her style. Even the scene of Andreia giving birth in The Mutants can be only retroactively grasped – since, during that traumatic event itself, we see no one but her. It is not uncommon to have a Villaverde scene in which there are two people speaking, but only one of them visible – perhaps in a single, seemingly truncated ‘sequence shot’ that absorbs the entire action. Such micro-mysteries – who is off-screen?; what is actually happening here? – are expanded, through large-scale practices of dysnarration, into macro-mysteries. Villaverde’s films are full of strange enigmas, sudden apparitions, and puzzling associations of events and characters (usually across different time frames of past and present). The goals of her characters are presented in a deliberately cloudy, ambiguous fashion – it is only when the strong actions occur (usually after a long, tense ‘priming’) that we can retroactively impute motivation and orientation and, even then, with some doubt. The narrative scheme of each film can more or less be sorted out, but only ‘after the fact’ of viewing (and over multiple viewings), if one has the patience and can piece together the fleeting hints and clues. The basic structure of Villaverde’s complex plots tends to proceed as follows:  after the introduction of the central characters (usually, as we have noted, the members of a family, whether seen interacting together, or separately), there is a series of narrative ‘splittings’ – wanderings, travels, encounters  – that introduce new characters. These new characters may remain peripheral to the central plot (carrying the sort of comparative, symbolic or metaphoric significance familiar from a long gallery of ‘minor players’ in art cinema storylines) – but, more often, through twists and revelations, they are drawn into the centre of the intrigue. In Alex, for instance, it is intimated that Ana’s new lover (played by Miguel Borges and identified only as ‘Unknown’) may once have been intimately involved with Emília, and therefore possibly also the biological father of the child that has been taken away. The dual effect of Villaverde’s dysnarration – this growing sense that everything is atomized and yet secretly interconnected – creates, like in Denis’ films L’Intrus/The Intruder (2004) and Les Salauds/Bastards 158

Broken Links (2013), an experience for the spectator that is both ominous (even paranoiac) and strangely hopeful. The third major way in which Villaverde’s films escape the realism of the social issue genre is through their very particular handling of miseen-scène across the twin, integrated phases of staging and editing. While one, time-honoured formulation of mise-en-scène presents it as the ‘art of bodies in space’ (see Martin 2014) – which is as true of classical cinema (Howard Hawks, Max Ophüls, Kenji Mizoguchi) as it is of the more conceptual, neo-classical work of (to stay with Portuguese examples) Manoel de Oliveira or Rita Azevedo Gomes  – Villaverde, again in the 1980s tradition carved out by Godard, Carax, Costa, Chantal Akerman and others, is fixed on something different:  limbs in space, not whole bodies but their frequently bisected parts and details (see Figure  9.2). Her unusual choice of camera placement and perspective (plunging angles, decentered framings, ‘Antonioniesque’ configurations of people and environmental materials or textures) often has the effect of retarding our immediate comprehension of a scene, and depersonalizing it as well (as in the extended, sensual spectacle of blowing hair that opens The Mutants).

Figure 9.2 Decentered framing: Ana Moreira in Trance

159

Portugal’s Global Cinema At times – particularly in Two Brothers, My Sister – Villaverde’s miseen-scène follows the model of what Raymond Durgnat (2014) designated as the notional scene, a scene which is ‘sketched’ rather than fleshed out in a conventional way. She does this according to two variations. First, out of a few, minimal elements (two actors in a park, for example, or three people sitting in a bar), a ‘diagram’ is drawn: one character stands in place, another enters, eventually both exit at different moments and on different trajectories. The plot action plays itself out only as strictly required, without any need for realistic scene-setting or establishing detail; this has often been Akerman’s chosen option too. Second, and more in the spirit of the so-called ‘violent’ scenes in Godard’s Alphaville (1965) or Carax’s The Night is Young, action is subjected to a Pop Art-like abstraction via the powers of cinematic montage:  a series of static poses (limbs frozen in space) is simultaneously strung together and ‘spaced out’ via hard-tolocate sounds (cries, gunshots), insertions of black frames, and snatches of music set at an incongruous counterpoint to the typical, generic nature of such events. A more complete analysis of the intricate and crucial mise-en-scène aspect of Villaverde’s cinema  – including the interaction of image with sound – must wait for another occasion. For the moment, we note a major motif in The Mutants involving physical suspension, floating and hanging in the air – which feature in many inventive variations. Characters lie at the end of a train with their head over the side; they lean back as they sit in a truck; they regularly play perilously at the edge of one precipice or another, courting the abyss. This motif recurs, to varying extents, across all her work: the opening, memory/fantasy sequence of Two Brothers, My Sister (once again, its ultimate status is left deliberately unclear) shows Maria, both as child and adult, performing a perilous somersault on a thin, elevated ledge. Hence, connections are shattered at every level in Villaverde’s cinema: from the theme of the dysfunctional family, through all the ‘broken links’ provided, tantalizingly, by the formal strategies of montage and miseen-scène, and not least in the films’ ubiquitous practices of dysnarration. And yet these are not so-called ‘puzzle films’; on another, simultaneous level, they are visceral and direct. 160

Broken Links

Figures and feelings The portrayal of teenage life in The Mutants is extremely violent, physical and sensual. As usual in Villaverde’s cinema, her refusal to explain every detail of interior motivation figures as an ethical decision. However, the film shows a deep understanding of two fundamental drives that the teenagers portrayed share. First, the urge for freedom, which prompts them to constantly escape; and second, their deep anxiety over not being loved, the feeling that they have been abandoned, and the fear of being forgotten – which pushes them to inscribe their names in walls so as to affirm their identities, if only in a precarious way. Villaverde’s treatment of this generic gesture – with a choral polyphony of voices on the soundtrack laid over the impressionistic montage of wall inscriptions – gives it a special poetry. Precarity, although bound up with the idea of freedom in Villaverde’s film, is not presented with the least bit of romanticism. There is none of that Beat-era, bohemian fantasy of going ‘on the road’ and picking up work, food, shelter and companionship in an easy and abundant rhythm. Villaverde’s characters find themselves instantly and irreparably caught in a vicious double-bind: the moment they break out of an institution in their impulsive grab for independence, they are immediately, utterly dependent on anyone who can provide them with a morsel to eat, a bed to sleep in, or the prospect of earning any money. Andreia in The Mutants and Sonia in Trance fall prey to this punishing cycle. Villaverde effectively portrays how boring and tiresome it is for Andreia in The Mutants to listen to adult, authority figures as they reprimand her, or try to make her see reason. For her, these conversations are always simply something interfering with her plans, hence stopping her from moving forward. Her deepest motivation would seem to be (if we follows the hints, clues and moods) that she refuses the social equation that positions a fiduciary institution such as a welfare centre (however well-meaning or caring its individual staff ) as ‘replacement parents’. Andreia closes herself up like a block of ice – ice in various states (blocks, cubes, sheets) is a recurrent motif in Villaverde’s work – so that no one else can know her, or have access to what she is feeling.

161

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Figure 9.3 Applying lipstick: Ana Moreira in The Mutants

In the same way that there is a continuity between Ana in Water and Salt and Vera in Swan (they are both artists, economically self-sufficient, broad-minded and, despite their evident class status, highly sensitive to the plight of precarious people who are also fighting for their independence), there is a continuity between Andreia in The Mutants and Sonia in Trance. In the latter case, this link is emphasized by the fact that the same actress (Ana Moreira) plays both characters. Andreia and Sonia have both been dispossessed of their freedom. While Andreia escapes, and affirms her identity by making her own decisions and repeating her name in a mirror (a more dramatic reprise of Jean-Pierre Léaud’s ritual in Truffaut’s Baisers Volés/Stolen Kisses, 1968), Sonia keeps her name secret, as if it were the only thing that others cannot take from her, that she can still protect. Andreia applies lipstick as a sign of reclaiming her freedom (see Figure 9.3); while the only way for Sonia to protest her prostituted status is by smearing her lipstick (see Figure 9.4). These small, direct actions and gestures, in place of ‘white elephant’ narratives with a social message (see Farber 1998), are frequently what give us the key to the characters in Villaverde’s cinema. Their feelings are never really spoken, explained or narrated in any conventional way (the words 162

Broken Links

Figure 9.4 Smearing lipstick: Ana Moreira in Trance

‘I can’t say’ and ‘I don’t know’ recur like a mantra throughout her work); rather, they are represented through psychosomatic affects (lack of air and difficulty of breathing, insomnia, sweaty fever, burning, bleeding eyes), explosions of energy (breaking a window in The Mutants, bicycling under the sun in Swan, swimming to the point of exhaustion in Water and Salt), and dreams or fantasies. In Trance – the film that goes farthest in expressing, by every possible means, the mental state of its heroine  – even the landscape becomes a reflection of Sonia’s inner self. The ice that breaks, the trees that fall, or the violent breath of wind form an external representation of her turbulent, inner reality. Sonia is kidnapped by a Mafia ring and forced into prostitution: her journey becomes a descent into the hell of globalized Europe. Humiliated, mistreated, violated and sold, she enters a via crucis that drives her from Russia to Portugal, via Germany and Italy. Trance begins by introducing an important key for its reading: repetition, which associates the individual drama of the central character with its mythical, social and historical aspects. Repetition (of dialogues, situations and settings) becomes a constant, the only possible way of representing the looped, closed circuit in which Sonia moves. This is reinforced 163

Portugal’s Global Cinema by references to the figure of Andrei in Tolstoy’s War and Peace – as Teffi (2014), a contemporary of the Russian author, lamented, ‘a living person dies once, but Prince Andrei was dying forever, forever’. Isak Dinesen (a likely influence on Villaverde’s artistic sensibility) wrote in her Seven Gothic Tales: ‘The cure for anything is salt water – tears, sweat, or the sea’. Water and Salt, in its title as well as in its landscapes, suggests a process of healing open wounds – both for the woman inside the diegesis and for the director herself, through the creative process of making the film. Trance, by contrast, depicts the trance state as a psychic survival mechanism – a state of complete and utter dissociation that cinema can evoke better than any other medium. The film deploys an extreme formalization of terror and the fantastic in order to dissolve the distinction between the real and the mental: limbs in space, broken narrative and cinematographic blur are taken to the point of extreme abstraction, as the heroine is immersed in a dance of light and dark, shadows and colours, in a landscape she cannot recognize and through which she wanders, unable to determine its coordinates. As Villaverde remarked in an interview (Bittencourt 2012): ‘She’s living in a dream’. Villaverde’s characters are indeed dreamers (and another of Dinesen’s gothic tales, long nurtured as a film project by Orson Welles, was precisely ‘The Dreamers’, which has important affinities with Swan); their fantasy is not always distinguishable from their reality. These realms exist in continuity or blend together, forming a space where memories, imagination and traces of the present co-exist. In The Mutants, when Andreia goes to visit her mother, the two women take up positions sitting next to each other; suddenly, a shot from above shows Andreia walking from the other side of the room, kneeling, and leaning her head against the mother’s legs. As often in Villaverde, the unexpected shift in position and perspective alerts us to the process of radical doubt at the very heart of the film’s interlocking narrative and formal mechanisms – a characteristic which aligns her with a tradition of filmmakers (including Carl Dreyer, Otto Preminger, Jacques Rivette and John Cassavetes) for whom, as Jonathan Rosenbaum (1988) has suggested, ‘a shot is often a question rather than an answer, a hypothesis rather than a fact’.

164

Broken Links In Trance, Sonia crosses the limit of the real: she dreams of her Russian homeland, which possesses a white, archaic beauty; and of a child who gives her ice cubes. The various marks and traces of these fantasies reach a hallucinatory point of culmination just before the final scene, and immediately after the brutal rape of Sonia involving humans and dogs that occurs in a small, red cabin – a seeming condensation/transmission of motifs from a not dissimilar, highly abstract and experimental film about sex slavery in Eastern Europe, Philippe Grandrieux’s La Vie Nouvelle/A New Life (2002). In Sonia’s penultimate, dissociative fantasy – introduced by a Lynch-like forward tracking shot into the sheer blackness framed by the cabin door – all traits associated with melanxiety find a form: off-screen statements and questions are repeated, childhood is evoked, a princely soldier enters and offers to read to her, as she sits in a white, period costume. This scene is the apotheosis of an idea that has been gradually suggested throughout the film: the link between the heroic male soldiers of wartime and the dispossessed women of today’s globalized world. Such exchanges and gestures  – Sonia asks for a book, then simply lifts it to her chest from underneath the bottom of the screen – are unreal. Throughout the sequence, the complex, asynchronous mix of music (an orchestral arrangement of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs Without Words’, Op. 19) and sound (wind, crickets) further consolidates the inextricability of the levels of real and phantasmic. Everything about the sequence suggests to us that Sonia may really be dying, or has already died – but the subsequent, final tableau refuses to either confirm or deny the hypothesis. Trance works extensively to invoke images of a never-confessed desire. In Swan, by contrast, the imagined desire is put into words. Vera and Sam meet after having sent love letters to each other over a long period; they both have, each in their own minds, an image of this first encounter. When it finally occurs, these images do not at all coincide: Sam tells Vera that he wants to be in her house without her present, while Vera tells Sam how she imagined approaching and embracing him. In this film, more than any other by Villaverde, the drama is a clash of subjectivities that becomes stronger when the image of a desire that has been kept within oneself for so long does not match the way it unfolds in reality – such as when Pablo

165

Portugal’s Global Cinema at last visits the mother who abandoned him as a child, and this encounter is not how he pictured it. Giorgio Agamben speculates on why human desires are ‘unavowable’ – that is, why they resist being formulated in words. His answer to this (again, very Villaverdean) mystery is that desires are a matter of quasicinematic images, not of rational language  – and that these images, the accumulated substance of our imaginary lives, lie in a crypt ‘somewhere within ourselves, where they remain embalmed, suspended and waiting’. Indeed, as Agamben goes on to insist, this crypt of unavowed desire is ourselves, our secret selves. In the philosopher’s view, the daily, commonplace, social exchange of images or desires, in conversation or in media, is merely banal. But to ‘communicate the imagined desires and the desired images, on the other hand, is a more difficult task’ (Agamben 2007:  53). This is precisely the task that Villaverde, in her own, evolving way, has taken as her mission in cinema. For Agamben, playing (as he often does) on the Messianic image-repertoire bequeathed to the world by Walter Benjamin, the matter is resolved in a profane parable of the Last Day (see Martin 2012), when bodies and souls alike shall be released from their solitary crypts. Images will be separated from bodies, he muses, and the result is not so tragic after all, because we will realize that ‘they have already been fulfilled. Whatever we have imagined, we have already had’ (Agamben 2007: 54). Yet there remain the unfulfillable images, on which the Messiah goes to work: ‘With fulfilled desires, he constructs hell; with unfulfillable images, limbo. And with imagined desire, with the pure word, the beatitude of paradise’ (Agamben 2007: 54). The cinema of Teresa Villaverde never ceases to both tie and unpick this image-and-sound skein of hell, limbo and paradise on earth.

Note 1. This was at the time of writing. Colo went on to premiere at the 2017 edition of the Berlin Film Festival, and had the release date of 15 February 2017.

166

10 Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal: Territory, Littoral, City and Memory Bridge Michael Goddard

Raúl Ruiz’s 2010 film Mistérios de Lisboa/Mysteries of Lisbon may have been his first (and last) film in Portuguese, but it was far from being his first film in Portugal. In fact Portugal, beyond being an inexpensive and convenient film location, held a special significance in Ruiz’s work from the 1980s onwards. In an interview conducted not long before his death, Ruiz referred to Portugal, the location for a number of his films from the 1980s to Mysteries of Lisbon, as a bridge, meaning a passage from his exilic European present to his Chilean past of memory (in Goddard 2013: 171–184).1 This chapter focuses on Ruiz’s films made in Portugal, especially Mysteries of Lisbon, but also refers to some key earlier films like The Territory (1980) and La Ville des Pirates/City of Pirates (1983). It shows how they function as oneiric mnemotechnical passages for actualizing a phantom Chile, operating by means of a common southwestern littoral, however geographically, linguistically and temporally displaced. As such this chapter also engages with the idea of cinema as a mnemotechnical machine, foregrounded so memorably in Mémoire des apparences/Memory of Appearances (1986) and operative in the spectral logics of many of Ruiz’s films, especially City of Pirates, which was originally going

167

Portugal’s Global Cinema to be named ‘Impressions of Chile’. Mysteries of Lisbon would then be the culmination of this mnemotechnical series of films made in the space of passage of Ruiz’s Portugal, but giving it new dimensions via its engagement with Portuguese language, literature and culture. If Mysteries of Lisbon is indeed Ruiz’s only obvious contribution to Portuguese cinema, it is nevertheless necessarily a highly transnational and displaced one that situates Portugal as a space of passage between France and Brazil, and ultimately as still mysteriously linked to Chile.

Portugal as Ruizian territory This section focuses on Ruiz’s first film made in Portugal, aptly named The Territory, as the beginning of the engagement Ruiz would have with Portuguese space as a space of passage. Ruiz himself referred to Portugal in the following terms in the interview already alluded to: MG:

RR:

We talked already about Portugal because you seem to have a particular relationship with that place… I wondered, is there a connection for you between Portugal and Chile? As a bridge. Because for a long time I was divided between Chilean memories and nostalgias and all that, and reality, which was Europe, France. And Portugal was between. I started making a bridge there with City of Pirates. It was made at Baleal, on the coast. At Sintra I made The Territory and Love Torn in Dream. Portugal has that idea of the secret which I  always connect with cinema, in cinema you have a secret film inside a film, and you have to keep that secret. (Ruiz in Goddard 2013: 182)

As I argued in my monograph on Ruiz, the filmmaker’s neo or hyperbaroque cinema (Bégin 2009; Buci-Glucksmann 2004) can be usefully elucidated by the concept of cartography (Goddard 2013: 2–5ff.). The focus on cartography in Ruiz’s cinema of the 1980s is the sign of a more spatial orientation that was not developed in order to lend authenticity through the incorporation of real rather than virtual places but rather in order to develop new forms or territories for cinematic invention. As such it sets up a type of rubric for many of Ruiz’s films of the 1980s that can usefully be 168

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal read as so many instances of ‘impossible cartography’ in which cinema is used as a mapping device, again in an exploratory and experimental rather than mimetic sense of the cartographic, as so many mobile mappings of new and unpredictable cinematic spaces. Ruiz’s films express the search for an outside, a space of passage, beyond both European and Latin American traditions and cultural objects, the idea that by passing through the most clichéd forms of narrative, myth and folklore it might be possible to arrive at an open space that Ruiz directly associates with the sea. It is surely no accident that it was in this precise period that Ruiz moved both from televisual to truly cinematic projects as well as from working predominantly in France to a variety of European and international locations, particularly Portugal, facilitated by Ruiz’s beginning of a long term working relationship with the Portuguese film producer Paulo Branco. This was not a purely pragmatic move, even if Portugal at this time was considered one of the most economical countries in Europe for producing art cinema and therefore attracted several other European auteur filmmakers such as Wim Wenders. As already indicated, for Ruiz, Portugal also functioned as a passage to the ocean, as the only European coast that fully meets the Atlantic. For Ruiz, the Portuguese coastline constituted a type of substitute for Chile’s southwestern ‘littoral’ that faces the Pacific, as indicated in the interview previously cited. This is not merely due to the geographical coincidence of being a narrow strip of land on the southwest corner of a continent, directly facing the ocean, but also to a range of atmospheric resonances with cultural as much as geographical dimensions. All of this would be incorporated into the impossible cartographies expressed in the series of films that Ruiz would film in Portugal during the 1980s, beginning with The Territory. The Territory itself, however, was a fairly inauspicious start to Ruiz’s Portuguese adventures. The film seems to be shrouded in a kind of mystery concerning its production, for example, concerning the involvement of its supposed producer, Roger Corman, whose sole contribution was to write a telegram saying that ‘this movie must be very, very disgusting’ (Corman cited in Martin 2004a). Similarly there is the story that the entire cast and crew was appropriated by Wim Wenders for his Der Stand der Dinge/The State of Things (1982), which was shot shortly afterwards and featured 169

Portugal’s Global Cinema Corman as a lawyer and with which indeed many of Ruiz’s crew and cast were involved. Whatever the case, The Territory was made on a virtually non-existent budget and was only released in 1983 at the same time as the much more widely distributed Les Trois Couronnes du Matelot/Three Crowns of the Sailor. Appropriately enough, considering its production conditions, it concerns a group of tourists who become stranded in an anomalous zone, a forest park in Sintra, from which there seems to be no escape, as it constitutes a kind of labyrinth. The tourists soon resort to bizarre behaviours culminating in cannibalism. Based both on recent news stories about the passengers of crashed planes in the Andes turning to cannibalism, before even running out of food, on one level the film uses cannibalism as a critical mirror for examining the mores of contemporary consumer society. However, more than this, it is a type of dark utopia that explores an alternative society, in which the rules of civilization have been suspended. The scenario of an anomalous zone in which the usual rules of spatiotemporal cause and effect seem to have broken down seems to resonate with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), which was released shortly before the shooting of Ruiz’s film. However, The Territory can only have a distant relation to this film, since its ‘mysticism’ is very far removed from the Christian-derived moral of Tarkovsky’s and is rather more related to ethnological or Bataillean questions of sacrifice, survival and the origins of the social. While the scenario of The Territory in some respects resembles Luis Buñuel’s film, El Ángel Exterminador/The Exterminating Angel (1962), in which a group of bourgeois characters are mysteriously unable to leave a party and also ultimately resort to cannibalism, the key difference between the films is that between the degradation of the urbane interior of a mansion that perfectly encapsulates the social habits of its occupants and an exterior space of the forest in which the tourists become lost in The Territory. In the latter film, the tourists are ‘strangers in a strange land’, already potentially lost, and subject to external forces of an alien nature. This brings The Territory into greater proximity with the aesthetics of the B grade horror film than those of surrealism. As this film was shot inland in Sintra (in contrast to Wenders’s parasitic film that relocated members of the cast and crew to the littoral zone that 170

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal Ruiz would shortly make use of as well), the idea of Portuguese territory as an allegory of Chile is not as explicit as in some of Ruiz’s other films. However, the park depicted in the film represents the other side to Ruiz’s Portugal as an anomalous and unknowable zone operating according to a secret logic, and in which the characters are lost from the beginning. Telling in this regard is when the stranded tourists actually encounter two locals who respond to their distressing situation with utter lack of interest. It is as if this inside out world, described in the film in cartographic terms with reference to a map of the park in which the world is inside Europe, which is inside the nation, which is inside the region, which is finally inside the park itself, is perfectly normal for them, something they are entirely used to. This relates to Ruiz’s idea of Portugal as an anomalous European space harbouring a secret dimension, that paradoxically links it more to its Latin American than to its European neighbours. Some similar spaces would also figure in Mysteries of Lisbon, also shot to a large extent around Sintra, albeit presented by means of a more romantic and gothic, as well as art cinema aesthetic.

Three Crowns of a Sailor (1982), City of Pirates (1983) and impossible cartographies City of Pirates was also filmed in Portugal, this time near the coast, at Baleal, and, according to Ruiz, the film was the result of a strange process, partly based on a traumatic response to his first trip to Chile since the coup and partly an extension of the already developing obsession with the sea that had informed Three Crowns of the Sailor. In that film, Portugal, as Europe’s one opening to the Atlantic Ocean, had already functioned as the allegory of the ‘littoral’, substituting for both Valparaíso and a variety of other ‘exotic’ ports. With its origins in both Chilean and European tales of ships of the dead, this film constructed a liminal zone not only between life and death, reality and storytelling, but also between Europe and Latin America, with Portugal, for the first time, standing in as the passage between these spaces. So while the film begins with a scene of storytelling in an entirely fantasized and impossible Poland, the real beginning, in the story the sailor of the title tells, is in a Valparaíso recreated in Portugal as precisely 171

Portugal’s Global Cinema this spectral space of passage. This is particularly poignant in the sailor’s return to Valparaíso many years after leaving only to find his mother and sister dead, and their family home boarded up and haunted by their phantoms. This impossible return conjures up a phantom lost Chile, now lost due to the condition of exile, not to mention the effects of the still operating Pinochet dictatorship. What is significant here is the creation of what Zuzana Pick has called a ‘metafictional territory’ (1993: 183) of allegory, in which the experience of exile gives rise to both narrative and geographical displacements, as Portugal stands in for this phantom Chile. In City of Pirates, however, this allegorical function is intensified, and the Portuguese coast becomes a dreamt or displaced Chile, to use Adrian Martin’s term, whose oneiric and allegorical logic dispenses with any need for a direct narrative or precise geographical referent: a constant referral elsewhere in terms of the action’s origin or destination, its animating impulse or its ultimate meaning (…) the entire tale, its theorem of people, places and events, is always potentially ‘about something else’, a distorted reflection of an elsewhere (such as, in Ruiz’s case, far-off Chile). (Martin 2004b: 48, 49)

In the same essay Martin also refers to Ruiz’s practice of ‘micro-fictions’ (2004b: 51), the art of putting at least two stories into a single film, or conversely the dispersal of similar motifs across multiple films. It is worth noting that City of Pirates was one of Ruiz’s first films to systematically apply this principle since there are two distinct stories with overlapping characters and no indication given that one has passed from the space of one story to the next. This micro-fictional practice can be seen as intrinsically related in this film to the meta-fictional site of the Portuguese littoral in the film, presented by means of an array of colour filters, rendering it both otherworldly, and as the object of a kind of extra-territorial longing for a lost elsewhere. Consider, for example, the opening sequence of the film. Rather than the beginning of any story, the scene presents an array of initially disconnected elements that only gradually come into relation with one another. However, in this process the film tends to become more, rather than less, 172

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal bizarre and works to open up a mysterious cinematic space out of apparently banal and simple elements: a kitchen, a terrace, some knives, a bouncing ball, a couple and a maid. This world is at once purely cinematic and oneiric and also a specific one that makes evocative use of the distinctive geography of Baleal with its rock outcrop overlooking the sea in almost every direction and its traditional fishing village atmosphere. In City of Pirates, the space almost seems to be surrounded by the ocean, made explicit by the thematic of a secret island in the second part of the film. Colour is both extraordinary and excessive in the film, from the multicoloured tinted seascapes to the costumes of the characters and the artificial lighting used in almost every scene. However, rather than communicate any symbolic meaning, this use of colour generates an intensified vision of a specific world, whose only meaning might lie in the allegorical sense that what we are seeing is a refracted vision of another reality, that might correspond to Ruiz’s initial wish to call the film ‘Impressions of Chile’. In fact, the way the film operates is at once to frustrate the desire for narrative meaning while nevertheless evoking several tales, providing openings for an entirely different mode of relating to cinematic images as a type of associative exploration of an invented cinematic space. While this could be related to the idea of surrealist automatic writing, it can also be productively understood as a type of audiovisual cartography, an impossible cartography in the sense that it presents movements and perspectives that are only possible cinematically, for example, the point of view from within a character suffering from toothache’s mouth, but that nevertheless generate their own consistent reality. In this respect, City of Pirates can be seen as the cinematographic mapping of another invisible scene of a remembered Chile in which cinema functions as a kind of mnemonic device, a functioning that would be especially presented in Memory of Appearances. However, this impossible other scene only becomes possible in the context of the space of passage of the Portuguese littoral itself. While many of Ruiz’s films of the late 1990s can be seen in relation to the ideas of cinematic complexity, the most direct and radical actualization of these ideas is undoubtedly Combat d’Amour en Songe/Love Torn in Dream (2000), which was also filmed in Sintra. This film used the device of an explicitly combinatorial, mnemotechnical and alchemical system for 173

Portugal’s Global Cinema combining multiple narratives, based on the work of the medieval Spanish alchemist Ramon Llull. The appeal of Llull’s art to Ruiz is clear; not only does he have a similar fascination with complex or ‘baroque’ systems but Ruiz is especially interested in mnemotechnics as was particularly evident in the case of Memory of Appearances, which was already a highly Llullian film. In this film a Llullian like system based on movies seen as a child is used to ‘store’ the memories of the names and addresses of a group of militants, which the state authorities then try to extract under interrogation – at once one of Ruiz’s most direct allusions to contemporary Chile, while at the same time the playing out of an alchemical, combinatorial system. The problem for Ruiz is to rework the geometric non-imagistic nature of Llull’s system in cinematic terms; nevertheless, bearing in mind that Llull’s system was based on abstraction in order to put existing theological and philosophical categories into movement, Llullism is arguably already cinematic and Ruiz clearly believed it was possible to substitute cinematic sequences for Llull’s geometric algebra. Ruiz expresses his attraction towards Llull’s ars combinatoria as a method of cinematic construction in Poetics of Cinema; Llull may not be mentioned by name but it is clearly his art that Ruiz has in mind: Insofar as story structure is concerned, I should like to propose an open structure based on ars combinatoria. A system of multiple stories, overlapping according to certain established rules. This process is capable of generating new stories. For instance ten themes … story lines that are both dramas and vectors. These themes can be considered either as ‘bridges’ or schemas. They may be simple stories, fables, or sequences from everyday life, numbered from zero to nine. At first they are exposed in order, then combined in pairs … this is not just a way of writing but a way of filming. (Ruiz 1995: 88)

While this combinatorial approach to cinematic construction can be seen as a tendency in several of Ruiz’s films and especially those from this period like Trois vies et une seule mort/Three Lives and Only One Death (1996), in Love Torn in Dream this combinatorial art is applied literally and explicitly, even including an explanation of how it will be applied to construct the film in a humorous black and white prologue. In this prologue a representative of the Portuguese minister of culture (played by regular 174

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal Ruizian Portuguese actor Duarte de Almeida), announces to assembled guests the way the film will use Llull’s system to combine no less than nine stories. The reference to Llull and his times are not limited to the use of this system, however, since it is stated in the prologue that the director is absent because he is in Rome to obtain permission from the pope for the film, a clear reference to the troubled fate of Llull’s ideas which were at various times decreed by the church to be a dangerous heresy. Furthermore the content of the individual stories play out directly the intersection between philosophy and theology that constituted Llull’s own endeavours, for example, in the story of the theology student who loses his faith from reading Descartes’s meditations. Other stories recapitulate obsessive Ruizian themes such as pirates and lost treasures, paintings with animistic qualities and the power to heal or to curse, or the proximity of the sacred and eroticism to the extent that it is almost a meta-cinematic reflection on Ruiz’s own work. Finally, in this film the shift from a baroque approach to one drawing more on proliferating modes of storytelling like the 1001 Nights can be clearly seen not only due to the multiple stories and their interferences but also the fact that within these stories, characters tell yet other stories. It can further be added that this alchemical dimension is one that the film, and Ruiz himself, associated directly with Portugal as an enchanted space of passage or bridge between incommensurate territories, continuing the thematics already described in relation to City of Pirates. For Ruiz, Portugal is a space that always conceals an oneiric space of passage, and so is a place of enchantment that is always other to itself. This is nowhere more pronounced than in this opening to Ruiz’s most alchemical film. Nevertheless the question remains as to why Ruiz wanted to create this almost monstrous labyrinth which, in contrast to most of the other films he was making at this time, is virtually impenetrable on a first or even second viewing and can only be fully taken in by resorting to the reconstruction of a Llullian schema capable of mapping the complex relations between overlapping stories and worlds. Might the film not itself be an expression or emanation of a type of Llullian alchemy, operating at an unconscious level whose very operations are designed to perform a type of magical effect on the spectator? Such an hypothesis may be disallowed in a rational field such as film studies and yet everything in the film 175

Portugal’s Global Cinema points to either of two explanations; either the film is a huge joke, playing with the most elaborate narrative schemas Ruiz was able to draw on, both from his own work and from that of other baroque/alchemical directors like Wojciech Has, merely for the sake of complexity itself, or it is the genuine attempt to construct not only a highly poetic but also a shamanic cinematic work capable of or at least pointing towards cinema as a form of contemporary alchemy. This gives an added ‘alchemical’ dimension both to Ruiz’s previous films made in Portugal, as well as informing Mysteries of Lisbon, which in its own way is no less about the combinations and passages between multiple stories.

Mysteries of Lisbon and mysteries of enchantment The previous examples are by no means exhaustive of Ruiz’s filmmaking career in Portugal. However, the most significant of these projects, and the one most engaged with Portuguese language and culture, is undoubtedly the 2010 film and TV series Mysteries of Lisbon, which won several awards, was shown at several prestigious film festivals such as São Paulo, San Sebastián and London and was hailed by several critics as the culmination of Ruiz’s career. This project, which involved simultaneously filmed but distinct film and TV versions, was the adaptation of the work of the nineteenth-century Portuguese novelist Camilo Castelo Branco. This project was suggested to Ruiz by his Portuguese producer Paulo Branco as being perfect for him, and seemed in some respects a deliberate attempt to produce a film that would see a relatively wide distribution. While not made on the same budget and without the well-known international stars of the Proust adaptation Le Temps Retrouvé/Time Regained (1999), it was nevertheless a major project and one that fully overcame the perceived esoteric tendencies of Ruiz’s other later work to gain a much wider international cinematic release than had been the case with other of his later films, especially in the UK and USA. Ruiz worked with producer Paulo Branco as early as The Territory and on almost every film he made in Portugal, and some outside it, including those already discussed. Paulo Branco is one of the most well-known producers of art cinema internationally, and has produced more films that 176

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal have been entered in the Cannes Film Festival than any other producer. It is interesting to note that the beginning of Branco’s career as a producer was intimately connected with the work of two filmmakers, Ruiz himself and Manoel de Oliveira. Branco produced two films by Oliveira before first working with Ruiz, and both of these films were connected to the author of Mysteries of Lisbon, Camilo Castelo Branco. The first of these films, Amor de Perdição/Doomed Love (1979), was a direct adaptation of a Castelo Branco story not entirely removed from one of the main tales in Mysteries of Lisbon. In this film, two lovers from rival families, Teresa and Simão, are unable to consummate their love. Doomed Love was simultaneously produced as a six-part TV series and a feature film, which was more or less exactly replicated 33 years later as the production model for Mysteries of Lisbon, albeit with a more substantial budget and European funding.2 Doomed Love was far from being a popular success due to its overly literary nature; rather than filming events, the director wanted to film the text itself, almost in the manner of Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet’s approach to written texts as material to present, rather than represent. This hardly enamoured TV audiences, but the shorter cinematic version received rave reviews in France. Doomed Love was followed by a film based on a love triangle in the life of Castelo Branco, partly based on a novel, and partly on letters that Oliveira had access to since his wife was a distant relative of the original female protagonist in the triangle, Fanny Owen. Whether Ruiz was aware of this at the time is unknown. But he certainly felt an affinity with Oliveira, the most international of Portuguese directors, in addition to having a direct link to his work via Paulo Branco. As with most of the more complex Ruiz’s films since the 1990s, Mysteries of Lisbon involves multiple narratives, this time embedded in a labyrinthine neo-baroque structure of intercalated stories, whose only point of cinematic comparison might be Wojciech Has’s Rękopis Znaleziony w Saragossie/Saragosa Manuscript (1965), or the more delirious films from Ruiz’s own filmography like Love Torn in Dream. Nevertheless, unlike the latter’s arbitrary and aleatory scheme for combining distinct worlds and stories, in Mysteries of Lisbon the stories revolve around several key points, represented by the key characters João/Pedro da Silva (João Arrais 177

Portugal’s Global Cinema and José Afonso Pimentel), Father Dinis (Adriano Luz) and Alberto de Magalhães (Ricardo Pereira). Instead of a story based around a central conflict, Mysteries of Lisbon uses these multiple centres to narrate multiple stories, which nevertheless all have bearing, however remote, on the destiny or destinies of the main character, introduced in the beginning as the parentless João. However, even if he is the point at which all the stories converge, the film constantly emphasizes that rather than being a causal agent of these stories he is rather just an accumulation of their effects, which ultimately overwhelm him and lead him inexorably towards an early death. Furthermore, all of these seemingly stable points are revealed to be so many disguises and metamorphoses, so that the pirate/assassin ‘Knife-Eater’ becomes the Byronic aristocrat de Magalhães, João becomes the lost love child of Dom Pedro da Silva and Ângela de Lima, and Father Dinis does God’s work by passing through disguises too numerous to mention. In a key scene, João enters the forbidden room where Father Dinis’s costumes are all kept: soldier, gypsy, young aristocrat and so on. The camera completes a 360-degree pan of this eerie room seemingly only occupied by João and those empty disguises, and ultimately comes to rest on Father Dinis himself who seems to have entered the room without opening any door. This gives the impression that his identity as the philanthropic priest Father Dinis is only yet another of this series of disguises, an impression that renders his, and the other key characters’ identities strictly undecidable. While shot in a distinctive style, with constantly gliding, circling, almost dancing camerawork, there are only a few scenes in the film that radically distinguish it from European period drama aesthetics. Some of these, such as shots from under glass tables during the scene set at the Paris Opera, seem almost like gratuitous Ruizian flourishes, as if the filmmaker was tiring of this European standard and wanting to remind the viewer of the purely fictive nature of the events being presented. More essentially, in the period in which João is entering into a delirium following what appears to be a kind of epileptic fit, the image distorts into a sort of anamorphosis, rendering the figures surrounding his bed, one of whom may or may not be his mother, into floating distorted fragments (see Figure 10.1).

178

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal

Figure 10.1 João in anamorphic delirium

Figure 10.2 The puppet theatre

This is when a typically Ruizian device appears, a type of puppet cutout theatre that from this point on punctuates the rest of the film as if all the events that transpire are the product of a play with this simple representational device (see Figure 10.2). This is emphasized by the fact that during a scene whose outcome João does not like – his mother leaving to visit the deathbed of the man who kept her a virtual prisoner for years – he flicks all the personages to the floor of the theatre. All the multiply

179

Portugal’s Global Cinema imbricated tales of doomed loves, sexual exploitation, romantic obsession, betrayal and sacrifice, heroic rescues and multiple disguises would then be so many disguises called up by this impoverished visual device as a machine which, analogous to the cinema itself, generates multiple worlds, characters, events and stories. This corresponds closely with the ultimate undecidability of the film, namely, whether all the events recounted and specifically those involving Pedro da Silva’s short life and ultimate death, actually took place, or whether this was the delirious wish fulfilment of a child without parents, without a story, fabulating ancestors, conflicts, rivals and benefactors, and ultimately a phantasmagoric if doomed identity for himself, to fill in the void of his existence, and those surrounding him like Father Dinis. The anamorphosis coupled with the puppet theatre suggest that this question is undecidable too; history is only the product of incommensurable stories and fabulations, as is suggested in the very opening scene of the film in which entirely contradictory versions of ‘current affairs’ in the form of a reputed invasion of Portugal, are presented orally and without resolution. Again we are presented with an anomalous territory, within which events might simultaneously be both true and false, from this beginning ‘report’ to the central narrative of the film itself, whose events may or may not have actually taken place. In fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is in the use of anamorphosis within the film, signalling a radical uncertainty of the narration, that Ruiz is able to find a perfect visual allegory for his vision of Portugal as an anomalous space of passage in which events can be simultaneously true and false, real and distorted, or perhaps only dreamed and imagined. Despite art cinema appearances, it was very important for Ruiz that the basis of Mysteries of Lisbon was not in high literature, even if Castelo Branco is a well-regarded author, but in a kind of feuilleton or soap opera. The novel was originally published in segments in the daily O Nacional, before being edited as a book in 1854. This form was of interest to Ruiz throughout his career and even at the start of it: before becoming a director Ruiz wrote dialogue for Mexican and Chilean telenovelas as a commercial activity, to support his then creative outlet of writing avant-garde plays. For Ruiz this nineteenth-century form of the feuilleton was also interesting because, as it was often made up from week to week, it lacked any 180

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal over-arching narrative structure, being constituted by narrative accidents and surprises, and sudden shifts of character that depart from codes of realism while remaining a popular form. In this respect feuilletons are both popular and experimental, and also have a direct link to a subject that was of increasing importance to Ruiz, namely folklore. So for Ruiz, it is the apparent weaknesses of the serial form that actually make it interesting, and able to articulate a galaxy of inter-related stories, while maintaining a good deal of incredulity and departing in significant ways from dominant codes of realism. In fact for Ruiz ‘they are more realistic because they are completely unbelievable somewhere’ (in Goddard 2013: 172). More than this, Castelo Branco’s writing embodied a key dimension of how Ruiz saw Portuguese culture, namely in connection with what he called the secret, which is also essential to cinema: ‘Portugal has that idea of the secret, which I always connect with cinema, in cinema you have a secret film inside a film, and you have to keep that secret’ (in Goddard 2013: 182). While it might be an exaggeration to connect this secret directly to Latin American folklore in the case of Mysteries of Lisbon, there is a clear connection between the European feuilleton and the Latin American telenovela, as well as the context within the film of Portuguese colonialism in Brazil, including the fact that according to one interpretation of its events, the central character ends up there and writes the stories that make up the film while dying. It is important to emphasize that this idea of Portugal as a bridge between Europe and Latin America, the present and the past, is explicitly thematized in the film through the inclusion of scenes taking place in France, as well as the scene of writing at the end of the film in Brazil. Once again Portugal functions as a kind of bridge, and the film is an essentially transnational one that deterritorializes its origins in Portuguese literature into an inescapable sense of transitoriness and passage in which neither personal nor cultural identities are stable. Given all these typically Ruizian elements of multiple imbricated stories, characters subject to metamorphoses, mnemotechnical and fabulating machineries, and stories told from the point of a delirium between life and death, not to mention the relatively unbroken use of a high-art European style, it is hardly surprising that several critics saw the film as both the culmination of Ruiz’s career and a disguised autobiography. This 181

Portugal’s Global Cinema was, for instance, Jonathan Romney’s view, writing about the film as film of the month: ‘One could [also] see Mysteries as a disguised autobiography, “Ruiz” almost rhyming with “Dinis” – for the Chilean was himself a disguise artist as well as a manipulator of story, masquerading variously as a French, a Portuguese, even an American filmmaker’ (Romney 2012). If there is a lot of Ruiz in this film, this is not least in the links with Portugal this chapter explores, as a memory bridge to Chile and Latin America. In this sense, Mysteries of Lisbon does constitute an ultimate statement on Ruiz’s Portugal as an anomalous, anamorphic space of passage, as well as a film that will inevitably be read as a meditation on death and mortality. All of the complexity of Ruiz’s combinatorial, cinematic art of memory was greatly facilitated by the use of specific locations in Portugal in all the films this chapter discusses, as a memory bridge, or a mnemotechnical opening both spatially and temporally to a lost world of Chilean memories. Mysteries of Lisbon seems to share nothing with the work of contemporary Portuguese filmmakers like Pedro Costa, but rather with the Portuguese cinema of the so-called Portuguese School of the 1980s in which Oliveira played a key role (see Baptista 2010). This most European period of Portuguese cinema (Baptista 2010: 12–13) was also the one during which Ruiz made most projects in Portugal, and encountered Portuguese cinema via his association with Branco; it is perhaps not too far-fetched to consider Mysteries of Lisbon, among other things, as a kind of pastiche or homage to Oliveira, a filmmaker Ruiz very much admired. For this reason Mysteries of Lisbon has in many ways an anomalous position in relation to contemporary Portuguese cinema. Made by a foreign director, featuring a cosmopolitan cast, and above all situating Portugal less as a stable territory than an enigmatic zone of transnational passage, it nevertheless provides an outside contribution to Portuguese cinema that in its very deterritorialization of Portuguese space paradoxically enacts an alchemical enchantment. Strangely, this outside portrayal of Portugal as a space of passage, while made in a manner utterly distinct from contemporary Portuguese films with their near-documentary focus on ‘young criminals, teenage mothers or illegal immigrants’ and themes of ‘poverty, sickness, unemployment, domestic violence, people trafficking, prostitution, and drug abuse’ (Baptista 2010: 14), nevertheless shares the 182

Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal ‘predisposition these films displayed to meet the “other” ’ (2010: 15). It is in this deterritorialized space of the encounter with otherness, whatever the difference in form that this might take between Ruiz’s ornate art film that is almost a ‘Portuguese cinema’ pastiche, and the work of a filmmaker like Pedro Costa which aims as much as possible to escape Portuguese cinema history as Baptista presents it, that Mysteries of Lisbon can perhaps find its place as a displaced contemporary Portuguese film.

Notes 1. This interview was conducted in Ruiz’s apartment in Paris as research for my book The Cinema of Raúl Ruiz:  Impossible Cartographies (2013) around the period of the making of Mysteries of Lisbon. The interview is partially transcribed as an appendix to the book. 2. Ruiz’s Les Destins de Manoel/Manoel’s Destinies (1985), produced by Paulo Branco, also experimented with a similar dual mode of TV and cinematic release.

183

11 White Faces/Black Masks: The White Woman’s Burden in Pedro Costa’s Down to Earth Hilary Owen

Pedro Costa’s second feature film Casa de Lava/Down to Earth (1994) is almost universally regarded, including by the director himself, as a key transitional film in his oeuvre as a whole. Here Costa found several of the ideas and inspirations for his later work on what has become known as the Fontaínhas trilogy, dealing with the displaced, largely Cape Verdean communities of a now destroyed Lisbon slum district. Down to Earth represents to date Pedro Costa’s only full-length feature film shot in Cape Verde itself, on the islands of Fogo and Santiago. In a 2009 interview at the Tate, London (4 October 2009), included in the Second Run DVD edition of Down to Earth (2012), Costa himself locates his decision to film in Cape Verde at the time in the political context of Portugal’s global capitalist and Europeanist turn under the modernizing, reprivatizing and free market Social Democrat governments of Aníbal Cavaco Silva (1985–95). Subsequently characterized as Cavaquismo, the period marked a distinctive era of post-Utopian disillusion in respect of the Socialist visions held out during the previous decade, following the Revolution of 25 April 1974.1 His attempts to use standard technology on Cape Verde and the intrusion

185

Portugal’s Global Cinema this visited on the islanders also marked the beginning of Costa’s now famous disenchantment with conventional film industry methods, his personal epiphanic moment as a filmmaker, triggering his move towards the reduced interventions of digital video camera that would most emblematically characterize No Quarto da Vanda/In Vanda’s Room (2000) (see Jorge 2016: 169–70; see also Jorge in this volume). Despite Costa’s anti-Cavaquista contextualization of his motivation to film in Cape Verde, no overt or unambiguous political message is delivered by the film’s narrative. The extreme discontinuity, static camera shots, artistic abstraction, elliptical and syncopated editing, lingering close-ups and use of montage that permeate Down to Earth do not permit of any straightforward interpretative closure nor indeed of any rational explanation for many of the film’s represented happenings (see Jaffe 2006:  109–126). It dedicates considerable space to situations that are clearly marked by poverty, race and exploitation, and yet as Jacques Rancière (2006a) succinctly puts it, referring to Costa’s cinema in general, ‘Pedro Costa’s camera never once takes the usual path from the places of misery to the places where those in power produce or manage it’. Rather, Costa conspicuously refuses the teleological conventions of mimetic realist narrative and continuity editing as a means to progressive change or programmatic transformational goals, at the same time as his commitment to politics and ethics ostensibly remains, as do some significant documentary-type features from cinéma vérité. As Darren Hughes notes, regarding his work in general, ‘what distinguishes Costa from his contemporaries is his uncynical commitment to form and ethics, which are bound in his films not by transcendence but by imminence – that is, by the sacred dignity of the material, human world’ (2008:  3). In this sense, Costa’s work appears to resonate well with a contemporary resurgence of film about spirituality and ethics, not as a formal belief system, but as a challenge to and a possible going beyond the reaches of materialist film theory. Jeffrey Pence, for example, forges an ultimately Levinasian link between alterity, ethical obligation and practice, and transcendence (2004:  48), which leads him to a consideration of the spiritual as speaking ‘not strictly to the faculties of reason but to that admixture of thought and affect more characteristic of 186

White Faces/Black Masks aesthetic experience and ethical enquiry’ such that ‘in both aesthetics and ethics, then, indeterminacy may generate interest, affective involvement and new possibilities of thought’ (2004: 40). Working somewhere between Hughes’s imminence and Pence’s transcendence, Costa’s refusal to openly pander to rational narrative demands certainly bespeaks on one level, as Hughes cogently argues, a latently spiritual though never conventionally ‘religious’, post-Marxist appeal to this interface of the ethical and the aesthetic. Thus new possibilities of affect and thought are generated precisely by his relentless staging of the indeterminate, the ineffable, that which never manages to become completely known. However, if Fontaínhas will take Costa ever more squarely and productively into the spatial and temporal sensibilities of imminence, the ghosts of a still recognizable historical indexing, grounded in transcendent thought systems, still remain to be dealt with in Down to Earth. My intention in this chapter is to analyse some of the ways in which specific histories of race and gendering, and the intersections between them, are explored in Down to Earth, particularly as they relate to Costa’s oftenclaimed cinematic sources and inspirations.

Remaking Hollywood? Volcanoes, zombies, crazy women A notorious Atlantic slave entrepôt, the Cape Verde archipelago was also the site of Tarrafal, Salazar’s worst-feared political prison and death camp for anti-New State dissidents. Furthermore, the Cape Verde Islands (uninhabited on their ‘discovery’ in 1456)  became historically the privileged exemplar of Gilberto Freyre’s Lusotropicalist apologia for empire under the New State, based on the rhetorical glorification of racial miscegenation, structured by a Luso-Christo-centric cultural civilizing mission. As a film director from the metropolis Costa must somehow ‘locate’ himself here. Perhaps unexpectedly in light of this imperative, Down to Earth begins with a classic, National Geographic-style imperial trope, which on one level ‘repeats’ the original 1456 discovery of uninhabited land, as Costa uses some real aerial footage by Orlando Ribeiro of the volcano of Fogo island itself, erupting to the background music of a Paul Hindemith Violin Sonata. 187

Portugal’s Global Cinema This is the prelude to Costa’s engagement with what Jonathan Rosenbaum movingly calls, ‘the unanswerable question of how one can honourably or usefully behave inside a charnel house, a former slave colony’ (2012: 4). Hughes claims that this is achieved in the film’s first three and a half minutes of drastic cuts between the volcano of Fogo Island, and a Lisbon building site, thus conjuring up ‘the perilous relationship between colonizer and colonized and the complex history (economic, political, cultural, and familial) they continue to share – [such that] he’s also implicated himself and the audience in that history’ (2008: 5). What Hughes does not note is that in the process of developing this self-implication on screen, Pedro Costa has become a woman. His strategies of self-implication are heavily feminized in a way that necessarily intersects with the politics of race and deprivation throughout the film. Costa’s conspicuous ‘outsider’ view becomes embodied in the figure of the nurse protagonist Mariana, who travels to the archipelago to accompany a comatose African construction worker Leão who has fallen from scaffolding in Lisbon. Rosenbaum has aptly referred to Mariana as Costa’s surrogate (2012: 7). And where the figure of Edite, the older woman representing the anti-fascist resistance generation of the 1960s functions largely, as Rosenbaum notes, as Mariana’s ‘doppelgänger’ (2012:  7), these two white women become, in a sense, Costa’s dual avatar on screen. At the same time, they also evoke the screen histories of Costa’s various, well-documented film sources and inspirations for Down to Earth, conjuring an army of past cinematic referents alongside the outsider’s observational present. As Costa himself explains regarding his sources, in interview with Nuno Crespo: The original [intention] was a kind of remake of an American film that I loved [I Walked with a Zombie, by Jacques Tourneur] which, in turn, was a variation on Jane Eyre. Adventures in Cape Verde, volcanoes, zombies, crazy women. And I  had the idea of taking this film in a direction that was less concrete, more political or documentary, if you will. (Costa 2013b)

What then does Costa actually do with his raced and gendered cinema antecedents, the ‘zombies’ and the ‘crazy women’ that he draws not only from Jacques Tourneur, as we will see, but also from the 1960 French

188

White Faces/Black Masks classic, variously claimed by gothic horror, art cinema, and as forerunner of the ‘splatter’ genre, Les Yeux Sans Visage/Eyes without a Face, directed by Georges Franju, as well as, to a lesser extent, the Italian neo-realist canon and its deployments of landscape and space, in Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950)? As he tells Mark Peranson in interview ‘I set out to make an angry film about prisoners in Africa, but then the Romanesque took over’ (2006: 11). With this Romanesque turn comes an emphasis on gothic romance and sexuality, as if the various sources and inspirations, while never followed closely, nonetheless exert a powerful and often competing set of influences, as well as a bewildering mix of styles and genres, when subjected to the largely objectifying, often static gaze of non-narrative documentary style filming, or still montage, with few character ‘point of view’ shots and even less deference to standard continuity editing. As Rosenbaum astutely notes in this regard, Down to Earth may be the film of Costa’s that poses the most: constant and furious tug of war in his oeuvre between Hollywood narrative and the portraiture of both places and people, staging an almost epic battle between the two. These warring modes become almost magically fused whenever there is a landscape shot with one or more human figures; every time this happens, the film moves into high gear. (Rosenbaum 2012: 3)

For Rosenbaum, it is specifically I Walked with a Zombie (1943), rather than Stromboli, that offers a ‘useful key that unlocks some of the film’s treasures’ (2012: 4) particularly as regards Costa’s ethical self-location. On the surface of it, the zombie genre is not a particularly promising place to start an ethically-informed movie about a former slave colony. As Edna Aizenberg remarks, ‘Hollywood’s zombie is thoroughly enclosed within a colonialist discourse that usurps history and identity’ (1999: 462).2 The film’s first encounter with people, shortly after the opening volcano shots, shifts to a series of cameo-like static shots of the island’s women, initially from the back and then in semi-profile, looking unblinkingly without our being aware of what precisely they see. With cropped, rear views, part images from the back, and hands, we confront already the capacity of the external, observational lens (of science and ethnography) to fix and reify

189

Portugal’s Global Cinema the body. As Fernando Arenas has pointed out, picking up deftly on the implied male gaze in these sequences: The directorial gaze is evidently seduced by the austere beauty of Fogo’s landscape as well as the understated sensuality of its people, particularly its women, as can be surmised by the prominent exterior landscape shots and the striking close ups of the women. (…) In the end these suggestive images reveal an aestheticization and exoticization principle at work in the relations between the Portuguese director and his Cape Verdean subjects that is historically and ideologically overdetermined. (Arenas 2011: 136)

The ethical problem that arises here concerns the historical and ideological compromise that over-determines the exoticizing, aesthetic eye that Arenas correctly identifies. An abrupt transition to the next scene, preparing for this, is smoothed only by the continuation of the same Hindemith music soundtrack still running as the Cape Verdean Leão’s team of co-workers come out of their shack to go back to work. Given that the aural cue typically guides the eye in the work of Costa, the Hindemith music will function as the clearest sign of the external directorial gaze ‘from the metropolis’, returning significantly, only at the very end of the film, as we observe another migrant labour work crew leaving Cape Verde for Lisbon. After Leão’s fall is announced by a foreman, Mariana’s sudden arrival on screen is communicated through a series of heavily gothicized images.3 At work in a Lisbon hospital, her hair and face are being gripped by a pair of disconnected, visibly blood-stained white hands, appearing disembodied as if reaching from the grave. The hands belong to an old white woman in her death throes. Mariana and a colleague later, rather coldly, recall her age being sixty, and speculate on the mysterious cause of her demise, with the colleague noting that she has lost several liters of blood. The interaction with this old, dying woman affords the discursive field in which Mariana emerges as sexually repressed and frustrated. Standing in front of the mirror, she hesitates to put on the red lipstick that she loans to a much more confident and sexually self-aware colleague.4 This initial staging of her incomplete sexual maturity already connects her proleptically, through its narrative context, to the dominant maternal 190

White Faces/Black Masks figure of Edite who she will later meet on Cape Verde, now a similar age to the old woman patient, if as we are told, Edite was 20 when she came to Cape Verde in 1958. A white, male doctor ostensibly triggers the film’s ‘plot’, when Leão is inexplicably discharged as a letter from a woman and a cheque have arrived to send him back to Cape Verde. Following this, a very brief, obliquely angled gaze at the sheet being drawn over the now dead old woman is all that remains of Mariana’s affective ties to Lisbon. This view shifts abruptly to a travelling shot of Fogo Island from the air, through a plane window representing a rare point of view shot taken from Mariana’s perspective. However, as she retraces the white man’s colonial journey, she will only rarely be allowed his traditional historical mastery of the all-surveying, colonial gaze. By the same token there is little if any use of the traditional shot/reverse-shot sequence, the absence of which is especially telling in her unsatisfying or forced sexual encounters, effectively denying the conventional Hollywood film semiotics of romance or classic suture. Rather she is afforded an embedded on-screen gaze internal to the scenes. Indeed, working as a Costa surrogate for ‘outside observer status’ on the Island, her own living-dead ‘in-between’ status in the film rapidly usurps centre stage from the drama of Leão’s comatose zombification. This subtle transposition of ‘zombie emphasis’ is prepared for by Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie, which also famously shifts the centre of gravity for the plot’s zombie drama onto the white woman, Jessica Holland, away from the black man, Carrefour. Significantly, Costa retains and works within this ‘white woman as zombie’ problematic, as part of his own self-inscription, rather than merely reversing it to confer agency on the black zombified man.

Neo-colonial gaze, desire and sexuality Given that the unfolding of Down to Earth rapidly marginalizes the oppressed black worker Leão whose comatose half-life is relegated to the background for much of the film, Leão’s chief role is to be the object of Mariana’s desires and a pretext for her sexual self-discovery. Her quest to identify his family so as to reunite them provides the ‘mystery’ she ostensibly seeks to solve. Leão’s comatose body becomes, in this process, the object of sexual 191

Portugal’s Global Cinema and clinical reification for Mariana, her own suppressed desires and possessiveness towards Leão providing a simmering subtext that evokes the oldest of colonial sex paranoias, the forbidden obverse of authorized miscegenation, in which white women have sexual relations with black men. This specific fear of white woman as the matrix of hybridity lay at the heart of Tourneur’s similar transposition of zombie emphasis in I  Walked with a Zombie, effectively masking historical black suffering with the threat of a zombie-like loss of conscious agency making pure, white women all too ‘available’. As Edna Aizenberg critically notes, Tourneur transforms ‘the zombie from enslaved, black victim vitiated by white colonization to virginal white victim menaced by black erotic rites’ (1999: 462), such that ‘the shifting of black suffering onto white women, and the eliding or underplaying of the oppressive historical circumstances remains at the film’s ideological and visual core’ (1999: 462). In Down to Earth, however, Costa subtly circumvents this difficulty by casting both of his white women, Mariana and Edite, as active protagonists, not passive victims. As a neo-colonizer surrogate for the outside observer’s camera eye, Mariana in particular seeks possession of the sexually controlling and all-knowing gaze in the film, only for this to be, itself, repeatedly negated or controlled by the film’s over-arching, distancing vision, elliptical editing and a refusal to install either the doubled perspective, or the subjective ambiguity and tension conventionally associated with shot/reverse-shot (see for instance Rose 1976–1977: 92). The representation of Mariana’s gaze, in this scenario, in the liminal between-state of a woman/girl on the verge of sexual fulfilment permits highly productive reading through Mary Ann Doane’s work on the relation between Freudian structures of masochism, and films centred on the drama of women’s exercising the internal gaze. For Doane, following Jacqueline Rose’s work, the film system’s ‘narrative structure produces an insistence on situating the woman as agent of the gaze, as investigator in charge of the epistemological trajectory of the text, as the one for whom “the secret beyond the door” is really at stake’ (Doane 1984: 70–1), such that ‘the woman’s exercise of an active investigating gaze can only be simultaneous with her own victimization. The place of her specularization is transformed into the locus of a process of seeing designed to unveil an aggression against herself ’ (Doane 1984:  72). In this, ‘castigation of the 192

White Faces/Black Masks female gaze’ genre, this act of aggression is structured around a form of masochistic fantasy, the woman/girl becomes a protagonist in her own masochistic scenario, no longer figuring as participant but rather as spectator. In relation to the specific woman-centred psychological horror films that Doane chooses, including Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) and Cukor’s Gaslight (1944), she identifies two principle forms this takes. The woman is (would-be) agent of the gaze investigating secrets, which are then only disclosed or resolved through some act of male violence or aggression against her. Alternatively, the woman is placed more as object of the medical gaze than the erotic, located in a medicalized discourse that will reveal the truth of her subjectivity in medical or psychological terms, although this process may also perhaps take the form of specular beautification as her ‘cure’. To this, I  would add that where racial difference is triangulated with sexuality and specularization in the context of colonial cinema, the medical and sexual gazes that Doane identifies here find themselves complicated by, and conjoined with those that fix, and are fixed as, racial difference. As Gwendolyn Audrey Foster notes in her study of performing whiteness in colonial cinema, ‘the eyes of evil whites have power because vision has been traditionally used in colonialist white culture to control bodies’, such that ‘the sexually controlling white male gaze is often a medical one’ (2003: 129). In this sense, by showing Mariana consistently attempting to be the agent of the investigatory gaze, Costa places the colonial history of white male sexual and medical control firmly within the sexuallydifferentiated structures of Freudian masochism. Working in carefully orchestrated reverse from the position of knowledge and visual power that she wants to obtain in getting her questions answered (like Fogo Island seen through the easy window of a plane), Mariana is moved progressively backwards through a series of problematic, unsatisfying sexual encounters, from a position on the edge of sexual pleasure and symbolic self-assurance, into a position of total incomprehension corresponding to a desexualized, quasi infantile identity. Indeed, our final view of Mariana has her childishly throwing rocks at Leão’s restored ‘lava-built’ house, as he emerges from the shadows with Edite behind him, gothically back-lit, commanding a masterful position at the top of the staircase, with the enraged Mariana standing at the bottom looking up.5 193

Portugal’s Global Cinema The only ‘secret knowledge’ behind Leão’s door would appear to be that of Mariana’s own stupidity. The treacherous, bad white ‘mother’ Edite has apparently been enjoying a liaison with Leão. Perhaps it was even she who sent the letter and plane fare that brought him back to Fogo. As Mariana is made to enact Costa’s laying down of the colonizer’s visual power, the locus of her sexual trajectory throughout the film, then, is one of regressive, masochistic infantilization entailing the progressive loss of colonizer power in sexual and in medical terms. As Doane notes in her astutely gender differentiated reading of Freud’s model for masochism, ‘the feminine masochistic fantasy (…) is desexualized’ (1984: 78) such that ‘the I of the fantasy is no longer operative within its diegesis and, instead, the child who is being beaten [in Freud’s original scenario] is transformed into an anonymous boy or even a group of boys who act as the representatives of the female in this scenario’ (Doane 1984: 78–79). Read in this light, Edite’s nameless son, played by Pedro Hestnes, functions literally as the nameless boy representative who suffers the projection of Mariana’s sexual denial and regression as in Doane’s terms, she ‘loses not only her sexual identity (…) but her very access to sexuality’ (1984: 79). The implications of this are particularly interesting for Mariana’s ‘surrogacy’ of Pedro Costa’s directorial positioning given that, as Doane indicates, Freud’s classic vision of masochism as male ‘is labelled “feminine” precisely because the fantasies associated with this type of masochism situate the subject in positions “characteristic of womanhood” i.e. they mean that he is being castrated’ (1984: 77). If Costa’s self-implication in the film is acting itself out masochistically through the projected mirror effect of a masochistic woman, Mariana, she is nevertheless subject to the hidden phallic mastery concealed behind this ‘self-castratory’ performance, as demonstrated in the fact of her being ultimately re-disciplined to an infantilized, Oedipally-organized and de-eroticized place of non-knowing by the end, demarcated by the sudden sorrowful, return of the heterodiegetic Hindemith theme, in marked contrast to the homodiegetic Cape Verdean morna and funaná heard throughout the film. As Doane observes, in various films of this woman-centred horror sub-genre, ‘the potential danger of a female look is (…) reduced or entirely avoided by means of the delegation of the detecting gaze to another male figure who is on the side of the 194

White Faces/Black Masks law’ (1984: 71–72). This produces an interesting twist in Down to Earth, which has, within the on-screen narrative diegesis, precisely no detecting gaze pertaining to a male figure on the side of the law. Rather the corrective gaze of the male, acting on the side of the law, occurs through the film’s constant, situational concealment of important knowledge from Mariana. The organization of shots, edits and sequences, by the objectifying directorial lens leaves her prey to a growing force of dramatic irony. She is always wrong footed, she is always ‘the last to know’. For all that she attempts to dominate the landscape by striding across the island, the extreme long distance focus typical of landscape cinema reduces her to a barely detectable moving dot against a symbolically dry and barren territory. Its redness offers an explicit colour match with her skimpy red dress in the kind of landscape scenes which more properly evoke Rossellini’s Stromboli than Tourneur’s gothic, in Italian post-war neo-realist terms, the post-faith existential void of Europe cast as desert wasteland.6 The volcano’s dark and threatening lava and the crashing waves ebbing and flowing on the beach evoke her latent sexuality, her long legs slightly akimbo, as if compulsively inviting yet repelling intrusion. Even when she is looking at Edite’s ‘found papers’, the box of documents and letters is placed between her cropped and parted legs, explicitly positioning sex in terms of knowledge.7 The sexual liaisons that Mariana engages in all, initially, play on the edges of aggression, rape, ambivalence and absence of pleasure. She is attacked on the black, volcanic beach at night, to the sound of crashing waves, by a black figure initially unknown (later found to be Tanu), and attempting to lie on top of her prone figure, until she is saved by what is apparently Edite’s, but actually Leão’s, large black dog that scares off her attacker. Mariana herself interestingly underplays the incident as a beating not an attempted rape. Edite’s son also attempts to have sex with her, or at least lies on top of her, refusing to get off and let go of her, despite her repeated pleadings that she cannot breathe, and attempts to push him away, until he falls asleep still lying on Mariana. Later, after an implied night of passion with him, which we are not shown, she adamantly refuses to admit even remembering it the next morning as he asks ‘was it me you wanted?’(‘Era para mim ou não?’) painfully fearful of her fantasized erotic investments elsewhere. 195

Portugal’s Global Cinema Similarly, in the first instance of putatively pleasurable sex for Mariana on the beach, she begs Edite’s son to speak to her in Cape Verdean Krioulo, reinforcing his status as exoticized stand-in for her real object of desire, Leão. The son also asks her if he hurt her, almost as if he were either taking her virginity or working to cure her of frigidity. At the same time, the sequence which immediately follows, posits the Cape Verdean girl, Tina, as an alternative erotic focus as if Mariana were arrested at a narcissistically lesbian early stage of sexual development, in a liaison to which Edite later alludes, remarking ‘Bassoé’s little Tina has a goat called Mariana.’ A sudden shift of scene to show shreds of paper, possibly letters, on the volcano slope gives way to a shot of Tina’s inert and prone body, lying on the same volcano slope in her flame-coloured clothes that are a near colour-match for both Mariana and the lava flow. Preceded by the shredded papers, Tina is made here to afford a significant hiatus in the sexual signifying chain set up by the deferral and substitution of bodily desire, as each sexual encounter posits an absent third person as an alternative erotic fantasy or memory. This is metonymized in the constantly moving transfer of the love letters, starting with the original Vicente Bento Águas missives and becoming confused with Edite’s letters handed to Tina and with the letter that brings Leão back to Cape Verde.

Female embodiment of male masochism: between science and sexuality When Leão finally wakes up from his coma, his cold abuse and indifference to Mariana mark the end of her fantasy projections about him and lead to her final de-auratization. As she lies on the ash-ridden slope of the volcano with Leão, in a moment that alludes to but does not exactly repeat, the eruption of female sexual self-awareness implied at the end of Stromboli, Leão looks away from her and towards the camera in mid close-up, obliquely describing his desires in relation to a third person, as he strokes her hair. When Leão suddenly falls on top of her and rolls her out of shot altogether, whatever sexual encounter follows gets edited out, elliptically alluded to only in retrospect, in the subsequent scenes. There we witness, part voyeuristically through a typically gothic open window 196

White Faces/Black Masks

Figure 11.1 Gothic framing in Pedro Costa’s Down to Earth

frame, Mariana half naked and viewed from the back in broad daylight, her red dress and white vest rolled down to waist level, as she compulsively scrubs and washes her upper body, face and hair, evoking on one level a standard physical reaction to a rape, certainly a move to de-eroticize herself and also finally reconnecting with the scene in the hospital before her journey to Cape Verde, when she had been compulsively washing and scrubbing up with her colleague, before the mirror in the context of the old woman’s death (see Figure 11.1). The window frame, like the mirrors and staircases of which Down to Earth makes ample, gothicized use, are classic sites of female specularization in Hollywood, here marking not Mariana’s embrace of spectacle but her humiliated retreat from it.8 After this second scene of frantic washing, she emerges suddenly having divested herself of the red dress to wear a sober white t-shirt and black skirt, even more like a school girl, symbolically confirming her regression from the scarlet eroticism that she had attempted to embody, to an innocent, infantile whiteness and non-colours, partly prefigured already by the rather scruffy, childish white vest worn under her ubiquitous, revealing red dress. As implied in Doane’s reading of the masochistic woman with the investigatory gaze, an act of aggression towards Mariana has finally, in a 197

Portugal’s Global Cinema sense, ‘solved her mystery’. Her own, potentially violated or at least sexually disrespected and instrumentalized body, has turned out to be the end point of her quest to unravel Leão’s meaningful affective axis. As she tells him flirtatiously, ‘you were alone there. I was too’ he replies coldly: ‘I wasn’t alone. I was never alone.’ Her ultimate ‘knowledge’ is paradoxically the revelation of her own sexual and scientific naivety. Parallel to what Doane describes as the loss of her ‘sexual identity [and even] her very access to sexuality’ (1984: 79), is her loss of belief in science. It comes as no surprise that she has stepped out of her symbolic ordering and renounced the nursing vocation that brought her to Cape Verde in the first place, as she declares ‘no more doctor, no more medicine, I’m finished with all that crap’. It is ultimately Tina, however, who is sacrificed to both the failure of medical knowledge and female sexual exploitation. In this sense, the historical truth of Cape Verdean suffering as a slave colony does, in the final account, find itself transferred back onto the body of an African mulata woman as its end point, but white, male historical agency has disappeared in this process. Tina is affected, possibly fatally, by Mariana’s medical interventions, as is Tano, bringing vaccines to the island that have infected them with hepatitis. Mirroring Mariana’s abusive medical intrusion on Tina’s body is the lesbian gaze cast openly upon her by Edite in a sequence where the older, white woman tries to persuade Tina back into her sphere of pseudoromantic sexual influence, in a sinister, pathologized portrayal of Edite as a ‘lesbian corrupter of youth’. Playing the overpowering, maternal exploiter to Mariana’s masochistically infantilized daughter figure, Edite appears to be the decadent, at times perverse, remnant of a defunct political radicalism, Portugal’s anticolonial, anti-fascist past. She is the former lover of a political prisoner of the Salazar regime, Vicente Bento Águas, who she had followed to Tarrafal concentration camp on nearby Santiago Island. After Vicente died there in 1962, Edite had remained in Cape Verde with her son and gone native, receiving her dead lover’s pension, which she uses to control the emigration opportunities of the locals. In addition to her obvious configuration of Tourneur’s zombie woman, Jessica Holland, Edith Scob brings a further, specific gothic horror referent clearly into view in the form of Eyes Without a Face. This is less frequently cited by Costa than 198

White Faces/Black Masks I Walked with a Zombie, but it constitutes an unmistakable allusion in Down to Earth, on account of the central role afforded to Edith Scob who starred in Franju’s film as Christiane Génessier, the eponymous ‘eyes without a face’. In this film, a cruel Parisian surgeon excises and steals the faces of beautiful fair-skinned women, in order to graft them onto his facially mutilated daughter Christiane, who finally rebels against his brutality and kills him. In parallel with the gothic masochism which defines Mariana’s sexual trajectory in the film, the presence of Scob as Edite, as the echo from Franju, also has much to tell us about Costa’s feminized self-implication in Down to Earth, further alienating the image of whiteness as the reified mask-like creation of a pathologizing science and aesthetics. While there are many productive readings of Eyes Without a Face (see for instance Hawkins 2000; Ince 2005; Wheatley 2007), one of the most significant for our purposes concerns its historical allegorical operations in terms of race. Adam Lowenstein foregrounds the film’s link with the (still fairly recent in 1960) recollections of racist and anti-semitic Nazi scientific experiments in occupied France and with the gruesome racial subtext of black prisoner torture in the Algerian war, that was still ongoing at the time of its release (Lowenstein 2005: 43). Picking up the racialized undertones of this clinical scientific whitening, Scob clearly delivers an aesthetic reprise of her role as Christiane. She is clothed and lit as artificially, almost translucently whitened and blue-eyed, drifting round the screen in luminescent, floating white nightwear. Costa’s reframing of the specific white racial pathologies inherent to both Eyes Without a Face and I Walked with a Zombie, is revealed particularly clearly and usefully in his Casa de Lava – Caderno. This compilation of stills, newspapers clippings, abstract art, landscapes, ideas and inspirations, published nineteen years after Down to Earth in 2013, functions both as an independent artefact and as a valuable retrospective insight into the film’s own artistic subconscious, operating as it did for Costa in place of any conventional script. Clever juxtapositions of stills from the Tourneur and Franju films, sometimes in matching poses, set alongside images of the Cape Verdean Creole women from Down to Earth reveal the constructed facticity of idealized performative whiteness, and its inherence in the 199

Portugal’s Global Cinema racist clichés of Hollywood. The first set of pictures from Franju’s black and white film that Costa presents in the Caderno shows Scob with digitally enhanced bright yellow hair, in a Marilyn Monroe style avant-garde screen print in order to heighten the Aryan versus blackening effect. These images are followed by a series of clinical facial photographs underexposed to exaggerate black and white contrast, originally used in the Franju film to scientifically chart Christiane’s different stages of facial degeneration as the heterograft is rejected and her fair face turns dark and blemished. The pathology of whiteness, materially reified here into an extreme scientific, heterografted and therefore transferable form, is shown to have sinister complicity with artistic, particularly photographic and filmmaking, endeavour. Costa’s explicit lightening and shading of black and white facial images, thus makes the visual language of ‘whitening’ into a constructed, artistic operation for which the artist and filmmaker is responsible. It also recalls the now fairly familiar parallel that Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, following Diana Fuss, notes, between the language of image and filmmaking with its cuts and sutures, and that of clinical medicine and surgery (Foster 2003: 129). The haunted face of Edith Scob as Franju’s Christiane used as a selfconscious quotation of white scientific racism, effectively affords a further white female mask of alienation for the white male filmmaker’s selfimplicating gaze. However, what Edite significantly does not do, in Down to Earth, is rebel and usurp power from the surgeon/filmmaker Father, in the manner of Christiane, overthrowing Dr. Génessier and his experiments. No less neo-colonially imbricated than Mariana, Edite rather uses her economic power to control native emigration flows from the island. As with Mariana this has sexual overtones too, as evident in her attraction to Amália, the former cook in Tarrafal, and her implied lesbian coercion of Tina. As she intimately confides to Tina, regarding men and women, ‘let the poor bastards live as they wish. Let the girls do as they please’ she reminds her ‘I’m so happy with what you did for me last night’ as she leans on Tina’s reluctant shoulder and fondles her face, chest and hair. Tina’s initial reluctance makes Edite the stereotypical vision of the mature lesbian seducer (see Figure 11.2). Masked behind the sexually predatory gaze of the white woman here is the lubricious gaze of the white male hybridizer. 200

White Faces/Black Masks

Figure 11.2 Tina and Edite – the female gaze in Down to Earth

For his male viewers, on one level, Costa doubly estranges this lubricious gaze both by granting it to a woman, and by refusing to film it as POV. Detached from POV, Edite’s perverse female gaze at Tina is designed to deflect the male viewer from any drive to identification. At the same time, one could argue, this arrangement allows the male viewer to enjoy the object of this gaze, the sexual charge between the Cape Verdean girl and the white woman, freed from the more problematic guilt of identification with the female looker.

Conclusion: a dystopian Island of Love? Since there are no white male imperialists or patriarchs present to restore or uphold the symbolic order in Down to Earth, as Paul Holland does in Tourneur’s film, the figure of the ‘white planter’ is missing. Whilst Costa does, on one level, effectively negotiate a subtle, critical path through the grotesque, slavocratic racial politics inherent in the zombie genre (recalling Rosenbaum’s important ethical question about how ‘to behave inside a charnel house, a former slave colony’ [2012: 4]) the two white women are left as the film’s bearers of white male guilt, malaise and disavowal. 201

Portugal’s Global Cinema In this scenario, Mariana functions largely as a marker for the empty place of white Portuguese masculinity whose existential crises, and postLusotropicalized moral panic can only be referred to in indirect terms and by feminine proxy. As the surrogate, or better scapegoat, for Costa’s own masochistic self-implication in the film, she affords the screen onto which the pathological sex drive of colonial Portugal may be projected and reversed. Where Mariana and Edite so clearly ‘stand in’ for the imperial male presence, the guilt for its sexualized project transforms their bodies into collective masochistic trauma sites for the memory of the colonizer. Mariana and Edite thus bear the historical burden of Portuguese empire’s bad sexual conscience, respectively, affording the screen and the mask, which enable the concealment of patriarchal implication in the historical pathology of imperialism’s ‘evil whites’. Given that she came to Cape Verde to follow a lover imprisoned and killed in Tarrafal, Edite also evokes the now defunct ‘glory days’ of antifascist and anti-colonial resistance. Her drunken dance with Amália who shares the same memories, parodies their former ideals as they ironically recall, in the voice of cynical old age, the days of ‘Juventude em Marcha’ (‘Youth on the March’, a well-known slogan from the Revolution), its longerterm legacy of loss poignantly pre-empted by Amália crying nihilistically: ‘let them all die. Fathers and sons for generations to come.’ This moment of woman-on-woman desire framed as the lasting death of masculinity on the island, is left to point up the ongoing legacy of emigration from post-independence Cape Verde, and in a broader sense, the failures and limits of the 25 April 1974 revolution and the end of Portuguese colonialism in Africa, doubling back upon itself here in the throes of Cavaquista expansion (Lisbon’s many building sites and injured Cape Verdean workers) in the mid-1980s to 1990s. In this generically complex ‘heterograft’ of a film, Costa has ingeniously used his masochistically infantilized urbanite Mariana and her progressive loss of knowledge to reverse the classically Oedipal imperial trope of an all-knowing paternal metropolis governing its immature infant colony, still unready for independence. But he has done so at the cost of re-Oedipalizing Mariana under a patriarchal (directorial) ‘change of the guard’ furnished with a postcolonial alibi. As Lowenstein

202

White Faces/Black Masks astutely asks in his reading of Eyes Without a Face, regarding the historical phenomenon of mutilating female collaborators with Nazism, in Franju’s film ‘why this insistent displacement of warfare’s wounds and scarring from the masculine to the feminine?’ (2005: 50). As noted above, the return of the extra-diegetic violin music of the Hindemith Sonata occurs just before the end, at the moment when Mariana is stoning Leão’s house, this typically aural cue signalling the return of a baleful directorial eye which had initially established itself, before Mariana was introduced to us, as the privileged viewer of this apparently all-female, volcanic island. If the Cape Verdean women are the only ones who remain, their physically fit and valid men emigrate and depart, and love between women is cast as deadly and degenerate, we are left with an ironic twist on the mythical Island of Love, the fantasy space imagined by Camões as a reward for Vasco da Gama’s sailors, in which they would breed with Venus’s nymphs to produce a new race of Portuguese heroes. The fantasy of Down to Earth’s island is of an entirely dystopian nature. Devoid of meaningful phallic intervention and very far from breeding the empire’s future race of Portuguese heroes, it is cast as a place of morbidly all-female affect (‘let them all die. Fathers and sons for generations to come’) a reproductive ‘short circuit’, a charnel house that cannot re-enter history.

Notes 1. As Darren Hughes also notes in this context, ‘Costa claims to have begun the project [Casa de Lava] out of anger with Portugal’s turn to the right amidst the formation of the European Union, which precipitated a dramatic restructuring of the nation’s economy, including the privatization of television. The few sources of funding in Portugal’s small film economy, dried up’ (2008: 4). 2. Historically, and with justification, the zombie subgenre of horror cinema has been tainted with charges of racism, projecting as it clearly does white imperialist fear in the face of a freed black slave population; see for instance Aizenberg (1999), Bishop (2010) and Young (1998). 3. See Bishop’s chapter ‘Raising the Living Dead. The Folkloric and Ideological Origins of the Voodoo Zombie’ (2010) for a full discussion of the colonial and gothic roots of the zombie-gothic subgenre in popular culture and cinema, and the historical emergence of the zombie as a figure of liminality, dissolving the boundaries between living and dead.

203

Portugal’s Global Cinema 4. Becker has tellingly described the mirror as ‘the site for the classic female gothic trajectory of the female (the mother’s) body; monstrosity and creativity, as well as separation/abjection’ (1999: 164). 5. As Doane observes, in relation to 1940s gothic, melodrama and horror genres addressed to female audiences, the staircase is ‘a signifier which possesses a certain semantic privilege in relation to the woman as object of the gaze, which articulates the connection between the familiar and the unfamiliar, or neurosis and psychosis’ (1984: 72). 6. As Melbye puts it: ‘Because the notion of divinity had already been projected inward, the fundamental question of divinity was also internalized, becoming a form of self-doubt. At this point, landscape allegory transformed into an ideological “wasteland” where it had previously been a bountiful paradise. This once fertile landscape of the mind ‘dried up’ and became an inhospitable desert, populated only by the ‘rubble’ of traditional cultural values’ (2010: 87). 7. The finding of ‘lost’ or ‘hidden’ papers and the quest for ‘ur-texts’ which promise but ultimately fail to resolve an ongoing mystery or to explain a story’s origins, constitute a classic convention of gothic intertextuality which is, as Becker states, bound up with ‘the deferral of explanations’ (Becker 1999: 71). 8. Doane notes in this respect that the window functions as a significantly gendered interface ‘between inside and outside, the feminine space of the family and reproduction and the masculine space of production. It facilitates a communication by means of the look between the two sexually differentiated spaces. That interface becomes a potential point of violence, intrusion and aggression in the paranoid woman’s films’ (1984: 72).

204

12 Light Drops: Portugal Critically Reviewing the Colonial Past? Paul Melo e Castro

The close of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first have seen an intense rememoration of imperial experience in Portugal, especially that portion which falls within living memory. The range of cultural products recalling the Portuguese Ultramar1 is varied, stretching from texts characterized by what Renato Rosaldo, in relation to cinema, has termed ‘imperialist nostalgia’, an elegiac mode of perception regretting the demise of a supposedly decorous, orderly white imperial world (1989: 107), and which can be thought of as the afterlife of colonial discourse, to those displaying clear post-colonial approaches, urging a critical revision of the past. This airing of national memory has occurred in every field of critical and artistic endeavour and the country’s cinematic production has not been absent from this process. In contrast to the acritical filmmaking pilloried by Rosaldo, Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Walter describe post-colonial cinema as a ‘dynamic departure from colonial knowledge and power’ (2012: 1) that revisits the colonial past from multiple viewpoints to debate its underlying nature, to challenge the presumptions and stereotypes that arose from colonialist ideology and which continue into the present day. Here I argue that the film under analysis in this chapter, Gotejar da Luz/Light

205

Portugal’s Global Cinema Drops (Fernando Vendrell, 2002), displays the features Ponzanesi and Walter ascribe to post-colonial cinematic productions: the recurrent tropes of memory, amnesia, trauma, denial and repression, the destabilization of identity and the splitting of fixed historical narratives into situated dissident minor stories (2012: 12). Yet, for all that Light Drops possesses these characteristics, Vendrell’s film ultimately seems caught between its condemnation of the past and an unshakeable, melancholic nostalgia for it, a strange mix that recurs in contemporary Portuguese culture and reflects the country’s particular attitude vis-à-vis its colonial history. Before examining Light Drops’s representation of Portuguese colonialism, I describe the history of this theme in Portuguese cinema to show something of the stakes and conditions of such a production. There has not been an abundance of films on empire in post-decolonization Portugal for the same reason that an expansive archive of colonial-era films does not exist: the relative economic weakness of the national film industry. Nonetheless, under the New State, several key films were produced that provide clear testimony to the imperialist ethos of the Salazar regime and thus informed ongoing colonial discourse and attitudes. Subsequently, from the 1990s onwards, a series of films began to appear that display an attempt to reckon with the country’s imperial past, partly by reworking aspects of these previous narratives. Whereas New State era works such as Feitiço do Império (António Lopes Ribeiro, 1940), which shows the conversion of a young LusoAmerican to Portuguese colonialist ideology, and Chaimite (Jorge Brum do Canto, 1953), which recounts the triumphant Portuguese conquest of Mozambique, staunchly align with colonialist ideology, the new wave of films appearing as Portugal settled into post-imperial life and membership of the EEC provide critical views of this previously celebrated past (often in cooperation with Africans, even though, as we shall see, the balance of this partnership can be uneven). A Idade Maior/Alex (Teresa Villaverde, 1991) and Aqui d’el Rei (António Pedro Vasconcelos, 1991), for example, can be read to an extent as critical revisions of Feitiço do Império and Chaimite respectively: the first involves a conscript soldier whose experience in Africa leaves him traumatized by his imposed role defending a

206

Light Drops doomed colonialism, leading him to abandon his family where the converted protagonist of Feitiço do Império returns to the national(ist) fold; the second shows events surrounding the Portuguese defeat of the native king Gungunhana from a less overtly chauvinist point of view, one that admits of the Portuguese as something other than shining heroes. A key difference between these two sets of films, which appeared either side of the colonial conflict, decolonization and civil war in Angola and Mozambique, their ideological orientation apart, is their production location. If the former were filmed in loco (an undertaking permitted by Portuguese colonial rule), the latter, though premised on events in Africa, were filmed, or indeed set, in Europe. Only recently has there been a return to making ‘Portuguese’ films in Africa, a fraught enterprise due to difficult practical conditions on the ground and the financial weakness of Portugal’s film industry. The 1990s saw the beginning of cinematic co-productions between the ex-metropole and the post-conflict PALOPs (as the Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa are sometimes known). Such films include O Miradouro da Lua (Jorge António, 1993), Ilhéu de Contenda (Leão Lopes, 1995) and O Testamento do Senhor Napumoceno (Francisco Manso, 1997). The first film by Fernando Vendrell, the director of Light Drops, entitled Fintar o Destino/ Dribbling Fate (1998), about a Cape Verdean who dreams of joining the Lisbon football club Benfica, is another example of such a production. Yet, as Jorge Leitão Ramos points out, these films, perhaps to avoid wounding sensibilities, generally eschew any specific reflection on colonial relations ‘as if this question was of secondary importance’ (2005: 250; my translation). This is even the case with Flagelados do Vento Leste (António Faria, 1998), whose source novel has clear post-colonial purchase. By contrast Light Drops, which was filmed in Mozambique and has a mixed Portuguese and Mozambican cast and a plot that exposes the unequal and damaging relationships between the colonizer and the colonized, is far more critical of colonialism than its predecessors. Here I shall consider the formal and thematic aspects of Vendrell’s film that can be related to post-colonialism as a ‘process of disengagement from the whole colonial syndrome’ (Childs and Williams 2006: 66).

207

Portugal’s Global Cinema

Light Drops as post-colonial film Light Drops re-views the past through the remembered coming to consciousness of the child protagonist, Rui Pedro (Filipe Carvalho). His experiences take in both Portuguese colonial domination (and the deeply exploitative nature of Portuguese rule) and Portuguese colonial hegemony, and so give the lie to Lusotropicalism, understood here as Portugal’s mythical ability equitably to assimilate native populations (see Klobucka 2008:  473), a discourse that was gaining traction at the time the film is set, that is, in the 1950s. Light Drops can thus be seen as engaging with the themes and issues associated with the two ‘wings’ of post-colonialism, roughly the Marxist and the culturalist, which focus respectively, in Gandhi’s view, on ‘sheer economic exploitation’ and ‘the ambivalent colonial construction of alterity’ (1998: 56). At the same time, despite the breadth and forcefulness of its critique, Light Drops remains ambiguous. This ambiguity is created by the frame tale that structures the film and the tragic ending that brings the embedded memory to a close. Our ultimate evaluation of the film’s post-colonial import rests on our final attitude to Rui Pedro, the protagonist reduced to a spectre in the present by the demise of colonialism. In the gap between the clear depiction of injustice and the ambiguity of the melancholic adult Rui Pedro, left adrift at the end of Light Drops, some of Portugal’s ambivalence to its colonial past can be detected. The post-coloniality of Light Drops is set out in the first part of the frame tale, with which the film begins. In a section lasting for some twenty minutes, we are introduced to the apparently fifty-something Rui Pedro (Luís Sarmento). Judging by his age, the social landscape and the historical markers in the film we can calculate the diegetic present as around the time of its production in the early 2000s. Alone and in silence, Rui Pedro drives out of a teeming city with nothing particular to locate it in Mozambique. What we see appears to be the generic outskirts of a third-world African city as relayed by Western media – milling black people, a lack of infrastructure. We see Rui Pedro’s weathered, white adult face in an enigmatic close up, setting up a retrospective comparison with the fresh face of the child actor playing the youthful Rui Pedro and introducing themes of innocence

208

Light Drops and experience, hope and disillusion. The unexplained and lengthy nature of the sequence prompts the viewer to consider the identity and purpose of the protagonist. The plangent synthesizer music drifting in and out contributes to the wistful poignancy of the atmosphere and forewarns that the initial idyll of the embedded narrative will not be the whole story. The adult Rui Pedro’s physical journey ends when he arrives at a dilapidated house, which we come to realize was once his childhood home. In retrospect, it will become clear that these ruins are material analogues to the memories that occupy the bulk of Light Drops. The fact that his home has been left to decay primes a series of possible readings that only become operational at the end, and which interfere with the explicitly anticolonial tenor of Rui Pedro’s memories: the expression of an implicit idea that Mozambique’s post-imperial settlement (as it stood at the time of the film’s release) had been far from successful in replacing an exploitative but functional past with a working but more equitable framework (a structure of feeling that can run to prejudice if unaccompanied by explanatory historical analysis) and a problematic questioning of whether there is actually a place for people such as Rui Pedro in the post-colonial nation. The adult Rui Pedro’s awkward status in contemporary Mozambican society is displayed when, on his first night back in his childhood home, which we later learn is called Bué Maria, he encounters a young goatherd (Alfredo Ernesto), a boy about the same age as the child Rui Pedro in the embedded narrative and so representing a sort of post-imperial replacement for the adult’s past self. Rui Pedro, who in the embedded story is on several occasions shown alongside African playmates, is unable as a grownup to establish a rapport with the boy: crucially he has forgotten Chilende, the local Bantu language that he spoke with some fluency as a child. The goatherd’s mistrust of this white outsider is shown in the scene when Rui Pedro offers him a cigarette. Whereas the protagonist had shared cigarettes with elder Africans as a boy, the goatherd merely takes the gift and tucks it behind one ear, all the while eyeing the stranger with suspicion rather than accepting his invitation to share a moment. In essence, this fireside encounter is the exact opposite of those the young Rui Pedro had shared with Jacopo, his African father figure (Amaral Matos). If easy harmony had been an illusion in the past, it is seemingly impossible in the present. 209

Portugal’s Global Cinema The vast majority of Light Drops takes place in flashback, an embedded narrative that begins when Rui Pedro looks out at the river by his childhood home, a watercourse that possesses multiple significances in the film. Judging the young Rui Pedro’s age against that of the adult in the frame tale and by certain chronological references, we can reckon the temporal setting of the embedded narrative as the mid-1950s. The bulk of Light Drops takes place, then, at the height of the Third Portuguese Empire (the stretch of the country’s imperial history dominated by colonialism in Africa, as opposed to Asia or South America), soon after the 1951 change of designation of the Portuguese colonies to overseas provinces and the period in which the adoption of Lusotropical discourses helped ‘transform the representations and practices of an anachronistic Portuguese colonialism’ (Vale de Almeida 2004: 57). Rui Pedro’s journey in the film is essentially from naivety to disillusion. He acts as a proxy agent discovering the true conditions of Portuguese colonialism for the uninformed viewer, a focalizer for the film’s vision of how assimilated Africans were structurally discriminated against (despite the blandishments of Lusotropicalist rhetoric) and how, contrary to the official discourse of amenity and uplift, the ‘hard colonialism’ of chauvinistic colonialist attitudes at an individual level went hand in hand with the ruthless exploitation of African workers through coerced labour. Rui Pedro’s discovery of these large-scale social facts is mediated through his interactions with his immediate white relatives and informal black family. Ashis Nandy observes that in colonial discourse there is a frequent homology between the child and the colonized (1983: 11). In Light Drops we see how Rui Pedro’s juvenile status enables him to mix with the colonized to a degree impossible for (and undesired by) the colonialist adults, and to cross back and forth at will across the colonial divide. Yet while the grown-ups around him tolerate this promiscuity, it soon becomes clear that Rui Pedro’s growth into manhood will force him to leave his indeterminacy behind. As his understanding of the social set up at Bué Maria develops, the white adults around Rui Pedro are increasingly revealed to be colonialists who accept themselves as such and attempt to self-justify this status (as defined by Memmi 1985: 70). By and large, they expect Rui Pedro to take his place alongside them without question. 210

Light Drops In Light Drops this self-justifying colonialist attitude is most clearly evidenced during the dinner scene. This episode revisits a typical topos of adolescent frustration with the adult world, tiresome grown-up interaction at mealtime, where the mundanity of the setting helps to establish the conventional nature of the opinions spouted. While the black domestic servants flit back and forth in the background we see the white male adults, and notably Rui Pedro’s father, take turns to enumerate the defects of the natives, a performance of implicit self-justification via what Memmi calls ‘lyric negativism’ (1985:  102). The scene exemplifies Boehmer’s observation that ‘images of the native, the alien, or the other, reflected by contrast Western conceptions of selfhood – of mastery and control, of rationality and cultural superiority’ (2005: 77; emphasis in original). In the structure of Light Drops, however, the representation of these discourses alternates with Rui Pedro’s interactions with Jacopo, which for the most part of the film serve to undermine the status and authority of the white adults’ ideas. This scene and others like it represent the idea that, though the film takes place after the turn to Lusotropicalist fantasies of racial egalitarianism and inclusion as an exculpatory discourse, in this period, at an everyday level, the overt racism of the past continued unabated. It is notable in Light Drops that, with the exception of the child Rui Pedro, and his generally sympathetic mother, the adults show a lack of the ‘social flexibility’ and ‘absence of race pride’ that supposedly defined the behaviour of the Portuguese in the tropics (Castelo 1998:  15). What we do see, in scenes such as Guinda’s assimilation test, is a certain amount of rather condescending (though apparently heartfelt) affection and instances of colonial desire, neither of which significantly distinguishes the colonial situation depicted in Light Drops from plausible equivalents in other colonial dispensations and so undermines any idea of Portuguese exceptionality.

Rui Pedro’s two families Though what Memmi calls ‘a coloniser by birth’ (1985: 70), someone born amid colonial discourse and accepting it as natural, Rui Pedro is, however, exposed to a counterdiscourse that seems intended to undo this ideology and lead him away from the position envisaged for him by the white adults. 211

Portugal’s Global Cinema Throughout Light Drops, Rui Pedro seems split between two ‘fathers’: his biological father, who fails to perform any conventional function of raising him to manhood and enabling him to develop a critical view of the world, and an African ‘father’, the only native character given the space to express his opinion at any length, who appears to perform a post-colonizing function by leading the boy to question the legitimacy of colonialism (though his acts at the end of the film render his role and message ambiguous to a large degree). César Morais, Rui Pedro’s father (played by António Fonseca), the administrator of a cotton plantation, is gradually revealed in his son’s eyes to be the pusillanimous stooge of colonialism. On the rare occasions cotton cultivation is called into question, Morais simply parrots colonialist clichés about the natives who work for him. At one point we do see him tuning into Radio Brazzaville, a station broadcasting from the French Congo, funded by the French government though generally considered quite objective (Thompson and Adloff 1960: 315). The viewer is led to consider for a moment the possibility of an instance of individual subversion on César’s part. As he listens to the broadcast, he is huddled and nervous, seemingly conscious of performing what was a rebellious act under the New State. However, despite the revelation in the broadcast that French Guinea has opted for self-rule, an example of the winds of change that will surely reach Mozambique, he reveals himself ultimately to be trapped in bourgeois colonialist exis, unable to adjust his attitudes to the coming anti-colonial reality. When Rui Pedro asks him questions, he either refuses to countenance these queries or insists the boy not contest the Salazar-era doxa, replicating on an interpersonal level the authoritarian attitude of the Portuguese state in the post-war era. The most egregious example of C ésar’s damaging refusal to engage with his son occurs when, after Rui Pedro has asked him to explain the logic behind cotton production, he dismisses his son’s preoccupations, telling him he is too young to understand such issues. Here is encapsulated C ésar’s failure to nurture his son, another example of how colonialism, alongside its greater evils, also damaged the colonizer, which as the plot builds to its dénouement arguably becomes the fi lm’s prime focus. 212

Light Drops

Figure 12.1 Light Drops: Rui Pedro and Jacopo by the river

By contrast with his biological father’s distance, Jacopo is shown unhurriedly spending time with the boy. A series of key scenes between Jacopo and Rui Pedro take place by the river, which in Light Drops models themes of division and contact, as well as playing its traditional role as a metaphor for time (see Figure 12.1). The interactions between the young white boy and the old native man initially appear to form a sort of heterotopia, ‘a parcel of the world that at once brings the totality of the world into apprehension and destabilizes or contests its unity’ (Melas 2007: 26), a locus for the revelation and critique of colonialism through Jacopo’s somewhat Socratic debates with Rui Pedro. Through Jacopo’s prompting and Rui Pedro’s own experiences the boy comes to realize that the cultivation of cotton is organized solely to yield bumper profits for state companies whilst forcing the native peasantry into a money economy where, between inadequate wages and dishonest traders, they find themselves increasingly immiserated. Here, through Rui Pedro’s eyes, we see represented Memmi’s observation that the more the colonizer can breathe easily, the more the colonized suffocates (1985: 47). Another way to conceptualize Rui Pedro and Jacopo’s interactions might be by reference to Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s idea of the ‘frontier’, a space 213

Portugal’s Global Cinema (or intersection of spaces) that permits the displacement of discourses, new sociabilities, weak hierarchies and the fluidity of social relations (2002: 15). Whereas the interior scenes involving colonizer and colonized (such as those in the office or the home) are hierarchical, in their riverside interactions Rui Pedro and Jacopo are generally shown side by side as they fish and eat by the fire. Jacopo never tells Rui Pedro anything, rather he leads him to think for himself, to question. They often speak in Chilende, the local tongue, which provides a linguistic metonym for the eschewal of a univocal Lusocentric viewpoint. In general, the viewer is led gradually to the premise that Jacopo’s role in the film is to encourage the boy to consider the true nature of colonial exploitation and colonized suffering. As the madala, or boatman, Jacopo seems to be attempting to guide Rui Pedro to the far bank of understanding, to achieve what Melas terms ‘dissimilation’ (2007: 93), which she defines as an interpellation that provokes a feeling of estrangement and of standing outside a social whole, which is then apperceived critically. The social whole here would be colonialism, which Jacopo describes using the river as a metonym. One side is Lisbon, from where orders arrive and to where the cotton is taken. The other side is Bué Maria, a space of native pain and suffering. Jacopo eventually encourages Rui Pedro to found his family on a ‘different bank’ of the river, metaphorically speaking one that abjures colonial hierarchies. The problem is that in his discussions with the boy Jacopo metaphorizes the land as a woman, and thus frames both as objects that can be possessed by men, foreshadowing the film’s tragic, ambiguous climax. As I  have argued, the viewer’s ultimate attitude to the film has to be rethought in the light of the film’s climax – in which sexual jealousy leads to violence between Rui Pedro’s two families – and the concluding part of the frame tale. Initially, when Rui Pedro returns home from school, his family life in Bué Maria seems happy and uneventful. This initial impression is best conveyed in the veranda scene with Rui Pedro, his mother, Alice (Teresa Madruga), and the black maid Ana (Alexandra Antunes), who is both a sister figure and an object of attraction to the boy. It is an intimate, familial scene, shot close up and with light diegetic music from the radio. Rui Pedro’s mother is teaching Ana to embroider and gently scolding her son for not reading enough. The impression is of a certain 214

Light Drops parity of affection, if not of opportunity, between Rui Pedro and Ana, who we learn is his mother’s goddaughter. Rui Pedro’s lack of consciousness at this moment is signalled by his choice of reading, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a work that, to an extent, brackets the issues of race and discrimination that Mark Twain broaches later in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Phillip Rothwell has expressed concern that as a nation the Portuguese by and large continue to believe they were ‘somehow less immoral and racist than other powers’ (2008: 431). The structure of Light Drops, which seems to invite Lusotropicalist readings only to undermine them as Rui Pedro’s understanding of the colonial situation deepens, signals its intention to challenge any such attitude. The second person Rui Pedro visits after his return to Bué Maria is Guinda (Alberto Magassela), a mechanic who works for the cotton company and who appears to be a sort of older brother to Rui Pedro. It soon becomes clear that in Rui Pedro’s absence, Guinda has become engaged to Ana. The interracial, intergenerational equilibrium that seems to characterize Rui Pedro’s childhood is further disturbed when his cousin Carlos arrives. Carlos, we learn, is at school in Johannesburg and has been sent to rusticate in Bué Maria while his parents are on leave in the metropole. Initially, as a counterpoint to the seeming harmonious, Lusotropicalist ambiance of the settlement, the boy appears to embody the difference between a harsh British colonialism and its ‘cordial’ Portuguese counterpart. He barks orders at the native handlers when he arrives and is rude to Ana when he first encounters her lounging and reading a magazine in Rui Pedro’s parlour. Yet Carlos is also shy and awkward, his adoption of a severe colonialist persona seemingly a way to cope with an unfamiliar world and a further example of how, albeit on a personal, subjective level, colonialism also corrupted the colonizer. The second half of Light Drops sees a love triangle form between Carlos, Guinda and Ana, which shows the balance of power within the colonialist hegemony Rui Pedro is progressively discovering. Ana and Guinda marry in a traditional wedding, but do not consummate their marriage as Ana wants to wait for the church ceremony, which, as well as a last attempt to express her will, indicates both her deracination and her hierarchical understanding of the world around her. Following their initial 215

Portugal’s Global Cinema encounter in the living room of Rui Pedro’s home, Ana and Carlos soon realize their attraction for each other and begin an affair, where Ana freely gives to Carlos the intimacy she withheld from her husband and during the course of which Carlos adopts a sneering, openly derogatory attitude towards Guinda. Thereafter Light Drops focuses increasingly on the affair, Rui Pedro’s discovery of it, and its eventual coming to public knowledge, which leads to the tragic ending that destroys Rui Pedro’s family and symbolically ends his childhood. One way to understand Light Drops is as organized around implicit comparisons between the white and black characters (from Rui Pedro and the goatherd to Rui Pedro’s father and Jacopo). The racial divisions of the love triangle, two sides of which eventually become murderer and victim, and the contrastive parallels between Carlos and Guinda which come to the fore in the latter part of the film extend this pattern. Carlos is white, privileged and attempts to project an air of self-assuredness to the world. Guinda is black, at first seemingly blind to the depredations of the system, with which he colludes for a fraction of Carlos’s privilege. A key event in Guinda’s character arc is the assimilation test sequence, which shows up the ridiculousness of evaluating a person’s level of ‘civilization’ and indicates the structural disadvantage to which black Mozambicans were condemned by colonialism even if they submitted to its precepts. In a series of scenes, we see Andrade e Castro and César Morais, Rui Pedro’s father, take Guinda through the exam, making him read from a child’s school textbook and asking him to mime eating at a table with a knife and fork (a skill that is later relativized when we see Carlos’s unease eating native food). Throughout the whole infantilizing pantomime, the viewer is led to reflect that the aim of this process is not to absorb Africans into Portuguese society but to fix the colonized into a secondary and derivative role. Ultimately Andrade e Castro and César Morais do not welcome Guinda into the fold, they put him in his place. As Memmi argues, assimilation can only be a myth under colonialism because, were it to actually occur, it would erase the boundaries colonial exploitation requires (1985: 91) and without which such an exam would not be possible. During the test, both Andrade e Castro and César Morais display encouragement for Guinda at a personal level. Across their faces pass 216

Light Drops expressions of support and dismay when he stumbles over some of the questions. Structural discrimination and fellow-feeling thus seem able to coexist. The final scene, after the examiners have approved Guinda’s efforts, when Rui Pedro stands in the doorway and laughs at the derisory figure his friend has cut, suggests some of the memories driving the wronged husband’s fury when he discovers Ana’s infidelity. Between the two adults and the child, whose laughter at the spectacle of power invading his friend’s privacy unwittingly draws a clear line between the white boy and his black brother/friend, the various gazes of these Europeans add up to a combined vision of a colonialism that, in a re-orientation of Bhabha’s well-known quasi-homophone, is both desirous of mimicry and mocking of it (see Bhabha 1984 for the original discussion). The viewer is left to wonder whether Guinda’s later violence represents a backdated realization that, in his desire to assimilate, all he did was confirm his subjection as a colonized African to an always inferior version of Europeanness. It is not just colonialism that Light Drops decries, but also sexist attitudes, which are shared by colonizer and colonized alike. Indeed, the tragic ending can be considered to be as much a result of ingrained sexism as colonialism. Ana’s affair with Carlos acts more as plot device than a character episode. We are never given a clear reason for her fling, though her constrained circumstances and semi-incorporated position on the fringes of an advantaged white family are highly suggestive, as is the prospective life in store for her as Guinda’s spouse, which will likely involve the end both of her work as a maid and her illusion of belonging to the white family. The closest we get to hearing the character’s own motives comes when she tells Rui Pedro that women cannot do what they want, only what they must, indicating that Ana harbours an urge to escape, a yearning to follow her own inclinations for once. For his part, Carlos’s attraction to Ana is a clear example of what Young calls ‘colonial desire’, the transgressive sexual interest in the cultural and racial other (1995:  3). In their early interactions, Carlos is stiff, gawky, clinging to his colonialist pose, while Ana is seemingly free, easy and confident. The contrast is most obviously established at the native celebration where their mutual attraction becomes obvious:  Ana, stereotypically in terms of European representations of Africanness, dances with abandon 217

Portugal’s Global Cinema as Carlos gazes awkwardly on. Ana’s desire for Carlos seems to be a sort of counter colonial desire, an ill-starred inversion of Fanon’s idea of the black man’s attraction to the white woman (1975:  51), the impossible wish to leave her narrow life behind and enter the white colonial world with which she is so intimate but from which she is eternally barred. In addition, part of Ana and Carlos’s mutual attraction seems to be their attractiveness to one another, which confirms how they wish to be seen by the world.

Post-colonialism and nostalgia? The film’s endgame comes when Guinda discovers his wife’s affair. Rui Pedro, who has been tortured by his knowledge of Ana and Carlos’s liaison, realizes that something awful is going to happen and seeks out Jacopo to resolve the issue. It is noteworthy that Rui Pedro does not turn to his biological father, who would in fact have had the power and desire to forestall what eventually comes to pass. As it stands, Guinda surprises Carlos and Ana together and murders the young white with a machete. He is about to kill Ana, who submits to his punishment without protest, when Jacopo and Rui Pedro arrive. Guinda cannot bring himself to kill Ana. It is as if, given the parallels between his assimilation and her submission to Carlos’s desire, he realizes that both of them are guilty of acquiescing to white hegemony. At this moment, the supremely wounding moment of trauma in the film, signalled by a switch to slow motion and a close-up of Rui Pedro at the instant of Ana’s death (which ensures that, even at her last breath, she exists in the film in function of the male characters), Jacopo takes up the machete and delivers Ana a mortal blow (see Figure 12.2). In symbolic, emotional terms, after Rui Pedro’s ‘brother’ has slain his cousin, his ‘father’ kills his ‘sister’ before his eyes. For Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, the film here establishes an equivalence between the ‘exploitation practiced by Portuguese colonialism’ and ‘an archaic custom’, positing a ‘cultural relativism’ that ‘insinuates that both cultures are in fact cruel and liberates (sic.) Portugal by means of one African homicide from 500 years of oppression, genocide, slave trade and abuse’ (2011: 236). Are all of Jacopo’s words and actions over the course of the embedded narrative, his dissimilatory discourse at the frontier of Rui 218

Light Drops

Figure 12.2 Ana’s death in Light Drops

Pedro’s colonial world, negated by this final action? Is his post-colonizing discourse decisively undermined by his attitudes to gender? Ultimately, I  believe Overhoff Ferreira’s conclusion to be overstated, though her doubts are entirely pertinent. Though relativism cannot be reduced to equiparation, Light Drops’s ending remains problematic if we take the film to have post-colonial objectives. On a sympathetic reading, after its exposé of the exploitation and discrimination of Portuguese colonialism, we might view the film as questioning Fanon’s idea of redemptive violence to free the colonized from colonialism (1996:  81), in that these acts do not purge the past so much as vitiate the future. Guinda’s murder of Carlos appears not to bring him any new self-respect, judging by his tatterdemalion appearance in the frame tale, and Jacopo’s killing of Ana appears to have traumatized Rui Pedro to the extent he is unable to act on the old man’s advice to raise his own family differently, as if this was possible outside the influence of his childhood experience of family ties. This idea, of course, brackets the need for violence in ousting a vicious Portuguese colonialism, the almost certainly unavoidable colonial war that occupies a blind spot in the film between the frame tale and the embedded memory. If anything, based on a short story by European-born Mozambican author Leite de Vasconcelos, Light Drops seems to express some doubt 219

Portugal’s Global Cinema that a post-imperial life for the white children of colonialism is possible. From the teeming, alien poverty of the initial images to the seemingly lonely bachelorhood of Rui Pedro there is no inkling in the film of a future being possible (even perhaps, for Guinda, given that he does not reply to Rui Pedro’s question about his family). Indeed, the ‘star text’ of the actor Luís Sarmento, who in his film career has largely played futureless white Africans adrift in a colonial situation  – in Preto e Branco (José Carlos de Oliveira, 2003)  and A Costa dos Murmúrios/The Murmuring Coast (Margarida Cardoso, 2004) – contributes to this impression. Leitão Ramos describes Light Drops as the ‘story of an amputation’ (1987: 279; translation mine) and the film is indeed ultimately more about what has been lost than what is now possible. We can conclude that while Light Drops has some belated anti-colonial purchase in its criticism of its past, its unresolved melancholia prevents any post-colonialism of the sort Bhabha calls touching ‘the future on the hither side’ (2007: 26). In a wide-ranging discussion of contemporary Portuguese texts concerning colonialism, Patrícia Vieira identifies a series of prominent strands, salient among which are ‘trauma’ and ‘melancholia’ (2015:  276). Light Drops is characterized, as I have attempted to show, by these two tendencies. We see trauma in the sudden destruction of a flawed but familiar past and melancholia in the protagonist’s inability to move past this wound, his fixed identification with a bygone time. This melancholia appears to be the oblique referent of Rui Pedro’s response to Guinda in the frame tale, when the older man asks him if he followed Jacopo’s instigations, and Rui Pedro replies elliptically that he ‘stayed’. In Light Drops only the past exists fully, the present is a mere ruin, a supplementary space for the melancholy reminiscence of a lost childhood and a vanished world. In Vendrell’s film there is not even a defence of Lusophony, the default stratagem for Portugal’s unresolved feelings for its imperial past and neocolonial yearnings – the goatherd that Rui Pedro encounters at the film’s outset appears to be outside this linguistic space. Robert Young describes post-colonialism as a critique of the colonial world ‘from the point of view of those who suffered its effects’ (2001:  4). Does Light Drops gainsay or confirm this statement? The film is ultimately from the point of view of the boy Rui Pedro, whose identity is fractured and whose story is here told as 220

Light Drops a counterpoint to received discourse, as per the characteristics enumerated by Ponzanesi and Walter and quoted in my introduction. Rui Pedro is a valid victim of the colonial situation, though his centrality in the film courts the risk of reducing cotton plantation and colonial discrimination to aspects of his privileged trauma. Ultimately Rui Pedro’s world is destroyed and appears not to be replaced with a functioning equivalent. While it is undeniable that Rui Pedro represents a class of people who suffered the effects of Portuguese colonialism, a much wider point of view will be necessary for a truly post-colonial cinema in Portuguese. Achieving this will require a decentring of the European viewpoint that Overhoff Ferreira sees as having characterized Luso-African co-productions helmed by European directors (2011:  242). A  truly post-colonial Portuguese cinema will only exist when – contrary to the most successful recent Portuguese film to deal with the country’s colonialism in Africa, Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012) – as well as overcoming its melancholia, Portuguese cineastes conceive truly plural narratives with some forward-facing momentum.

Note 1. Between 1946 and 1951, the territories comprising the Portuguese Empire were rebaptized ‘províncias ultramarinas’ or overseas provinces, as a ploy to defuse international pressure for the country to decolonize.

221

13 Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu Lúcia Nagib

We’ve lost a soldier and gained an artist (Foi-se o militar, ficou o artista). Spoken line in Tabu

In the most ferocious days of the military dictatorship in Brazil, in the 1970s, more than a thousand articles were censored in one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, O Estado de São Paulo. Because the forbidden sections were not allowed to be left blank, they were regularly filled with cooking recipes and more notably with long sections of the sixteenth-century epic, The Lusiads, by Portugal’s foundational poet, Luís Vaz de Camões. These ersatz texts, though distant in time and space from the country’s current troubles, were all the more political for the discrepancy they presented with the original, evidencing as they did the violent suppression of the truth. Watching Tabu gives me a similar impression of a film with scores of blank pages, filled up with playful ersatz where actual political statements should have been. Africa is thrown at us directly in a prologue about an ‘intrepid explorer’, who appears accompanied by a retinue of semi-naked natives carrying his belongings in trunks in an unidentified part of the continent. This is

223

Portugal’s Global Cinema followed by Part I of the film, called ‘A Lost Paradise’, in which Africa features again, this time in the figure of one of the protagonists, Santa, the Cape Verdean maid of semi-senile and openly racist Aurora, in a plot set in current-day Lisbon. Finally Part II, ‘Paradise’, is a flashback of Aurora’s life entirely set in Africa. In all these three instalments the unequal relationship between colonizers and colonized is of the essence. However, colonialism as such is all but absent from the plot. Instead, all we get are tales of love, gambling, charity, religion and pet crocodiles, invariably told in a citation mode full of irony and self-deprecating mockery. In particular, the complete disregard for cause-effect relationship and narrative realism in the way these tales are told removes from them any semblance of veracity. And yet this phony fantasy elicits a sense of foreboding, of an ominous truth lurking underground, whose form and content remain unknown, but whose historical reality is unequivocal:  the violence of Portuguese colonialism in Africa. But why does the film adamantly refuse to call it by its name? Needless to say, there is no ban imposed on the subject, as in the example of the dictatorial censorship in Brazil in the 1970s, meaning that the film’s foreclosure of history can only be deliberate. Whatever the case, the view that Tabu is a brilliant film is widespread and corroborated by the host of prizes and critical accolades it has collected since its release in 2012. I too share the persuasion that the film is exquisitely crafted and enacted, but find it hard to pinpoint the reasons why I  should actually like it. If the fictitious Mount Taboo, the central figuration in the African landscape in Part II, stands for the unspeakable crimes of colonialism, as all evidence indicates, then the tone of playful parody and irony adopted in the film’s fragmentary storylines, combined with their systematic diversions towards trivial personal fabulations whenever a social issue is at stake, would verge on the frivolous. But then if the colonialism the film elliptically refers to is not any specific historical fact, but an atmosphere emanating from current-day Portugal, there might be a point in its ‘wit and lightness of touch’, as Sally Faulkner (2015: 342) has put it. In favour of this interpretation is the fact that auteur-director Miguel Gomes had never been to Africa before shooting Tabu, hence his and his film’s alleged inability to represent colonialism as lived experience, but only as atmosphere. ‘In Tabu’, states Gomes, ‘there is this invented Africa, which 224

Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu is based on a kind of fake memory of Africa, for which we can thank classical American cinema’ (Prouvèze n.d.), adding elsewhere: ‘My memory of Africa is Tarzan, it’s Hatari!, it’s Out of Africa’ (Wigon 2012). At the same time, there is, in the film, an equally notable effort to ground all fiction in the real. Indexical realism is produced via traditional realist devices, such as: location shooting in Lisbon, for Part I, and in Mozambique, for the prologue and for Part II; the regular occurrence of non-professional acting, including most of the African cast; improvisation resulting from the latter and also from the other lead and supporting actors, at the mercy of Gomes’s usual working method of a loose script complemented haphazardly by chance events; the use of the long take in some key scenes; and the employment of documentary techniques, in particular with regard to the African rituals that feature in the prologue and in Part II. Moreover, the deconstruction of narrative realism elicits not only anti-realism but also its reverse, medium realism, most apparent in the film’s cinephilic fabric, made of countless nods to other films, starting with Murnau’s classic Tabu (1931) – also known as Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. The best illustration of how cinephilia endows the film with medium realism is the use of the already obsolete 35mm gauge for Part I, set in present-day Portugal, and the archaic 16mm for the prologue and the African flashback in Part II, a procedure that drives the film’s visuals away from digital virtuality and back to the haptic materiality of the medium. Along the same lines, the defence of the black and white stock has long been a cinephile’s pièce de résistance, particularly prominent during the 1980s post-modern nostalgia for Hollywood film noir. One only needs to remember the iconic Fritz Munro, the director of the film within the film in Wim Wenders’s Der Stand der Dinge/The State of Things (1982), who in his confrontation with a Hollywood producer exclaims: ‘The world is in colour, but black and white is more realistic’. Turning his back on Hollywood’s artificial colouring, in this inaugural post-modern take on Portugal, the cinephile character of Fritz Munro (a combination of the names Fritz Lang and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau) helps us to understand how Gomes at once reveres and subverts the tricks and conventions of commercial cinema, eliciting awareness both of the location and the medium that captures it. 225

Portugal’s Global Cinema In what follows, I will analyse these two structural, but opposite movements within the film: on the one hand, the denial of history, and, on the other, the grounding of the story in the reality of the objective world as much as that of the medium, with a view to identifying a possible truth procedure, as defined by Badiou (2002; 2007), in the self-defeating fantasy they create.

Historical detours The film’s first abrupt diversion from the subject of colonialism occurs right at the prologue, before Part I is announced. Presented as the introduction to the plot, this prologue avers itself, however, to have no relation whatsoever with what follows, except for a vague analogy between a man-eating crocodile here and a pet crocodile featuring later on in Part II, ‘Paradise’. The prologue starts by presenting a pathetic-looking bearded man, sporting a bowl helmet and a water canteen strapped across his chest, standing in a wooded area, while semi-naked black natives walk past him carrying spears, trunks and animal cages. A voiceover commentary, uttered by director Gomes himself and often at odds with the images, defines this character as an ‘intrepid explorer’, crossing the ‘heart of the black continent’, whom ‘neither beasts nor cannibals seem to frighten’, and we continue to see the natives at the service of this man, clearing the vegetation with their machetes while he looks on. The voice goes on to say that, rather than obeying the King of Portugal, whose will presides over the expedition by decree, or even God’s command, the ‘melancholic explorer’ prefers to follow the voice of his heart, ‘the most insolent muscle in all anatomy’. Unable to forget his recently deceased wife, who appears to him in the garments that ‘hugged her when she returned to dust’, he throws himself in the river where, it is presumed, he is devoured by a crocodile. The explorer’s jump into the crocodile-infested river is not shown to the viewer. Instead, we see a group of African dancers lined up in semicircle in front of the camera and, after the off-screen sound of a fall in the water and of a whistle blown by one of the group, they start to sing and dance to the beat of the drummers sitting next to them. The story continues with the voiceover explaining that from then on a crocodile, accompanied by a lady of yore, became 226

Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu a regular apparition in the jungle, while the camera pans along a living crocodile, revealing at last the figure of a woman in old-fashioned clothes sitting next to it. According to Gomes (Martins 2012), the character of the explorer is loosely inspired in the life of nineteenth-century Scottish explorer David Livingstone, who lost his wife to malaria in Africa. Whatever the case, this initial tale is only palatable for being nonsensical, as otherwise it would be unacceptable to see a European explorer so innocently treated as he goes about subjecting the African population at will, who are moreover referred to as ‘cannibals’ comparable to ‘ferocious beasts’. Needless to say, this story is there to be discredited, and so is the voiceover commentary, which is an obvious parody of official discourses from colonial times. As the film progresses, the viewer realizes that this story is actually part of another film being watched in an empty cinema by the character of Pilar, a protagonist, together with Santa and Aurora, of Part I, ‘A Lost Paradise’. Thus, as history turns into a film and this fades into the reality of a cinema, the lead character Pilar is introduced as a cinephile, watching old – possibly archival – footage, in the position of an alter ego of filmmaker Gomes himself, who until now was lending his own voice as narrator of the story of the implausible explorer. The soundtrack of the film within the film lingers on as we see Pilar looking at the screen with reading glasses perched on her nose – possibly to read the final credits. Given that current-day Lisbon is soon revealed to be the setting of Part I, rather than a Hollywood adventure in the jungle, Pilar may well have watched a Portuguese version (or parody) of such a film. Hilary Owen (2016) suggests this could be something like O Tarzan do 5º Esquerdo (Augusto Fraga, 1958), in which a newly-wed working-class hero, struggling to make ends meet in Lisbon, dreams of being Tarzan in a tropical jungle – and the dream actually shows him in a pond infested with crocodiles and other beasts, in a similar situation to Gomes’s ‘intrepid’ explorer. A parallel between the two films can also be drawn with relation to the music track. Brazilian tunes are played both during the jungle scene in Augusto Fraga’s Tarzan, where we hear a noisy samba track, and in the prologue of Tabu, which evolves to the background of a piano version of the bossa nova classic ‘Insensatez’, by Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, played by Joana Sá. The film credits name 227

Portugal’s Global Cinema this version as ‘Variações Pindéricas sobre a Insensatez’ (something like ‘trashy variations on Insensatez’), and indeed its flourishes, in the manner of cheap piano-bar music, distort and banalize the original. The song’s allusive role is further accentuated for those familiar with the lyrics, in which a heartbroken man talks to his own foolish heart, echoing the explorer’s broken heart. However, whereas Brazilian music in Fraga’s Tarzan is at the service of the jingoistic ‘lusotropicalism’ that animated Portuguese filmmaking in the colonial days, in the case of Tabu the music track has a selfparodic effect that includes a hint at the Brazilian co-producer, the state agency ANCINE (see Pinazza’s contribution to this collection). Though the story in the prologue finds no continuation in the rest of the film, it resonates formally with Part II, ‘Paradise’, dedicated to a flashback of Aurora’s youth in Africa. Shot on the same black and white 16mm stock, Part II contains no dialogue, but only voiceover narration provided by Aurora’s former lover, Gian Luca Ventura (an apparent pun combining the forename of Jean-Luc Godard and the hero of Pedro Costa’s Fontaínhas trilogy, the Cape Verdean Ventura), who retells her story to Pilar and Santa, after Aurora’s death. However, Ventura’s voice is imposed on footage that continues to follow the aesthetics of sound film, with long sections where characters converse without the sound of their voices, voiceover commentary or intertitles. Owen (2016) makes the interesting suggestion that this part could be understood as a ‘silenced’ rather than ‘silent’ film, citing as a possible inspiration for it another cinephile source, the film Feitiço do Império (António Lopes Ribeiro, 1940), a unique product of the Agência Geral das Colónias, created by the New State regime and intended to document the lives of Portuguese settlers in Africa. Feitiço do Império shows Portuguese characters involved in hunting adventures and love conquests in Africa, but most of the film’s soundtrack has been lost; the surviving fragments of the film kept at the Cinemateca Portuguesa are most likely the version seen by Miguel Gomes and his cinephile circle. By inserting the false handicap of the inaudible dialogue into his own new film, Gomes again attempts to divert the viewer’s attention from the history of colonialism to the reality of the medium. As Ferreira (2014: 42) reminds us, such strategies of self-reflexivity and anti-illusionism ‘could easily be described in the tradition of Brecht 228

Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu as alienating, or in the tradition of the “essay film” as trying to activate the spectators in order to make them evaluate the characters and the issues at stake. But this would only be half the story’. The other half is, in my view, that the film seems rather content with the black hole at its core. As Carvalho puts it, ‘Tabu asks us to think without telling us what to think’ (2014: 125), and he resorts to Lacan’s objet petit a in order to explain and justify its ersatz tales. The fundamental lack he identifies in it is, in his words, ‘the residue of what Lacan calls the Real, that part of the Real which exceeds our narcissistic perception of reality… that residue, that otherness, which signifies a lack in our perception of the world’ (Carvalho 2014: 122). Along the same lines, Faulkner (2015: 357ff ) identifies something ‘unrepresentable’ in the untold backstory of Tabu’s characters, and indeed there would be scope to invoke, a propos the film, Emmanuel Levinas’s (1991: 121) defence of, and respect for, what he calls ‘the infinite alterity of the other’, an ethics that would justify the turning the focus away from the immensurable plight lived by the victims of colonialism and towards an interrogation of the self. On the other hand, and in tune with the director’s avowed lack of experience in Africa and consequently of the colonial atrocities, the protagonists in the contemporary episode of Tabu (Part I, ‘A Lost Paradise’) are all women, Pilar, Aurora and Santa, all of whom had presumably been kept away from and misinformed about the wars waged by their male counterparts. The only man in Part I interacting with these female characters is Pilar’s old painter friend, who explains to her that he was discharged from the war effort in Africa, in his youth, because of his varicose veins  – a disease far more common in women than men. As much as Pilar, who rolls her eyes at this explanation, the spectator should take this as yet another of the film’s infamous detours, which ends with this pathetic comment by the painter: ‘We’ve lost a soldier and gained an artist’. Could this line serve as yet another selfreferential comment by the director, alien as he seems to be to the troubled period of colonialism in Africa, but always ready to turn it into artistic filmmaking, an ersatz expression though it would necessarily be? Given the dubious quality, as well as sinister appearance, of the painter’s work shown in the film, it could certainly be taken as the makeshift figuration of some unexplained historical guilt. 229

Portugal’s Global Cinema In Part II, ‘Paradise’, however, there are at least three important male characters:  Aurora’s husband, her lover Ventura and the latter’s friend, Mario. But compared to Aurora, an invincible hunter and strong-willed woman, they are weaker characters. Aurora’s husband is regularly away on business, leaving Aurora free to enjoy the company of Ventura, her lover, even while she is pregnant with her husband’s child. Mario, in turn, Ventura’s best friend and crooner of their band, soon becomes close to Aurora’s husband, to the point of Owen (2016) identifying an implicit homosexual link across these three male characters, a fact that would be the motive of Aurora’s eventual killing of Mario who was trying to separate her from Ventura. Whatever the case, the characters’ lack of direct experience of the war is again suggested in this part, this time by Ventura, whose voiceover narration recounts that he and Aurora ‘met in secret while the others played their wars’ (Aproveitávamos os momentos em que os outros brincavam às guerras para furtivos encontros), thus, once again, justifying the film’s recurrent diversions from the subject of colonialism.

The non-story and the index However, if the blank pages covered with phony stories is the path chosen by Miguel Gomes, this is certainly not the only one available for those filmmakers lacking in direct experience of history. For example, a film such as Margarida Cardoso’s A Costa dos Murmúrios/The Murmuring Coast (2004), which bears a number of interesting parallels with Tabu, partakes of an entirely different view. Here, the gruesome history of colonialism is knowable and representable, even if the point of view is provided by women who had no direct experience of it. In a similar way as in Part II of Tabu, in The Murmuring Coast the Portuguese women in colonial Africa are left behind in utter idleness, locked up in their houses or hotels, while their husbands are busy crushing independence movements in the hinterlands. Their ignorance of the goings-on is maintained by force, through mendacious radio broadcasts and printed news, fabricated reports from the front conveyed by the military authorities and most effectively by physical violence on the part of their husbands. However Evita, the heroine married to the more liberal Second Lieutenant Luís, embarks, in his absence, on an 230

Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu investigative journey that culminates with her discovering a photograph of her husband holding the severed head of a black rebel at the end of a stick. Estela Vieira (2013:  80), drawing on Mark Sabine and others, enlightens us that this photograph ‘is in fact the superimposed figure of the actor on what is a real photograph from the Portuguese colonial wars’. But even the unknowing spectator will feel the impact of an indexical climax provided by this picture, which fills the gap in fiction with the piercing punctum of documentary truth. Nothing as explicit as that is to be found in Tabu. Nonetheless, the film’s insistence on locating the characters in real time and space, in particular in Part I, should at least partially account for the revelatory power critics almost unanimously seem to recognize in it. Despite the robust professional profile of established actors such as Teresa Madruga (Pilar) and Laura Soveral (Aurora), this section of the film is a quasi-documentary account of Lisbon, with its actual roads, airports, shopping malls and casinos constantly in focus. Some obviously improvised scenes show us Gomes back to his usual exercise in staying true to life by focusing on ‘non-stories’, without any beginning, end or purpose, that happen to common people as they go about their daily business. An example is a tour to the Roman Galleries of Lisbon made by Pilar and her painter friend. At a certain point the tour guide, looking straight at the camera, declares: ‘For 23 years I performed my duty respectfully and with care. I buried 280 corpses. If there are any others around, I’m ready to do my job.’ At this, we hear Pilar bursting with laughter in a corner where the camera turns to, and next to her the painter protests: ‘Man, do you talk nothing but nonsense?’ The whole episode defies all logical explanation, but undoubtedly we are facing an actual gravedigger that Gomes just happened to find interesting for this scene in the film and let him evolve in front of the camera whilst documenting the real location of the Roman Galleries, a rare sight given that it only opens to the public once a year. The same kind of procedure is at play in the episode of Maya, a supposed member of the Taizé sect, who is expected to spend time in Pilar’s flat. Pilar goes to the airport to pick up the woman, who turns out to be simply a Polish backpacker. Surprisingly, she denies being Maya and pretends instead to be Maya’s friend, in charge of conveying to Pilar the message that 231

Portugal’s Global Cinema Maya is not coming anymore. The rest of the Polish youth group the girl is attached to continues to call her Maya, and the girl then disappears with them. One more nonsensical tale, whose only point seems to be to give an authentic Polish girl the opportunity to improvise before the camera, in a life-like, hesitant way, alongside an experienced actress who makes her acting ineptitude even more blatant, at the real Lisbon airport decorated with a sprawling scene of nativity during Christmas time. But it is in the scene in which Aurora is introduced to the spectator where Gomes’s intention to make fantasy spring up from the indexical real becomes most evident. Aurora has gambled her last penny in a casino and phones up Santa at home to come to her rescue. Santa appeals to their neighbour Pilar, who has a car and drives with her to the Casino. Their arrival by car at the real Casino Estoril, the biggest in Europe, 18km away from Lisbon, is recorded with documentary precision. Santa stays in the car, while Pilar joins Aurora for tea at a table placed on a revolving platform, which is also a real feature of Lounge D, one of the cafés in the casino. In a riveting performance, Laura Soveral, in the skin of Aurora, tells Pilar about a dream that made her try her luck yet again at the casino. In it she finds her home invaded by monkeys, fighting and biting each other. She is afraid that her estranged daughter might come by and discover that she has been eaten by the monkeys, but then she is suddenly in the house of a friend – already dead for ten years in reality – whose husband also resembles a monkey, but one that speaks. She is disappointed to realize that her friend is betraying her monkey-husband, albeit with other dead souls, some of them foreign celebrities. ‘Lucky at gambling, unlucky in love’ is the phrase uttered by the friend that persuades her to go gambling again. Captured mostly in one long take lasting for nearly three minutes, a procedure that since Bazin has been deemed the realistic device par excellence, Aurora’s simian fantasy gives flesh and bone to her prejudices against Africans, in particular Santa, who Aurora believes is plotting her death. On the formal level, the casino scene is Hollywood back to front in that the sliding backdrop behind Aurora and Pilar grounds in the reality of the casino the mechanism of the rear projection, a trick employed in the old days of American cinema to simulate movement in standstill, and whose clumsy artificiality is so outspoken that Laura Mulvey once described it as 232

Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu ‘smuggling something of modernity’ into the classical form (2012:  208). Here, instead, it is the classical fantasy that is smuggled into the modern realist procedure of the long take, and deconstructed through its superimposition onto reality, in a way that could be compared to the photomontage that inserts the body of an actor within a scene of atrocities in Africa, as seen in The Murmuring Coast. Here, however, what the characters are trying to do is to tame reality by means of fantasy, as can be didactically seen in Part II, when Aurora and her lover Ventura play at finding animal shapes in the clouds in Africa, and sketches of these animals are superimposed on the clouds, these being suggestively a monkey, a crocodile and a lamb (see Figure 13.1). Whilst monkeys and crocodiles are the characters’ favourite pets in Africa and the object of their domineering drive, the clouds refuse to fit entirely into the superimposed drawings, as much as Africa will forever refuse to fit into the colonizers’ (and the film’s) idea of it. In fact, in its recurrence, the pet crocodile

Figure 13.1 Tabu: the image of the crocodile stands for an Africa that refuses to fit into the colonizer’s imagination

233

Portugal’s Global Cinema becomes an eloquent metaphor of Africa. In Part II, the baby crocodile offered to Aurora by her husband soon becomes a dangerous big animal, who frequently escapes the pond purposely built for it. That it might end up devouring the explorer, as seen in the prologue, is only to be expected. Aurora’s misguided attempt at applying her fantasies onto reality is further illustrated by her belief that Santa is plotting her death behind her back, a suspicion fuelled by the fumes emanating from Santa’s nocturnal activities described by Aurora as ‘macumba’ (witchcraft). The realist translation of this persecutory fantasy is however presented to us in the form of Santa having an innocent cigarette after a meal and reading Robinson Crusoe in a children’s edition, in order to improve her literacy in the language of the former colonizers. The scene closes with an eloquent still- life composition, comprising the shells from the prawns she has just eaten, the book Robinson Crusoe and a pack of Águia cigarettes, complete with the label ‘Smoking kills’ (Fumar mata), implying that, if Santa is risking the life of anyone, it is only her own.

Fantasy as truth procedure One could speak of a structural fear in the film that places its core-subject under prohibition or taboo. Pilar, Aurora and Santa are linked to each other through a knowledge they cannot touch upon but which binds them together inextricably. Aurora is constantly assaulted by guilty feelings, and claims to have blood on her hands, and in Part II we learn that she once committed a murder. But Pilar, depicted as a thoroughly selfless good Samaritan, is strangely supportive of her guilty neighbour, even transgressing a minute of silence, in honour of the refugee victims she works for, to pray out loud for Saint Anthony, as requested by Aurora. Aurora, in turn, hating Santa as she openly does, insistently seeks physical contact with her, most touchingly at the end, when on her deathbed she draws the name of Ventura with her finger in Santa’s palm. At the same time, these elderly characters are the object of open rejection on the part of the younger generation. Aurora’s daughter born in Africa, at a time when she was having an affair with Ventura, now lives in Canada and cannot spare more than 15 minutes for her mother when visiting Lisbon over Christmas, as we hear 234

Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu from Pilar. Pilar, in turn, is rejected by the young Maya who pretends to be somebody else in order to spend Christmas and New Year holidays with her friends instead. And the old Ventura, now living in Lisbon, has been abandoned by his nephew (a belligerent-looking type, surrounded by dangerous dogs) in a care home. The respect the film demonstrates towards these old characters’ silenced knowledge could then perhaps be theorized in terms, not of a fear, but of a courage to face the void, the unknown, the nothingness that nauseated Sartre’s characters. Elaborating on Heidegger’s phenomenology, Sartre states, in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness, that, even if unknowable, nothingness can be understood: There exist … numerous attitudes of ‘human reality’ that imply a ‘comprehension’ of nothingness:  hate, prohibitions, regret, etc. For ‘Dasein’ there is even the possibility of finding oneself ‘face to face’ with nothingness and discovering it as a phenomenon: this possibility is anguish. (Sartre 1992: 17)

It is a mixture of hate, prohibitions, regret and anguish that form the atmosphere of Tabu, as they emanate from characters faced with a void they cannot name or explain, except through fantasy. On the level of the fable, this void is simply guilt. On the level of the film as medium, however, it is the unexpected encounter with a truth that presents itself within representation. Let me explain by resorting to Badiou’s ‘regime of truths’, which is governed by the notion of ‘event’. ‘To be faithful to an event’, he says, ‘is to move within the situation that this event has supplemented, by thinking …the situation “according to” the event’ (2002: 41). Such notions of ‘event’ and ‘situation’ chime with Tabu in that they acknowledge the precedence of presentation over representation, that is, of documentary fact over narrative construction. A situation, according to Badiou, can only occur once all multiple singularities are presented at the same time (Badiou 2006: 174), constituting a ‘state’ in the Marxist sense as well as in the common sense of ‘status quo’ (Hallward 2002: ix). For its representational character, the situation is thus endowed with a normative element which does not hold any truths in itself. ‘A truth’, says Badiou, ‘is solely constituted by rupturing with the order which supports it, never as an effect of that order’, that is to say, by

235

Portugal’s Global Cinema the emergence of the unpredictable event (2007: xii). The ethical subject, in turn, is characterized by ‘an active fidelity to the event of truth’ (Badiou 2007: xiii). It thus bears an intentionality regulated by the uncertain and the unexpected, which creates the need for a choice, ‘the same choice that divides… the courage of truths from nihilism’ (Badiou 2002: 35). The libertarian tone of Badiou’s statement reverberates throughout Tabu. Beyond any particular political orientation it may embrace, the film is actively committed to the truth of the profilmic event, that part that cannot and will not be controlled by the cinematic apparatus, or by pre-existing cinephilia or by any a priori knowledge on the part of the filmmaker. Just think of the ritual performed by a group of African musicians and dancers after the death of the ‘explorer’. Edited as if the performers were reacting to his death, in mourning or celebration, this documentary scene, shot in the manner of ethnographic footage, with details of the beating hands and stamping feet, is flagrantly disconnected from whatever fiction preceded it (see Figure 13.2). Beyond any parody, these men and women,

Figure 13.2 These men and women, performing solely for the sake of the camera (and not of the fiction), reveal themselves as totally unknowable others

236

Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu performing solely for the sake of the camera (and not of the fiction), reveal themselves as totally unknowable others, hence as an event of truth that dismantles the legend of the Portuguese explorer sacrificing himself for love. In conclusion, I  would say that in Tabu all is laughable, but there is no reason to laugh, given the enormity of the task it places in front of our eyes: thousands of blank pages to be filled out, not with our imagination, but with historical truth.

237

14 Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions: Rescue and Expansion Natália Pinazza

The emphasis of this chapter is on the role played by audiovisual policies and co-production initiatives in Brazilian and Portuguese national cinemas in a globalized context. The chapter’s aim is to argue for the continued relevance of national frameworks for the analysis of transnational filmmaking practices and to emphasize how supranational community discourses can inform both the production and subject matter of film. The chapter also considers how the labelling of Luso-Brazilian co-productions affects concepts that feature prominently in contemporary academic discourse, such as ‘European cinema’ and ‘Latin American cinema’, and, with broader theoretical implications, the binary approach of ‘national’ versus ‘transnational’. Although there is an increasing number of texts dealing with the transnational features of Iberian and Latin American cinema, only a handful of these analyse in depth the theoretical implications of the particularities of agreements involved in international film co-productions (see for instance Dennison 2013). Moreover, scant attention has been paid to transnational links in the Lusophone world; the most extensive study on this topic is by Overhoff Ferreira (2012). There have also been a number of seminars and very recent texts dealing with issues of transnationalism

239

Portugal’s Global Cinema (Villarmea Álvarez 2016) and post-colonialism (Sabine 2010; Ferreira 2014; Faulkner 2015; Faulkner and Liz 2016b) in Portuguese cinema. However, there is a surprising absence of discussions about the fact that a former colony, Brazil, is contributing to the representations of the colonial past and post-colonialism in contemporary Portuguese national cinema through the financing of Luso-Brazilian co-productions like A Primeira Missa ou Tristes Tropeços, Enganos e Urucum (Ana Carolina, 2014), O Grande Kilapy/The Great Kilapy (Zézé Gamboa, 2014), Yvone Kane (Margarida Cardoso, 2014), Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012), Entre os Dedos (Tiago Guedes and Frederico Guerra, 2009) and Diário de um Novo Mundo (Paulo Nascimento, 2005). By shedding light onto Luso-Brazilian co-productions, this chapter also contributes to pertinent debates regarding national and transnational cinemas in the Lusophone world. It is worth noting that film co-productions originated from bilateral agreements between ANCINE (the Brazilian National Cinema Agency) and ICA (the Portuguese Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Audiovisual) often obtain contributions from production companies from nationalities other than Brazilian and Portuguese. Within this understanding, the film co-productions here discussed are considered ‘Luso-Brazilian’ as they enjoy bilateral agreements between Brazil and Portugal but are not necessarily co-produced exclusively between the two countries. On the one hand, the overwhelming critical concentration of literature on Brazilian cinema on international film successes such as Central do Brasil/Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998), Cidade de Deus/City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002) and Madame Satã (Karim Ainouz, 2002) has contributed to debates regarding production outside national boundaries (they all are Brazilian-French film co-productions) and shed light on the impact of globalization on contemporary Brazilian cinema (they also gained international critical appraisal). On the other, the dominance of a few international co-productions in Brazilian cinema scholarship tends to overlook state funding in bilateral and multilateral agreements, thereby downplaying the national interests informing film co-productions. Since Andrew Higson’s (2006) seminal piece on the ‘Limiting Imagination of National Cinema’ there has been a tendency to pose national and transnational as a binary (Higbee and Lim 2010), which assumes that the dependence of 240

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions filmmakers on the state automatically excludes transnational film practices. For instance, drawing on the work of Shaw (2013), Villarmea Álvarez argues that Portuguese cinema’s dependence on public subsides reinforces ‘the permanence of Portuguese cinema within the national paradigm’ and that this model ‘impedes Portuguese films from entering the first category analysed by Shaw: transnational modes of production, distribution and exhibition’ (2016: 103). Arguably this perspective on state intervention stems from understandings of Portuguese film production within the context of the New State (1933–1974). This is particularly so considering the longevity of the regime, as well as the fact that the Portuguese Cinema Institute (then IPC) created in 1971 would finance projects under the condition that they were made by a Portuguese crew and filmed in the country in order to represent the ‘Portuguese spirit’ and Portuguese ‘collective soul’.1 However, this understanding downplays ICA’s recent internationalization efforts, including film co-productions, which is one of the elements that Shaw includes in the aforementioned category (2013: 52). In arguing for the remaining importance of a national framework for the analysis of contemporary Argentine cinema, Joanna Page counters a tendency in film criticism to focus on a selected number of successful international co-productions, neglecting the role of the state and the rest of the country’s cinematic production. As she puts it: Pronouncements made by critics of Latin American film concerning transnational production as the only, or principal, ‘viable route’ reflect something of the hegemony of neoliberal discourses, which have succeeded in presenting themselves as the only possible path for economic development. (Page 2009: 14)

Such a naturalization of neoliberal discourses not only obscures issues regarding the imbalance of power that might occur in international film co-productions, but also neglects the public role of cinema. National film policies are in place to protect national interests and safeguard artistic production. Hence the national continues to be an important framework for the analysis of transnational films involving both Brazil and Portugal in its production, as the state run agencies in the two countries, ANCINE

241

Portugal’s Global Cinema and ICA, respectively, remain responsible for regulating international coproduction agreements. Manoel Rangel, president-director of ANCINE, describes the bilateral film co-production agreement with Portugal as the ‘oldest and the most lasting partnership’ in Brazilian cinema (ANCINE 2013). The LusoBrazilian Film Co- production Agreement was first signed in 1981 with a view to encourage cinematographic activity between the two countries. As part of the same agreement, the Audiovisual Development Secretary of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and the Portuguese ICA created the Luso-Brazilian Film Co-production Protocol in 1994, based on the former Luso-Brazilian Coproduction Agreement first signed in 1981. After changes in technological demands, the Protocol was updated in 1996 and then eleven years later in 2007. According to the Protocol, both the Brazilian and the Portuguese governments agree to finance four feature films (fiction, animation or documentary) per year. Two of these are predominantly Brazilian and two predominantly Portuguese. The predominance of one nationality in a coproduction depends on the nationality of the director and the financial contribution of the country. A committee selects the projects to be funded by the Co-production Protocol. According to ANCINE, US$600,000 are invested in the four selected projects (US$300,000 in two predominantly Brazilian films and US$300,000 in two predominantly Portuguese films), thus benefiting film production in both countries. On the one hand the Brazilian Film Agency considers the expansion of its film production an opportunity for cultural assertion in the context of the country’s economic emergence. On the other, Portuguese filmmakers see the bilateral agreement with Brazil as an important aid to the Portuguese film industry, currently faced with a severe crisis. Here Ezra and Rowden’s argument that transnational cinema ‘transcends the national as autonomous cultural particularity while respecting it as a powerful symbolic force’ (2006: 2) sheds light on how these transnational cinematic practices can work in favour of national cinema. For instance, the winner of the best national feature film at the 42nd Gramado Film Festival in 2014 in Brazil was the film A Estrada 47/The Road 47 (Vicente Ferraz, 2013), a co-production between Brazil, Italy and Portugal, which

242

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions benefited from the Luso-Brazilian Co-production Protocol. Likewise, along with Tabu, other films that have benefitted from the Protocol such as O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra/The Mystery of Sintra (Jorge Paixão da Costa, 2007), Dot.com (Luís Galvão Teles, 2007) and José e Pilar/José and Pilar (Miguel Gonçalves Mendes, 2010) feature in ICA’s list of the top 40 most watched Portuguese national films. As is the case with other films made in a transnational context, those examples prompt a series of questions regarding how a film is framed discursively in terms of nationality and the extent to which a transnational exchange informs the final product with regard to style and aesthetics, choice of actors and subject matter. Within the understanding that transnational film practices are also shaped by national interests, this chapter explores how Luso-Brazilian film co-productions provide insight into the relationship between the countries involved, particularly in terms of identity negotiation and their shared colonial history, as well as into the current state of Brazilian and Portuguese national cinemas.

Globalization and the national cinemas of Brazil and Portugal Originally established to safeguard their respective national film industries, current Brazilian and Portuguese film policies remain central to fostering national production and intergovernmental co-production agreements. Despite the adoption of a more international approach to the business of film, there is an undeniable national interest behind international film co-productions. This is especially the case for an emerging economy like Brazil, since enabling national films to compete in both the domestic and international markets is an important strategy of cultural assertion. In 2013 the president of ANCINE put forward a political agenda for the expansion of the Brazilian audiovisual industry: I believe that the national development project for which we all work requires an ability to produce and export our own image […] the good current situation in the Brazilian audiovisual industry is a social victory. It is a result of the work of public power in its various bodies and it provides Brazilians with a number of opportunities for employment, cultural

243

Portugal’s Global Cinema affirmation and the flourishing of its audiovisual products. (ANCINE 2013a)

The financial incentives currently in place for the Brazilian film industry can be traced back to 1969, when EMBRAFILME (the Brazilian Cinema Enterprise) was created. Although this state film agency had been crucial for national film production since its creation, Fernando Collor de Mello, the first democratically elected president (who was later impeached for corruption), did away with EMBRAFILME in March 1990, plunging film production into deep crisis. Commenting on the severity of the crisis, José Álvaro Moisés, National Secretary for Audiovisual Affairs between 1999 and 2002, stated that, as a consequence of Collor de Mello’s actions, ‘national production, which had exceeded 100 films a year in the mid-1970s, was almost reduced to zero, with only two films released in 1992’ (2003: 7). Critics coincide in arguing that the Audiovisual Law of July 1993 was the defining element for the boom in Brazilian filmmaking in the mid-1990s (Moisés 2003; Oricchio 2003). This period of re-emergence, also known as retomada, was marked by films such as Carlota Joaquina – Princesa do Brasil/Carlota Joaquina  – Princess of Brazil (Carla Camurati, 1995), O Quatrilho (Fábio Barreto, 1995) and the internationally acclaimed Central Station. As part of the consolidation of the Brazilian film industry, the Brazilian Cinema Agency ANCINE was created in 2001 to deal with concerns relating to new industrial developments, by operating aid mechanisms for production, distribution and exhibition. Since the Audiovisual Law was passed there has been a re-establishment of the Brazilian film industry, which at the time of writing shows no sign of abating. Brazil produced 129 films in 2013, surpassing the production of previous years: 83 films were made in 2012 and 100 films in 2011. The mark of 129 national films in 2013 is a far cry from the 14 films made in 1995 (ANCINE 2014c). While the Brazilian government has been active in taking measures to produce and promote national films, internationally acclaimed Portuguese filmmakers have been vocal about their discontent with the lack of governmental attention to national cinema. As a result, the ‘big names’ of Portuguese cinema have signed a petition entitled ‘Portuguese Cinema: Ultimatum to the Government’, claiming that

244

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions Portuguese cinema is going through a dramatic situation at this moment, with [funding] cut[s] of 100% … The production of new films is paralysed – and a good part of the production companies are on the verge of closing, which will cause unemployment of thousands of people − and distribution, festivals, cineclubs, and international promotion are without any support.2

The crisis that has struck Portuguese national production has been the subject of debate in the national and international press. ‘Portuguese cinema is in danger’ claimed film producer Luís Urbano, together with filmmaker Miguel Gomes, in a text which was first made public to the international press at the Venice Film Festival in 2013 (Gomes and Urbano 2013). Urbano and Gomes consider the negligence towards the national film industry to be a political problem and accuse the Portuguese government of leniency with cable TV operators that contribute to a recently approved Cinema Law but do not pay the government the debts they owe. For Urbano and Gomes the opposition parties are witnessing the demise of the Portuguese Cinematheque and the National Archive of Moving Images in silence. The ‘alarm is ringing’ not because of the absence of incentive laws, but because of the inaction of the debtors, and the Portuguese Government’s lack of interest in and commitment towards the audiovisual sector. The first proposal for a ‘law to protect Portuguese cinema’ was drafted in 1970. The following year a law was passed creating the IPC (Portuguese Cinema Institute), which eventually came into force in 1973. The first film production plan was approved just before the Carnation Revolution on the 25 April 1974 and in 1994 the IPC was replaced by IPACA (Portuguese Institute of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Art). In the period 1998– 2000 a new institute was created, but it was not until the adoption of new cultural policies in 2007 that the current state-run agency for cinema, ICA, was established. The law currently in force, the ‘Law of Cinema Arts and Cinematographic and Audiovisual Activities’, was created in 2012 and revised in 2014. The current crisis in Portuguese cinema is not symptomatic of a lack of national policies in support of the audiovisual sector. Nor can it be said to be due to a lack of talent. Despite the crisis in the national film

245

Portugal’s Global Cinema industry, the relevance of the work of currently active Portuguese filmmakers such as Pedro Costa, João Pedro Rodrigues and Miguel Gomes, is testified by their presence at some of the most important film festivals across the globe, including Venice, Berlin and Cannes. The visibility of these filmmakers in such festivals is also testimony to the crucial role played by the exhibition sector in the internationalization of Portuguese cinema. Furthermore, state intervention in the cinema sector has put a support system in place to secure exhibition outlets for national production beyond national boundaries, while simultaneously guaranteeing distribution and exhibition of films from different nationalities within Brazil and Portugal. With a clear agenda to promote Brazilian audiovisual products abroad, in 2014 the ‘Programme of Support for the Participation of Brazilian Films in International Festivals and Workshops’ supported the exhibition of national films in renowned international film festivals including the New York Film Festival, the BFI London Film Festival, the Biarritz Festival of Latin American Cinema and the Busan International Film Festival. Similarly, ICA created its own national initiatives such as the ‘Support Programme for Internationalization’, a competition taking place in 2016 for producers with a view to securing distribution and participation of their work in the international market. Moreover, public institutions such as Instituto Camões and Embassy of Brazil promote national cinema abroad. International film festivals and talks have also become a platform to discuss and raise consciousness about the very state of these cinemas. In addition to Urbano and Gomes (whose statement at the Venice Film Festival was cited above), other Portuguese filmmakers and artists have used international film festivals as platforms to denounce the current state of Portuguese cinema. In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo in 2012, when the award winner Sangue do Meu Sangue/ Blood of My Blood (2011) was shown for the first time in Brazil, director João Canijo stated that ‘Portuguese cinema tries not to die. In Portugal there is auteur film, with some quality and global visibility, and there is a cinema referred to as “commercial cinema” that does not survive in the domestic market’ (cited in Fonseca 2012). The issue raised by Canijo must be situated within the wider context of Portuguese cinema’s

246

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions domestic market. The most watched national film between 2004 and 2014, O Crime do Padre Amaro (Carlos Coelho da Silva, 2005), had 380, 671 spectators, which is especially low when compared to the 1,206,161 spectators of the most watched film of the decade, Avatar (James Cameron, 2009). In fact, no Portuguese film features in ICA’s top 40 most watched films in the country; the list itself is evidence of Hollywood’s domination of the Portuguese audiovisual market (ICA 2014b). The same domination can be observed in Brazil. 129 out of the 397 films screened in Brazilian cinemas in 2013 were national films. However, Brazil has protectionist measures in place to secure the screening of national films in the domestic market, which includes paid TV channels. The most famous of these is the screen quota first introduced in the 1930s so as to promote the competitiveness of Brazilian products with international ones in the distribution and exhibition sectors, by establishing a law that requires that national films be screened in cinema theatres across the country. Despite their controversial nature – as state intervention potentially clashes with market interests – measures such as these appear to be effective in protecting Brazilian cinema within national boundaries. According to ANCINE, the number of Brazilian films broadcast on paid TV has increased three times in two years (ANCINE 2013b). Moreover, in 2014 a law was created so as to make the presence of national films in the national education curriculum compulsory. According to the law, national production has to be exhibited two hours per month in schools. In both the Brazilian and Portuguese cinematic contexts, understanding the national context and the agenda behind film policy is key to exploring the dynamics of the transnational exchange in bilateral or multilateral film co-production agreements. The political agenda underlying international film co-production poses important questions for the understanding of the dynamics of filmmaking, given the influence that supra-national communities have on transnational film practices. A shared history of crossborder interactions, as is the case with Portugal and Brazil, impacts the way in which projects resulting from co-production agreements can be shaped, both in terms of production and film texts.

247

Portugal’s Global Cinema

The role of co-productions in Brazilian and Portuguese cinema In the context of Brazil’s agenda for the internationalization of film production and Portugal’s endeavour to save its national cinema, coproductions have played an important role in Brazilian and Portuguese film policies. Between 2005 and 2013, 82 film co-productions involving Brazil were made as a result of a number of bilateral and multilateral agreements, among which 30 per cent (24 films out of 82) of the international film co-productions involving Brazil between 2005 and 2013 have been made with Portugal. In addition to Portugal, Brazil has bilateral agreements with Argentina, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain and Venezuela. It is also part of the Iberian-American Convention of Cinematographic Integration and the Latin American Film Co-production Agreement, which regulates a series of multilateral agreements with countries such as Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, there are protocols between ANCINE and other state-run agencies such as the Luso-Brazilian Protocol with ICA (Portugal), INCAA (Argentina), KOFIC (Republic of Korea), ICAU (Uruguay) and MIBAC (Italy). Other countries that are not listed in established co-production agreements such as the aforementioned ones are also able to co-produce films with Brazil. Nonetheless, they have to meet other requirements. According to ANCINE guidelines, producer companies from countries without a co-production agreement have to hold 40 per cent of the copyrights of the film and at least 2/3 of the artists and technicians employed must be Brazilians or have resided in Brazil for more than three years. Opportunities for international co-production involving Brazil are also prompted by events such as Film Cup, a market conference first held in 2012, which promotes encounters between filmmakers and producers from Brazil and film professionals of a chosen nation: in 2012 it was Germany, in 2013 France and in 2014 Italy. Similarly, Portugal has co-produced films with a number of different countries. Other than Luso-Brazilian Protocols, there are also Luso-Spanish Film Co-production Protocols and the Luso-French Fund. Portugal’s film industry has also received financial support from other bodies, such as

248

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions IBERMEDIA, the European Film Promotion Office, the EU’s MEDIA and Creative Europe programmes and the Council of Europe’s Eurimages. Because Brazilian and Portuguese national film policies have catered for a number of international film partnerships, rigid nationalistic approaches to these cinemas are problematic even when film production is still largely dependent on the state. Higson’s statement that ‘there is not a single universally accepted discourse of national cinema’ (1989:  36)  is relevant to consider how different film policies and agreements can shape what is considered ‘national’. In the case of the Luso-Brazilian Protocol, the patrimonial participation, which is the nation’s participation in the co-production, can be major or minor. For instance, in co-productions that are majorly Brazilian in terms of copyrights, there is a greater financial participation by Brazil. However, when it comes to labelling film co-productions in international film festivals, the bilateral agreement between Brazil and Portugal makes it compulsory to add the ‘Luso-Brazilian Co-production’ label in the credits. While labelling a film is a powerful marketing tool, having a film with two nationalities has implications for film analysis in terms of understanding the film and in relation to its national socio-historical and cinematic context. Drawing on Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’ (1983), Higson defines national cinema in the following terms: On the one hand, a national cinema seems to look inward, reflecting on the nation itself, on its past, present, and future, its cultural heritage, its indigenous traditions, its sense of common identity and continuity. On the other hand, a national cinema seems to look out across its borders, asserting its difference from other national cinemas, proclaiming its sense of otherness. (2006: 18)

Film co-productions blur these borders between nation and others. Furthermore, the dual-nationality complicates other ‘supra-national’ labels as they seem to compete against themselves. For instance, Portuguese films can be discursively framed as part of European cinema (cf. Kourelou et al 2014), whereas Brazilian cinema can appear as part of Latin American cinema both in scholarship (cf. Shaw 2003) and film festivals across the globe. Therefore, is a Luso-Brazilian co-production that is listed as both, a Brazilian and Portuguese film, European or Latin American? To answer this question simply by arguing that that would

249

Portugal’s Global Cinema be a matter of whether the film is listed as majorly or minorly ‘Brazilian’ or ‘Portuguese’ is to overlook the agenda set and the impact achieved by the protocols and bilateral agreements that I have been discussing. The affiliations between two or more national cinemas destabilize not only the nation but also other forms of rigid frameworks applied to cinema, including supra-national ones such as ‘European’ or ‘Latin American’. This problematization of labels also poses questions about how the concepts of ‘European’ and ‘Latin American’ cinemas feature in academic discourses. In his exploration of ‘European cinema’, Tim Bergfelder suggests that the concept should ‘include marginality and liminality’ taking into account Europe’s history of exile. He then states that in comparison to Hollywood, ‘migration has not become an equally integral element in the discourse construction of national cinemas in Europe itself ’ (2005: 320). This inclusive approach is adopted to analyse how co-productions between European countries and non-European countries such as the Luso-Brazilian ones are blurring the line between Europe and its ‘others’ by exploring the shared cultural legacy between the two countries, which involves migration flows from Portugal to Brazil and vice versa, as well as the exchange of fi lmmakers from both countries and cinematic traditions (Pinazza 2014). These co-productions can thus be seen as part of what Kathleen Newman calls a ‘geographical decentering of the discipline’: Areas once considered peripheral (that is, less developed countries, the so-called Third World) are now seen as integral to the historical development of cinema. The assumption that the export of European and US cinema to the rest of the world, from the silent period onward, inspired only derivative image cultures has been replaced by a dynamic model of cinematic exchange, where filmmakers around the world are known to have been in dialogue with one another’s work, and other cultural political exchanges to form the dynamic context of these dialogues. (2010: 4)

Such dialogue can be encouraged through production, distribution and circulation initiatives and programmes within a specific region, and some of them are based on the idea of a shared culture or geographical proximity. The very existence of these co-productions foregrounds the discourses on 250

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions supra-national community-building that lie behind such transnational film practices. The increase in multilateral agreements is symptomatic of the erosion of the nation state in the context of neoliberalism and has prompted the formation of new imaginaries that are not simply national in scope. The existence of a multilateral forum such as CPLP (Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries) testifies to how the Lusophone world can be considered a supra-national community with its own socio-political agenda and discourses due to its shared colonial history and linguistic bonds. To analyse the discourses and narratives of supra-national communities that lie behind contemporary filmmaking, scholars have adopted Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’ (1983), with a view to exploring how the re-emergence of these regional (Galperin 1999), linguistic (Ferreira 2012) and diasporic (Iordanova and Cheung 2010) communities have impacted cultural studies. The Co-production Protocol between ANCINE and INCAU (Uruguayan Institute of Cinema) was originally signed in 1983 as part of a Latin American Co-production Agreement and then updated in 2006 within the framework of international cooperation established by MERCOSUR (the Common Market of the South, an economic bloc created in 1991). There have been other significant acts of cross-border cooperation among Brazil and MERCOSUR member countries, primarily Argentina, and an institutional body, RECAM was created in 2003 with a view to integrating audiovisual industries in the region. Likewise, Portuguese cinema has benefited from initiatives that aim to strengthen national cinemas through regional integration, such as the aforementioned MEDIA Programme – the EU’s initiative renamed Creative Europe in 2014. This type of cinematic transnationalism has been defined by Mette Hjort as ‘affinitive transnationalism’, ‘a concept of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural affinity that was believed to make cross-border collaboration particularly smooth and therefore cost-efficient, pleasurable, and effective’ (2010a: 17). But such communities also rely on the notion of a shared historical legacy or cultural proximity, as is the case with the IBERMEDIA programme and the bilateral agreement and film co-production protocol between Portugal and Brazil. Luso-Brazilian film co-productions exemplify such decentring, both as cooperations between a South American and a European country and as forms of interaction between a former colony and its colonizer. 251

Portugal’s Global Cinema In fact, these new forms of cooperation have also impinged on the content and aesthetic of the films often due to co-production requirements such as nationality of cast and crew. In Luso-Brazilian co-productions, the common language spoken in the two countries makes it easier for actors and crew to interact, reducing costs of translation of official documents. As a result of the economic imperatives of funding, there is a marked presence of Brazilian actors in films considered ‘predominantly Portuguese’ and vice-versa. Portuguese director Margarida Cardoso explains that in order to secure Brazilian funding, she wrote a letter to the well-known Brazilian actress Irene Ravache (see Figure 14.1), who accepted a role in Yvone Kane (2014) (Faulkner and Liz 2016b). Cardoso considered that Ravache’s attempt to reproduce a European Portuguese accent made the character’s accent unidentifiable, which contributed to the filmmaker’s aim to deterritorialize the subject matter. Although Ravache’s participation worked in favor of Cardoso’s creation of a number of mysterious deterritorialized characters, whose origins and past are vague to the spectator, the casting of a Brazilian actress furnishes an example of the aforementioned co-production imperatives to which the directors are subjected. At times, the required presence of a Brazilian or

Figure 14.1 Brazilian actress Irene Ravache in the Luso-Brazilian Co-production Yvone Kane

252

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions Portuguese actor is more easily justified when there is a bi-national narrative, which ‘works as a natural bridge between the two countries and thus results as a credible co-production plot’ (Falicov 2013: 71). This is the case of Terra Estrangeira/Foreign Land (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995), set both in Brazil and Portugal. The presence of Portuguese actors is also justified by the figure of the conquistador, a trope found in bi-national narratives portraying the colonizing mission. For instance, Portuguese actor Rui Unas as Pero Vaz de Caminha in Primeira Missa ou Tristes Tropeços, Enganos e Urucum and Rogério Samora as a Portuguese lieutenant in Diários de um Novo Mundo. Another requirement, which forms the first of the Luso-Brazilian Coproduction Protocol’s criteria, is the ‘relevance of the project regarding the point of view of the cultural relationship between the countries involved’ (ANCINE 2014b). The trend of using literary texts that has marked LusoBrazilian co-productions since the beginning of their partnership remains strong:  recent literary adaptions include Os Maias (Alguns) Episódios da Vida Romântica (João Botelho, 2014), O Último Voo do Flamingo (João Ribeiro, 2011), Capitães de Areia (Cecília Amado, 2011), the aforementioned The Mystery of Sintra and Diário de um Mundo Novo, while other films deal with the life of an author as in José and Pilar or make allusions to Lusophone literature as in O Manuscrito Perdido (José Barahona, 2010). The use of actors from both countries, the mixture of accents and shared historical events problematize the presumed national features related to the characters and prompt the creation a common Lusophone discourse. However, in her study of Luso-Brazilian literary adaptions, Carolin Overhoff Ferreira explores how a body of films has perpetuated cultural myths of national identity, by engaging with a ‘Lusophone monologue’ instead of promoting a transnational dialogue. According to Ferreira, there are ‘soliloquies on national pre-eminence still dominating the imaginary of the Portuguese speaking world’ and ‘the popularity of biased views reveals how deeply rooted they still are in the imaginary of a significant number of filmmakers from both sides of the Atlantic’ (2012: 204). Indeed, although some Luso-Brazilian co-productions have often turned to their linguistic bonds and shared literary heritage to create films that appeal to both audiences, some of those films address concerns that do not appear to be 253

Portugal’s Global Cinema equally pertinent to both countries. In this regard, when explaining the financing of Yvone Kane, a co-production between Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal, Margarida Cardoso asserts that Brazil ‘is not normally so sensitive to African colonial subjects’ and yet was an important funder (in Faulkner and Liz 2016). This is a two-fold movement that reveals how LusoBrazilian film co-productions can engage with a transnational Lusophone dialogue while reasserting interests that are rooted in national concerns.

Conclusion The success of Tabu, a co-production between Brazil, Portugal, France, Germany and Spain in 2012 shows the significance of international coproductions, even from a standpoint of the national cinema culture, in a globalized market. The film brought a lot of attention to Portuguese filmmakers and prompted debates in international film festivals about the current situation of film production in Portugal  – a debate revived by Gomes’s subsequent production, As Mil e Uma Noites/Arabian Nights in 2015. International co-production agreements have also been beneficial for Brazil’s continuing objective to reassert itself as an emerging nation through the dissemination of its culture and global promotion of its image. The recognition of cultural similarities between Brazil and Portugal that have marked these countries’ filmmaking practices and that often inform their products  – through the thematization of the colonial past or literary adaptions of a shared tradition – problematizes discourses on regional supra-national communities that draw boundaries such as ‘Europe’ and its ‘others’ and ‘Latin America’ and its ‘others’. With regard to those boundaries, Ferreira (2006) asserts that Portugal’s entrance into the EU and the adoption of migration policies established by the Schengen Agreement distanced the country from its former colonies, an argument that she illustrates in her analysis of ‘Luso-Brazilian brotherhood’ in Foreign Land. Therefore, co-productions between Brazil and Portugal testify to the constant flux of these physical and discursive frontiers, and the role of culture within the shifting bounds of national and supra-national community building.

254

Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions My focus on the co-production agreements between Brazil and Portugal is intended to counter the generalizing tendency to reduce international film cooperation into ‘transnational practices’ and instead enable further exploration of the uniqueness and differences among such practices. My approach thus aims to avoid any dismissal of national frameworks and stress the ongoing importance of the state in securing the production and distribution of films in a globalized context. The main perceived benefits of co-production agreements such as the Luso-Brazilian Film Protocol is that it secures the production of at least four feature films a year (two predominantly Brazilian and two predominantly Portuguese). Those films must be culturally relevant to Brazil and Portugal, a measure that protects film production from solely market interests, technical and artistic collaboration between the countries. Moreover, once Brazilian or Portuguese filmmakers manage to secure the financial support provided by these bilateral agreements, there is the possibility to raise funds from producers from other countries. While this chapter testifies to the increasing importance of transnational practices, it is a contribution to adopting approaches that acknowledge that transnationalism entails different forms of practices shaped by national interests and that depends on the relationship between the countries involved in such transnational exchanges.

Notes 1. The law that created IPC is available at: http://www.ica-ip.pt/pt/o-ica/quemsomos/apresentacao/ (accessed 15 May 2016). 2. Online petition available at http:// peticaopublica.com/ pview.aspx?pi= ULTIMATO (accessed 15 May 2016).

255

Bibliography Adloff, Richard and Virginia Thompson (1960), The Emerging States of French Equatorial Africa, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, Giorgio (2007), Profanations, New York: Zone Books. Aizenberg, Edna (1999), ‘ “I Walked with a Zombie”:  The Pleasure and Perils of Postcolonial Hybridity’, World Literature Today 73(3), pp. 461–66. Amália Press Kit (2008), Available at http://www.amaliathemovie.com/ (accessed 18 May 2014). ANCINE (2013a), ‘Carta de apresentação de Manoel Rangel’. Available at http:// ancine.gov.br/ sites/ default/ files/ apresentacoes/ APRESENTACAO%20 MANOEL%20RANGEL%20SENADO%20FEDERAL%2024042013.pdf (accessed 20 November 2014). ——— (2013b), ‘Lei de cotas nacionais na TV paga vai bem’. Available at http:// www.ancine.gov.br/ sites/ default/ files/ clipping/ 2013- 08- 08- Lei%20de%20 cotas%20nacionais%20na%20TV%20paga%20vai%20bem.pdf (accessed 26 May 2015). ——— (2014a), ‘ANCINE lança novo edital de coprodução Brasil-Portugal’. Available at http://www.ancine.gov.br/sala-imprensa/noticias/ancine-lannovo-edital-de-coprodu-o-brasil-portugal (accessed 20 November 2014). ——— (2014b), ‘Protocolo Luso-Brasileiro de Co-produção Cinematográfica’. Available at http://www.ancine.gov.br/sites/default/files/editais-de-fomento/ Protocolo_ Luso- BrasileirodeCoproduçãoCinematografica_ 11_ 02_ 14.pdf (accessed 20 November 2014). ——— (2014c), ‘Dados de Mercado’. Available at http://oca.ancine.gov.br/dadosmercado.htm (accessed 20 November 2014). Anderson, Benedict (2006) [1983], Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Andrew, Dudley (2010), ‘time zones and jetlag  – the flows and phases of world cinema’, in Natasa Durovicová and Kathleen Newman (eds), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 59–89. APORDOC (2002), Livro de debates Doc’s Kingdom 2000, Lisbon: APORDOC. Areal, Leonor (2011a), Cinema Português – Um País Imaginado Vol. I – Antes de 1974, Lisbon: Edições 70.

257

Bibliography ——— (2011b), Cinema Português  – Um País Imaginado Vol. II  – Após 1974, Lisbon: Edições 70. Arenas, Fernando (2011), Lusophone Africa. Beyond Independence, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Augusto, Horácio and Miguel Gomes (2013), ‘Entrevista:  Miguel Gomes’, Interlúdio. Available at http://www.revistainterludio.com.br/?p=5682 (accessed 25 January 2016). Badiou, Alain (2002), Ethics:  An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward, London; New York: Verso. ——— (2007), Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham, London; New  York: Continuum. Ballesteros, Isolina (2015), Immigration Cinema in the New Europe, Bristol: Intellect. Baptista, Tiago (2008), A Invenção do Cinema Português, Lisbon: Tinta-da-China. ——— (2010), ‘Nationally Correct:  The Invention Of Portuguese Cinema’, P: Portuguese Cultural Studies 3, pp. 3–18. ——— (2015), ‘Como representar a revolução? Comentário da escultura Monumento ao 25 de Abril, de João Cutileiro, e do filme Linha Vermelha, de José Filipe Costa’, Práticas da História 1, pp. 173–184. BBC (2016), ‘The 21st Century 100’s Greatest Films’, 23 August. Available at http:// www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160819-the-21st-centurys-100-greatest-films (accessed 6 September 2016). Becker, Susanne (1999), Gothic forms of feminine fictions, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Bégin, Richard (2009), Baroque cinématographique:  Essai sur le cinema de Raoul Ruiz, Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes. Béglé, Jérôme and Albert Sebag (2014), ‘Le triomphe de la comédie à la française’, Le Point, 22 May. Belinchón, Gregorio (2015), ‘Las mil y una noches de la crisis portuguesa’, El País, 18 May. Available at http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2015/05/18/actualidad/ 1431937062_807790.html (accessed 4 March 2016). Bello, Maria Do Rosário Lupi (2010), ‘A Implosão do Cinema Português:  Duas Faces de uma Mesma Moeda’, P: Portuguese Cultural Studies 3, pp. 19–32. Bensaid, Daniel (2013), An Impatient Life: a memoir. London: Verso. Berger, Verena and Miya Komori (eds) (2010), Polyglot Cinema:  Migration and Transcultural Narration in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, Berlin: Lit Verlag. Bergfelder, Tim (2005), ‘National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema?: Rethinking European Film Studies’, Media, Culture & Society 27(3), pp. 315–32. Berghahn, Daniela and Claudia Sternberg (eds) (2010) European Cinema in Motion, Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

258

Bibliography Berlant, Lauren (2011), Cruel Optimism, New York: Duke University Press. Berry, Chris, Lu Xinyu and Lisa Rofel (eds) (2010), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Bhabha, Homi (1984), ‘Of Mimicry and Man:  The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, October 28, pp.125–133. ——— (2007), The Location of Culture, London: Routledge. BIEFF (2013), ‘The Portuguese Cinematic Miracle’, Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival. Available at http://bieff.ro/2013/film/section/9 (accessed 5 September 2016). Bingham, Dennis (2010), Whose Lives Are They Anyway?:  The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Bishop, Kyle William (2010), American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture, Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland and co. Bittencourt, Ela (2012), ‘ “One Day, the Swan Sang This with its Wings”:  An Interview with Teresa Villaverde’, Senses of Cinema 65. Available at http:// sensesofcinema.com/2012/feature-articles/one-day-the-swan-sang-this-withits-wings-an-interview-with-teresa-villaverde/ (accessed 1 January 2015). Blankenship, Janelle and Tobias Nagl (eds) (2015), European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition, Bielefeld: Transcript. Boehmer, Elleke (2005), Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bradshaw, Peter (2009), ‘Pedro Costa, the Samuel Beckett of cinema’, Guardian, 17 September. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/sep/ 17/pedro-costa-tate-retrospective (accessed 6 September 2016). Brom, Thomas (2004) [1976], ‘Interview with Robert Kramer: Filming in the fist of the revolution’, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 12/13, pp. 29– 30. Available at http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/jc12-13folder/ kramerint.html (accessed 2 March 2016). Buci-Glucksmann, Christine (2004), ‘The Baroque Eye of the Camera (Part One)’ in Helen Bandis, Adrian Martin and Grant McDonald (eds), Raúl Ruiz: Images of Passage, Rotterdam: Rouge Press/Rotterdam International Festival, pp. 31–44. Burdeau, Emmanuel (1999), ‘Seul le cinéma – Pedro Costa tourney Dans la Chambre de Vanda’, Cahiers du Cinéma 536, pp. 60–62. Calcagno, Luciana, Griselda Soriano and Miguel Gomes (2009), ‘El cine como juego. Entrevista a Miguel Gomes’, El Ángel Exterminador. Available at http:// elangelexterminador.com.ar/articulosnro.13/entrevistagomes.html (accessed 25 January 2016). Câmara, Vasco (2004), ‘Oliveira, o cineasta que faz ver mais em frente’, Público, 11 September.

259

Bibliography Camilleri, Carmel (1992), ‘Évolution des structures familiales chez les Maghrébins et les Portugais de France’, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 8(2), pp. 133–134. Campos, Alexandra (2015), ‘Portugal é o 12º país do mundo com mais emigração’, Público, 28 October. Available at http://www.publico.pt/sociedade/noticia/ portugal-e-o-12-pais-do-mundo-com-mais-emigracao-1712667 (accessed 7 March 2016). Cardoso-Marques, José-Alexandre (2002), Images de Portugais en France, Immigration et cinéma, Paris: L’Harmattan. Cardoso, Joana Amaral and Alexandra Prado Coelho (2008), ‘Familiares acusam “Amália – O Filme” de “deturpar a realidade” e imagem da fadista’, Público, 3 December. Available at htts://www.publico.pt/culturaipsilon/noticia/familiaresacusam- amalia— o- filme- de- deturpara- realidadep- e- imagem- da- fadista1352025 (accessed 21 September 2015). Cardoso, Patrícia da Silva (2010), ‘A estrutura do invisível:  palavra e imagem em Manoel de Oliveira’, in Renata Junqueira (ed.), Manoel de Oliveira:  Uma Presença  – Estudos de Literatura e Cinema, São Paulo:  Editora Perspectiva, pp. 217–234. Carvalhal, Álvaro de (2002), Os Canibais, Sintra: Colares Editora. Carvalho, John M. (2014), ‘ Tabu: Time out of Joint in Contemporary Portuguese Cinema’, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 5, pp. 113–126. Castelo, Cláudia (1998), O Modo Português de Estar no Mundo: O Luso-Tropicalismo e a Ideologia Colonial Portuguesa (1933–1961), Porto: Edições Afrontamento. Chakali, Saad (2005), ‘À corps ouvert(s)’, 22 April. Available at www.cahiersducinema.com (accessed 1 January 2015). ——— (2014), ‘Un doux mystère’, Trafic 90, pp. 12–18. Chèze, Thierry (2013), ‘Ruben Alves:  “Je ne vois pas La Cage dorée comme un film communautariste’, L’Express, 23 April. Available at http://www.lexpress. fr/culture/cinema/ruben-alves-je-ne-vois-pas-la-cage-doree-comme-un-filmcommunautariste_1242505.html (accessed 31 August 2016). Childs, Peter and Patrick Williams (2006), An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory, Harlow, Essex: Longman. Coelho, Eduardo Prado (1983), Vinte anos de cinema português:  1962–1982, Lisbon: Biblioteca Breve, Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa, Ministério da Educação. Corradin, Flávia Maria and Francisco Maciel Silveira (2010), ‘O Meu Caso Rebobinado’, in Renata Junqueira (ed.), Manoel de Oliveira:  Uma Presença  – Estudos de Literatura e Cinema, São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, pp. 13–28. Corrigan, Timothy (2010), ‘The Essay Film as a Cinema of Ideas’ in Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover (eds), Global Art Cinema:  New Theories and Histories, New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 218–237.

260

Bibliography Costa Lobo, Marina and Pedro C. Magalhães (2011), ‘Room for Manoeuvre: Euroscepticism in the Portuguese Parties and Electorate 1976–2005’, South European Society and Politics 16(1), pp. 81–104. Costa, José Filipe (2002), O Cinema ao Poder! A revolução do 25 de Abril e as políticas de cinema entre 1974–1976: os grupos, as instituições, experiências e projectos, Lisbon: Hugin. ——— ( 2011 ), ‘ When Cinema Forges the Event: The case of Torre Bela’, Third Text 25 (1), pp.105–116. Costa, José Manuel da (1999), ‘Douro Faina Fluvial de Manoel de Oliveira (1931)’, in Pierre Marie Goulet, José Manuel Costa, Teresa Garcia and Miguel Dias (eds), O Olhar de Ulisses, vol. 1, Porto:  Sociedade Porto 2001 and Cinemateca Portuguesa, pp. 82–87. Costa, Pedro (2012), Personal Interview to the author (Lisbon, 2 July). ——— (2013a), Casa de Lava. Caderno, Lisbon: Pierre von Kleist. ——— (2013b), ‘ “I Died a Thousand Times.” A Conversation between Pedro Costa and Nuno Crespo’, in Casa de Lava. Caderno. Supplement. Lisbon:  Pierre von Kleist Editions. Costa, Pedro, Cyril Neyrat and Andy Rector (2012), Um Melro Dourado, um Ramo de Flores, uma Colher de Prata. Conversa com Pedro Costa, Lisbon:  Midas Filmes/Orfeu Negro. Cruchinho, Fausto (2003), O Desejo Amoroso em Os Canibais de Manoel de Oliveira, Porto: Mimesis. ——— (2008), ‘ The Woman in the Shop Window and the Man looking at Her: the Politics of the Look in Manoel de Oliveira’s Oeuvre’, in Carolin Overhoff Ferreira (ed.), Dekalog  – On Manoel de Oliveira, London:  Wallflower Press, pp. 49–59. Cunha, Paulo (2013), ‘A “diferença” portuguesa?’, in Paulo Cunha and Michelle Sales (eds), Cinema Português: Um Guia Essencial, São Paulo: SESI-SP, pp. 215–237. ——— (2014), ‘Miguel Gomes, el cinéfilo’, trans. Iván Villarmea Álvarez, in Iván Villarmea Álvarez and Horacio Muñoz Fernández (eds), Jugar con la memoria: el cine portugués en el siglo XXI. Shangrila/a cuarta parede: Santander, pp. 108–133. Cunha, Paulo and Michelle Sales (eds) (2013), Cinema Português: Um Guia Essencial, São Paulo: SESI-SP. da Costa, João Bénard (1991), Histórias do Cinema, Lisbon:  Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda. ——— (1996), O Cinema Português Nunca Existiu, Lisbon: CTT. ——— (2001), ‘Os filmes que nos vêem/ os olhos que nos filmam’, O Independente, 2 March, p. 56. Dacosta, Fernando (2005), ‘A utopia é o caminho para a luz’ (interview with Manoel de Oliveira), Visão, 3 February.

261

Bibliography De Baecque, Antoine and Jacques Parsi (1999), Conversas com Manoel de Oliveira, trans. Henrique Cunha, Porto: Campo das Letras. De Melo, Anthony (2009), ‘ “Finally, we have our own nouvelle vague.” António da Cunha Telles Productions and the Cinema Novo Português (1963–1967)’, eSharp, Special Issue: New Waves and New Cinemas, pp. 4–21. Available at http:// www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_128006_en.pdf (accessed 19 September 2016). de Pina, Luís (1986), História do Cinema Português, Mem Martins:  Publicações Europa-América. Dennison, Stephanie (ed.) (2013), Contemporary Hispanic Cinema:  Interrogating the Transational in Spanish and Latin American Film, Woodbridge: Tamesis. Dinesen, Isak (1991), Seven Gothic Tales, New York: Vintage. Doane, Mary Ann (1984), ‘The “woman’s film”. Possession and address’, in Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp and Linda Williams (eds), Re-vision, Los Angeles: American Film Institute, pp. 67–82. Dos Santos, Irène (2010), Les ‘brumes de la mémoire’. Expérience migratoire et quête identitaire de descendants de Portugais de France, doctoral thesis, Paris:  École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Available at https://tel. archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00770184/document (accessed 2 May 2016). Duarte, Susana and Jacques Rancière (2011), ‘Questions for Jacques Rancière Around His Book Les Écarts du Cinèma’, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2, pp. 196–206. Durgnat, Raymond (2014), The Essential Raymond Durgnat, London: BFI. Durovicová, Nataša and ‎Kathleen E. Newman (eds) (2010), World Cinemas: Transnational Perspectives, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Elliott, Richard (2010), Fado and the Place of Longing: Loss, Memory and the City, Farnham: Ashgate. Elsaesser, Thomas (2005), European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. European Commission (n.d.), ‘European Capitals of Culture’. Available at http:// ec.europa.eu/ programmes/ creative- europe/ actions/ capitals- culture_ en.htm (accessed 10 March 2016). Eyny, Yaniv and A. Zubatov (2004), ‘Voyage to the End of the World: Manoel de Oliveira’s A Talking Picture’, Senses of Cinema 33. Available at http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/feature-articles/a_talking_picture/ (accessed 18 April 2016). Ezra, Elizabeth and Terry Rowden (eds) (2006), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, London: Routledge. Falicov, Tamara (2013), ‘Ibero-Latin American Co-productions:  Transnational Cinema, Spain’s Public Relations Venture or Both,’ in Stephanie Dennison (ed.), Contemporary Hispanic Cinema: Interrogating the Transational in Spanish and Latin American Film, Woodbridge: Tamesis, pp. 67–88.

262

Bibliography Farber, Manny (1998), Negative Space:  Manny Farber on the Movies, New  York: Da Capo. Faulkner, Sally (2015), ‘Cinephilia and the Unrepresentable in Miguel Gomes “Tabu (2012)” ’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 92(3), pp. 341–360. Faulkner, Sally and Mariana Liz (2016a), ‘Introduction – Portuguese Film: Colony, Postcolony, Memory’, Journal of Romance Studies 16(2), pp. 1–11. ——— (2016b), ‘Portuguese Film: Colony, Postcolony memory – Q&A with Margarida Cardoso’. Available at http://www.sas.ac.uk/videos-and-podcasts/ culture-language-and-literature/portuguese-film-colony-postcolony-memory (accessed 15 May 2016). Félix Ribeiro, Manuel (1983), Filmes, figuras e factos da história do cinema português, 1896–1949, Lisbon: Cinemateca Portuguesa. Ferreira, Carolin Overhoff (2006), ‘The Limits of Luso-Brazilian Brotherhood: Fortress Europe in the Film Foreign Land’, Third Text 20(6), pp. 733–43 ——— (ed.) (2007), O Cinema Português através dos seus filmes, Lisbon: Edições 70. ——— (ed.) (2008), Dekalog – On Manoel de Oliveira, London: Wallflower. ——— (2007), ‘Os Mutantes’, in Carolin Overhoff Ferreira (ed.), O Cinema Português Através dos seus Filmes, Porto: Campo de Letras, pp. 223–231. ——— (2008), ‘Heterodox/Paradox:  The Representation of the Fift h Empire in Manoel de Oliveira’s Cinema’, in Carolin Overhoff Ferreira (ed.), Dekalog – On Manoel de Oliveira. London: Wallflower Press, pp. 60–89. ——— (2011), ‘Ambivalent Transnationality:  Luso-African Co-Productions After Independence (1988–2010)’, Journal of African Cinemas 3(2), pp. 221–245. ——— (2012), Identity and Difference  – Postcoloniality and Transnationality in Lusophone Films, Vienna: Lit Verlag. ——— (2013a), ‘1990–1999:  Estabilidade, crescimento e diversificação’ in Paulo Cunha and Michelle Sales (eds), Cinema Português:  Um Guia Essencial, São Paulo: SESI-SP, pp. 238–267. ——— (2013b), Manoel de Oliveira  – novas perspectivas sobre a sua obra, São Paulo: Fap-Unifesp. ——— (2014), ‘The End of History through the Disclosure of Fiction: Indisciplinarity in Miguel Gomes’s Tabu (2012)’, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 5, pp. 18–46. Fonseca, Rodrigo (2012), ‘Mostra de cinema português começa nesta terça discutindo a crise econômica lusa’, O Globo, 26 June. Available at http://oglobo. globo.com/ cultura/ mostra- de- cinema- portugues- comeca- nesta- tercadiscutindo-crise-economica-lusa-5313532 (accessed 20 November 2014). Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey (2003), Performing Whiteness:  Postmodern Re/ Constructions in the Cinema, New York: SUNY Press.

263

Bibliography Fradique, Teresa and Rita Jerónimo (1994), ‘The Fadista as an Artist’, in Joaquim Pais de Brito (ed.), Fado: Voices and Shadows, Lisbon: Electa, pp. 91–105. Gaertner, Julien (2008) ‘L’Islam dans le cinéma français’, Les Cahiers de la Mediterranée, 76. Available at http://cdlm.revues.org/4305 (accessed 2 May 2016). Galperin, Hernan (1999), ‘Cultural Industries Policy in Regional Trade Agreements: the Cases of NAFTA, the European Union and MERCOSUR’, Media, Culture & Society 21(5), pp. 627–648. Gana, Nouri (2004), ‘Remembering Forbidding Mourning: Repetition, Indifference, Melanxiety, Hamlet’, Mosaic 37(2), pp. 59–78. Gandhi, Leela (1998), Postcolonial Theory:  A  Critical Discussion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gatinois, Claire (2014), ‘Portugal indebted to Angola after economic reversal of fortune’, Guardian, 3 June. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ jun/03/portugal-economy-bailout-angola-invests (accessed 14 September 2016). Geada, Eduardo (1981), ‘Portuguese Cinema: Yesterday and Today’, translated by Barrie Ellis-Jones, Framework 15/16/17, pp. 66–73. Goddard, Michael (2013), Impossible Cartographies:  The Cinema of Raúl Ruiz, London; New York: Wallflower; Columbia University Press. Gomes, Miguel (2005), ‘Testemunhos’, in João Nicolau (ed.), João César Monteiro, Lisbon: Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema, pp. 561–565. ——— (2011), ‘Director’s note’, in Our Beloved Month of August (Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto):  A  Film by Miguel Gomes [booklet]. Second Run DVD, p. 13. ——— (2015), ‘Arabian Nights: Vol. 2 Q&A’, New York Film Festival. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yQhgbxz2JE (accessed 25 January 2016). Gomes, Miguel and Kathleen Gomes (2008), ‘Miguel Gomes: Salteador da Fantasia Perdida’, Público, 3 December. Available at http://www.publico.pt/culturaipsilon/ noticia/ miguel- gomes- salteador- da- fantasia- perdida- 217650?page=3 (accessed 25 January 2016). Gomes, Miguel e Luís Urbano (2013), ‘Cinema português: o alarme soa’, Público, 31 August. Available at http://publico.pt/opiniao/jornal/cinema-portugues-oalarme-soa-27028888 (accessed 20 November 2014). Graça, André Rui (2016), ‘Uma agulha num palheiro: cinema português em Berlim’, Observador, 19 February. Available at http://observador.pt/opiniao/agulhanum-palheiro-cinema-portugues-berlim/ (accessed 6 September 2016). Graf, Alexander (2002), The cinema of Wim Wenders: the celluloid highway, London and New York: Wallflower Press.

264

Bibliography Grey, Lila Ellen (2013), Fado Resounding:  Affective Politics and Urban Life, Durham: Duke University Press. Grilo, João Mário (2006), O Cinema da Não-Ilusão, Lisbon: Livros Horizonte. Hagener, Malte and Tina Kaiser (eds) (2016), Film-Konzepte 41:  Pedro Costa, Munich: et+k. Hallward, Peter (2002), ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward, London; New York: Verso, pp. vii-xlvii. Harrod, Mary, Mariana Liz and Alissa Timoshkina (eds) (2015), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization, London: I.B. Tauris. Hawkins, Joan (2000), Cutting Edge:  Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Higbee, Will and Song Hwee Lim (2010), ‘Concepts of transnational cinema: towards a critical transnationalism in film studies’, Transnational Cinemas 1(1), pp. 7–21. Higson, Andrew (1989), ‘The Concept of National Cinema’, Screen 30(4), pp. 36–46. ——— (2006), ‘The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema’, in Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden (eds), Transnational Cinema:  The Film Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 15–25. Hjort Mette (2005), Small Nation, Global Cinema:  The New Danish Cinema, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ——— (2010a), ‘Affinitive and Milieu-Building Transnationalism:  The Advance Party Initiative’, in Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones and Belén Vidal (eds), Cinema at the Periphery, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, pp. 46–66. ——— (2010b), ‘Small Cinemas: How They Thrive and Why They Matter’. Available at http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Winter2011_SmallCinemas.html (accessed 9 September 2016). Hjort, Mette and Duncan Petrie (eds) (2007), The Cinema of Small Nations, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hoberman, James (2010), ‘Our Beloved Month of August Is Neither Narrative Nor Documentary’. Available at http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-09-01/film/ourbeloved-month-of-august-is-neither-narrative-nor-documentary/ (accessed 25 January 2016). Hollanda, Heloísa Buarque de (1978), Macunaíma da Literatura ao Cinema, Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio Editora/Embrafilme. Holton, Kimberly da Costa (1998), ‘Dressing for Success:  Lisbon as European Cultural Capital’, The Journal of American Folklore 111(440), Special Issue: In Modern Dress:  Costuming the European Social Body, 17th-20th Centuries, pp. 173–196.

265

Bibliography ——— (2006), ‘Fado historiography:  old myths and new frontiers’, P:  Portuguese Cultural Studies 0, pp. 1–17. Hughes, Darren (2008), ‘Long Pauses:  Pedro Costa’s “Vanda Trilogy” and the Limits of Narrative Cinema as a Contemplative Art’, in Kenneth R. Morefield (ed.), Faith and Spirituality in Masters of Modern Cinema, Newcastle-uponTyne:  Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Available at http://www.longpauses. com/costas-vanda-trilogy/ (accessed 25 May 2016). ICA (2014a), ‘Quadro Resumo 2004–2013’. Available at http://www.ica-ip.pt/ pagina.aspx?pagina=500 (accessed 20 November 2014). ——— (2014b), ‘Ranking dos Filmes Mais Vistos 2004–2013’. Available at http:// www.ica-ip.pt/Admin/Files/Documents/contentdoc1958.pdf (accessed 20 November 2014). ——— (2014c), ‘Ranking dos Filmes Nacionais Mais Vistos 2004–2013’. Available at http://www.ica-ip.pt/Admin/Files/Documents/contentdoc1959.pdf (accessed 20 November 2014). ——— (2015), ‘Obras Nacionais Produzidas 2005–2014’. Available at http:// www.ica-ip.pt/Admin/Files/Documents/contentdoc1881.pdf (accessed 25 May 2015). ——— (2016), ‘Apresentação’. Available at http://www.ica-ip.pt/pt/o-ica/quemsomos/apresentacao/ (accessed 8 March 2016). Ince, Kate (2005), Georges Franju, Manchester and New  York:  Manchester University Press. Ingawanij, May Adadol and Benjamin McKay (eds) (2012), Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia, Ithaca, NY:  Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University. Iordanova, Dina and Ruby Cheung (eds) (2010), Film Festival Yearbook 2:  Film Festivals and Imagined Communities, St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Iordanova, Dina, David Martin-Jones and Belén Vidal (eds) (2010), Cinema at the periphery, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Jäckel, Anne (2003), European film industries, London: British Film Institute. Jaffe, Ira (2014), Slow Movies:  Countering the Cinema of Action, New  York: Wallflower Press. Jameson, Fredric (2005), ‘Forward: a monument to radical instants’, in Peter Weiss, The Aesthetic of Resistance. Volume 1: a Novel, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, pp. vii-xlix. Jenkins, David (2016), ‘Arabian Nights – Review’, Little White Lies, 21 April. Available at http://lwlies.com/reviews/arabian-nights/ (accessed 6 September 2016). Johnson, Randal (2005), ‘Aniki-Bóbó’, in Alberto Mira (ed.), The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, London: Wallflower Press, pp. 41–50. ——— (2007), Manoel de Oliveira, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

266

Bibliography ——— (2008), ‘The Ethics of Representation’, in Carolin Overhoff Ferreira (ed.), Dekalog – On Manoel de Oliveira, London: Wallflower Press, pp. 49–59. Jorge, Nuno Barradas (2014), ‘Pedro Costa on the Island of the Dead: Distant referencing and the making of Casa de Lava’, Adaptation 7(3), pp. 253–264. ——— (2016), ‘Living Daily, Working Slowly: Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room’, in Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge (eds), Slow Cinema, Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, pp. 169–179. King, Geoff (2014), Indie 2.0:  change and continuity in contemporary American indie film, London: I.B. Tauris. Klobucka, Anna (2008), ‘Lusotropicalism, Race and Identity’, in Prem Poddar, Rajeev S. Patke and Lars Jensen (eds), A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures  – Continental Europe and its Empires, Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, pp. 471–476. Kourelou, Olga, Mariana Liz and Belén Vidal (2014), ‘Crisis and creativity: The new Cinemas of Portugal, Greece and Spain’, New Cinemas 12 (1+2), pp. 133–151. Lanzoni, Rémi Fournier (2014), French Comedy on Screen, London:  Palgrave Macmillan. Leitão, Nicolau Andresen (2007), ‘A Flight of Fantasy? Portugal and the First Attempt to Enlarge the European Economic Community, 1961–1963’, Contemporary European History, 16(1), pp. 71–87. Lemière, Jacques (2006), ‘ “Um centro na margem”: o caso do cinema português’, Análise Social 41(180), pp. 731–765. Levinas, Emmanuel (1991), Totality and Infinity:  An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Dordrecth; Boston; London:  Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lim, Dennis (2010), ‘It’s Actual Life. No, It’s Drama. No, It’s Both’, New York Times, 20 August. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/movies/22hybrid. html?_r=0 (accessed 25 January 2016). ——— (2012), ‘Under the Influence’, Artforum. Available at https://artforum.com/ inprint/issue=201206&id=31085 (accessed 2 February 2015). Loshitzky, Yosefa (2010), Screening Strangers:  Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema, Bloomington and Indianapolis:  Indiana University Press. Lourenço, Eduardo (2005), A Europa Desencantada: Para uma mitologia Europeia, 2nd Edition, Lisbon: Gradiva. Lowenstein, Adam (2005), Shocking Representation, Historical Trauma, National Cinema and the Modern, New York: Columbia University Press. MacQueen, Norrie (2003), ‘Re-defining the “African vocation”:  Portugal’s postcolonial identity crisis’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 11(2), pp. 181–199.

267

Bibliography Maier-Schoen, Petra (ed.) (2004), Manoel de Oliveira, Munich: Filmzentrum. Main, Elizabeth (2011), ‘La concierge dans l’imaginaire parisien 1830–2004’, in Tsikounas, Myriam (ed.), Imaginaires urbains du Paris romantique à nos jour, Paris: Editions Le Manuscrit, pp. 269–301. Manoel de Oliveira, Lisbon: Centro Portuguệs de Cinema, c. 1975 (ms.). Marmelo, Jorge (2011), ‘Porto 2001 mexeu mas pouco’, Público, 9 January. Available at https:// www.publico.pt/ local/ noticia/ porto- 2001- mexeu- mas- pouco1474321 (accessed 14 April 2016). Martin, Adrian (2004a), ‘The Territory’, Rouge 2: Raúl Ruiz, an Annotated Filmography. Available at http://rouge.com.au/2/territory.html (accessed 8 November 2014). ——— (2004b), ‘Displacements’, in Helen Bandis, Adrian Martin and Grant McDonald (eds), Raúl Ruiz:  Images of Passage, Rotterdam:  Rouge Press/ Rotterdam International Festival, pp. 45–53. ——— (2006), ‘Kind of a Revolution, and Kind of Not: Digital Low-Budget Cinema in Australia Today’, Scan 3(2), pp. 1–5. ——— (2012), Last Day Every Day: Figural Thinking from Auerbach and Kracauer to Agamben and Brenez, Brooklyn: Punctum Books. ——— (2013), ‘The Moves I:  Blood’, Transit, 29 October. Available at http://cinentransit.com/o-sangue/#unoe (accessed 1 January 2015). ——— (2014), Mise en scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art, London: Palgrave. Martins, Fernando Cabral (2010), ‘A Infância do Cinema’, in Renata Junqueira (ed.), Manoel de Oliveira: Uma Presença – Estudos de Literatura e Cinema, São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, pp. 3–12. Martins, Rui (2012) ‘Miguel Gomes fala sobre Tabu’, Expresso, 16 February. Available at http://expresso.sapo.pt/dossies/postais/postal_festival_internacional_ de_ cinema_ de_ berlim/ miguel- gomes- fala- sobre- tabu=f704744 (accessed 28 February 2016). Martins, Susana (2001), ‘No Palco da Vida’, JL: Jornal de Letras e Ideias, 7 March, p. 9. Mazierska, Ewa (ed.) (2013), Work in Cinema:  Labor and the Human Condition, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mazierska, Ewa and Laura Rascaroli (2006), Crossing new Europe:  postmodern travel and the European road movie, London: Wallflower Press. Melas, Natalie (2007), All The Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and The Ends of Comparison, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Melbye, David (2010), Landscape Allegory in Cinema, From Wilderness to Wasteland, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Memmi, Albert (1985), Portrait du Colonisé, Précedé de Portrait du Colonisateur, 4th Edition, Paris: Gallimard. Mira, Alberto (ed.) (2005), The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, London: Wallflower.

268

Bibliography Moine, Raphaëlle (2014), ‘The Contemporary French Biopic in National and International Contexts’, in Tom Brown and Belén Vidal (eds), The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 52–67. ——— (2017), ‘The concierge in contemporary French cinema’, in Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), Paris in the Cinema:  Beyond the Flâneur, London: BFI Palgrave-Macmillan. Moisés, José Alvares (2003), ‘A New Policy for Brazilian Cinema’, in Lúcia Nagib (ed.), The New Brazilian Cinema, London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 3–21. Mongin, Olivier (2007), De quoi rions-nous? Notre société et ses comiques, Paris: Hachette. Mónica, Maria Filomena (2006), ‘Prós e Contras: Portugal: identificação de um país’ in Portugal: identificação de um país, Lisbon: Relógio D’Água and RTP. Monteiro, João César (1974), ‘O Passado e o Presente: Um Necrofilme de Manoel de Oliveira’, in Morituri et Salutant: Os Que Vão Morrer Saúdam-te, Lisbon: &etc, pp. 33–43. Monteiro, Paulo Filipe (1995), Autos da Alma: os guiões de ficção do cinema português entre 1961 e 1990, PhD Thesis, Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Mourinha, Jorge (2013), ‘Contar de emigração. A Gaiola Dourada’, Público/Ipsilon, 29 July. Available at https://www.publico.pt/culturaipsilon/noticia/contar-deemigracao-1658410 (accessed 15 June 2016). Moutinho, Anabela and Maria da Graça Lobo (eds) (1997), António Reis e Margarida Cordeiro: A poesia da Terra, Faro: Cineclube de Faro. Moutinho, Isabel (2008), The colonial wars in contemporary Portuguese fiction, Woodbridge: Tamesis. Muñoz Fernández, Horacio and Iván Villarmea Álvarez (2015), ‘Aesthetic tendencies in contemporary Portuguese cinema’ in Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema, 3(6), pp. 39–45. Murcia, Claude and Régis Salado (eds) (2015), Manoel de Oliveira: l’invention cinématographique à l’épreuve de la littérature, Paris: Hermann. Naficy, Hamid (2001), An Accented Cinema:  Exilic And Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Nagib, Lúcia (ed.) (2003), The New Brazilian Cinema, London: I.B. Tauris. Nancy, Jean-Luc (2001), The Evidence of Film:  Abbas Kiarostami  – L’Évidence du Film: Abbas Kiarostami, Brussels: Yves Gevaert. Nandy, Ashis (1983), The Intimate Enemy:  Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Neto, Anastácio (2005), ‘Manoel de Oliveira: o decano do cinema português está de volta’, O Comércio do Porto, 25 January. Newman, Kathleen (2010), ‘Notes on Transnational Film Theory:  Decentred Subjectivity, Decentred Capitalism’, in Nataša Durovicová and ‎Kathleen

269

Bibliography E. Newman (eds), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 3–11. Neyrat, Cyril (2009), ‘Critique. Ce Cher Móis D’août de Miguel Gomes’, Cahiers du Cinéma, 36–38. Available at http://www.cahiersducinema.com/CritiqueCe-cher-mois-d-aout-de.html (accessed 31 August 2016). ——— (2010), ‘Rooms for the Living and the Dead’, Letters From Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa (DVD booklet), New  York:  The Criterion Collection, pp. 10–17. Nielsen, Christine Sarah, Ana Maria Soares and Carlos Páscoa Machado (2009), ‘The Cultural Metaphor Revisited:  Exploring Dimensions, Complexities and Paradoxes through the Portuguese Fado’, International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 9(3), pp. 289–308. Oliveira, Luís Miguel (2008), ‘Inventário de Portugal’, Público, 21 August. Available at http://www.publico.pt/culturaipsilon/noticia/inventario-de-portugal-1654479 (accessed 25 January 2016). Oliveira, Paulo Motta (2010), ‘De Amores, Cartas e Memórias – Camilo na lente prismática de Manoel de Oliveira’, in Renata Junqueira (ed.), Manoel de Oliveira: Uma Presença – Estudos de Literatura e Cinema, São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, pp. 51–66. Oricchio, Luiz Zanin (2003), Cinema de novo: Um balanço crítico da retomada, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade. Owen, Hilary (2016), ‘Filming Ethnographic Portugal: Miguel Gomes and the Last Taboo’, paper given at the symposium ‘Portuguese Film:  Colony, Postcolony, Memory’, IMLR, University of London, 15 January 2016. Owen, Hilary and Anna Klobucka (eds) (2014), Gender, Empire, and Postcolony: Luso-Afro-Brazilian Intersections, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Page, Joanna (2009), Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Pantenburg, Volker (2010), ‘Realism, not Reality: Pedro Costa’s Digital Testimonies’, Afterall 24. Available at http://www.afterall.org/journal/issue.24/realism-notreality-pedro-costa-s-digital-testimonies (accessed 21 January 2014). Parsi, Jacques (2001), ‘O Mistério da Representação’, in Pierre Marie Goulet, José Manuel Costa, Teresa Garcia and Miguel Dias (eds), O Olhar de Ulisses  – A Utopia do Real 3, Porto:  Sociedade Porto 2001 and Cinemateca Portuguesa, pp. 373–379. Pence, Jeffrey (2004), ‘Cinema of the Sublime. Theorizing the Ineffable’, Poetics Today 25(1), pp. 29–66. Peranson, Mark (2006), ‘Pedro Costa. An Introduction’, Cinema Scope (Summer), pp. 6–15.

270

Bibliography ——— (n.d.), ‘The Rules of the Game: A Conversation with Miguel Gomes’, Cinema Scope. Available at http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope-magazine/interviewsthe-rules-of-the-game-a-conversation-with-miguel-gomes/ (accessed 25 January 2016). Pereira, Carlos (2010), ‘Os filmes de Miguel Gomes’, in João Maria Mendes (ed.), Novas & Velhas Tendências No Cinema Português Contemporâneo, Lisbon: Biblioteca da Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, pp.161–164. Pessoa, Fernando (2007) [1934], Mensagem / Message, London: Shearsman Books. Pick, Zuzana (1993), The New Latin American Cinema:  A  Continental Project, Austin: University of Texas Press. Pina, Luís de (1986), História do Cinema Português, Mem Martins: Europa-América. Pinazza, Natália (2014), Journeys in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema, New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pita, António Pedro (ed.) (1994), Régio, Oliveira e o Cinema, Vila do Conde: Câmara Municipal de Vila do Conde; Cineclube da Vila do Conde. Poma, Paola (2010), ‘A Estrutura do Visível’, in Renata Junqueira (ed.), Manoel de Oliveira: Uma Presença – Estudos de Literatura e Cinema, São Paulo:  Editora Perspectiva, pp. 235–241. Ponzanesi, Sandra and Marguerite Walter (2012), ‘Introduction’, in Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Walter (eds), Postcolonial Cinema Studies, London: Routledge, pp. 1–16. Port, Mattijs van de (1999), ‘Reflections on the Death of a Portuguese Star’, Etnofoor 12(2), pp. 7–25. Prado Coelho, Eduardo (1983), Vinte Anos de Cinema Português (1962–1982), Lisbon: Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa. Prouvèze, Alexandre (n.d.), ‘Interview Miguel Gomes:  Time Out sits down with the director of “Tabu”, a tantalising tale of paradise lost’, trans. Alex Dudok de Wit, Time Out (Paris). Available at http://www.timeout.com/paris/en/miguelgomes-interview (accessed 10 January 2016). Prysthon, Angela (n.d.), ‘As estranhas e selvagens canções de Miguel Gomes’, La furia umana. Available at http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/2uncategorised/ 153- angela- prysthon- as- estranhas- e- selvagens- cancoes- demiguel-gomes#sdfootnote3sym (accessed 25 January 2016). Quemener, Nelly (2014), Le Pouvoir de l’humour: Politiques des representations dans les médias en France, Paris: Armand Colin. Quintana, Àngel (2009), ‘Hacia un hiperrealismo de la imagen digital’, Cahiers du Cinéma España 6, pp. 24–25. Ramos, Jorge Leitão (1989), Dicionário do Cinema Português, 1962–1988, Lisbon: Caminho.

271

Bibliography ——— (2005), Dicionário do Cinema Português 1989–2003, Lisbon: Caminho. ——— (2012), Dicionário do Cinema Português 1895–1961, Lisbon: Caminho. Ramos, Tiago (2013), ‘A Gaiola Dourada’, Split Screen, 1 August. Available at http:// splitscreen-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/a-gaiola-dourada-por-tiago-ramos. html (accessed 1 June 2016). Rancière, Jacques (2006a), ‘The Politics of Pedro Costa’, Colossal Youth. Masters of Cinema. Tate Modern (25 September  – 4 October 2009). Available at http:// www.diagonalthoughts.com/?p=1546 (accessed 18 June 2016). ——— (2006b), Film Fables, trans. Emiliano Battista, Oxford; New  York: Berg. ——— (2009), The Emancipated Spectator, London-New York: Verso. ——— (2010), ‘The paradoxes of political art’ in Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On politics and Aesthetics, transl. Steven Corcoran, London and New York: Continuum, pp. 134–151. ——— (2011), Les Écarts du Cinéma, Paris: La Fabrique. ——— (2012), Figures de L’Histoire, Paris: Presses Universitaire de France. Rapfogel, Jared (2008), ‘An Ethical Cinema: An Interview with Manoel de Oliveira’, Cineaste:  America’s Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema, 33(3), pp. 18–21. Rêgo, Cacilda and Marcus Brasileiro (eds) (2014), Migration in Lusophone Cinema, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rezola, Maria Inácia (2007), 25 de Abril: Mitos de uma Revolução, Lisbon:  Esfera dos Livros. Ribas, Daniel (2009), ‘Nova Geração?: a geração curtas chega às longas’, in Frederico Lopes (ed.), Cinema em Português:  Actas das II Jornadas, Covilhã:  Livros Labcom, pp. 93–101. Robbe-Grillet, Alain (1989), For a New Novel:  Essays on Fiction, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Robert-Gonçalves, Mickaël (2010), Bon people portugais de Rui Simões (1980): Histoire et esthétique d’un film-révolution, mémoire de Master, Université Paris 1: Panthéon Sorbonne. Robinson, Luke (2013), Independent Chinese documentary: from the studio to the street, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Romney, Jonathan (2012), ‘Film of the Month: Mysteries of Lisbon’, Sight and Sound, 22(1), pp. 60–61. ——— (2015), ‘Film of the Week:  Arabian Nights’, Film Comment, 2 December. Available at http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/film-of-the-week-arabiannights/ (accessed 6 September 2016). Rosaldo, Renato (1989), ‘Imperialist Nostalgia’, Representations 26, pp. 107–122.

272

Bibliography Rosas, Fernando (2010), ‘Portuguese Neutrality in the Second World War’, in Neville Wiley (ed.), European Neutrals and Non-Belligerents during the Second World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 268–282. Rose, Jacqueline (1976–77), ‘Paranoia and the Film System’, Screen 17(4), pp. 85–104. Rosenbaum, Jonathan (1988), ‘Self-Portraits’, Chicago Reader, 19 August. Available at http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1988/08/self-portraits/ (accessed 1 January 2015). ——— (2008), ‘The Classical Modernist’, Film Comment 44(4), pp. 45–50. ——— (2012), ‘Casa de Lava. Eruptions and Disruptions in the House of Lava’, Casa de Lava. A Film by Pedro Costa. Second Run DVD, pp. 3–10. Rothwell, Phillip (2008), ‘The Myths and Realities of Portuguese Postcolonial Society’, in Prem Poddar, Rajeev S. Patke and Lars Jensen (eds), A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures  – Continental Europe and its Empires, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 431–435. Rovai, Mauro Luiz (2008), ‘ Time and Memory:  An Oblique Look at Journey to the Beginning of the World and A Talking Picture’, in Carolin Overhoff Ferreira (ed.), Dekalog – On Manoel de Oliveira, London: Wallflower Press, pp. 122–141. Ruiz, Raúl and Benoît Peeters (2004), ‘Annihilating the Script’ in Helen Bandis, Adrian Martin and Grant McDonald (eds), Raúl Ruiz:  Images of Passage, Rotterdam: Rouge Press/Rotterdam International Festival, pp. 15–30. Sabine, Mark (2010), ‘Putting Violence back in the Picture: Margarida Cardoso’s “A Costa dos Murmúrios” and Post-Colonial War Anamnesis’, in Helena Gonçalves da Silva, Adriana Alves de Paula Martins, Filomena Viana Guarda and José Miguel Sardica (eds), Conflict, Memory Transfers and the Reshaping of Europe, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 291–302. San Filippo, Maria (2011), ‘A Cinema Of Recession:  Micro-Budgeting, MicroDrama, And The “Mumblecore” Movement’, Cineaction 85. Available at http:// www.cineaction.ca/old/issue85sample.htm (accessed 30 September 2014). Santos, Vítor Pavão dos (1987), Amália: Uma Biografia, Lisbon: Contexto. Santos Touza, Ángel (2009), ‘Entrevista Miguel Gomes’, Miradas de Cine, 20 August. Available at http://archivo.miradasdecine.es/estudios/2009/08/entrevistamiguel-gomes.html (accessed 26 September 2016). Santurbano, Andrea (2010), ‘A Divina Tragédia ou o Olhar ‘Tragirônico” sobre a Condição Humana’, in Renata Junqueira (ed.), Manoel de Oliveira:  Uma Presença  – Estudos de Literatura e Cinema, São Paulo:  Editora Perspectiva, pp. 202–216. Saramago, Patrícia (2013), Email interview (23 July).

273

Bibliography Sartre, Jean-Paul (1992), Being and Nothingness, trans. with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes, London: Washington Square Press. Schefer, Raquel (2013), ‘The Lived Cinema of Robert Kramer:  Politics and Subjectivity’, La Furia Umana, Paper 2, April. Schneider, Jörg (2013), Email interview (26 July). Schwartz, Arnaud (2013), ‘Eloge de la concierge portugaise’, La Croix, 24 April. Shaw, Deborah (2003), Contemporary Cinema of Latin America:  Ten Key Films, London: Continuum. ——— (2013), ‘Deconstructing and Reconstruction “Transnational Cinema” ’, in Stephanie Dennison (ed.), Contemporary Hispanic Cinema: Interrogating the Transational in Spanish and Latin American Film, Woodbridge: Tamesis, pp. 47–66. Shaw, Lisa and Rob Stone (eds) (2012), Screening songs in Hispanic and Lusophone cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Silberman, Roxane and Irène Fournier (2006), ‘Les secondes générations sur le marché du travail en France: une pénalité ethnique ancrée dans le temps’, Revue Française de Sociologie 47, pp. 243–292. Silvestre, Osvaldo Manuel (2008a), Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto (I). Os Livros Ardem Mal [blogue]. Available at http://olamtagv.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/ aquele-querido-mes-de-agosto-i/ (accessed 25 January 2016). ——— (2008b), Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto (IV). Os Livros Ardem Mal [blogue]. Available at http://olamtagv.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/aquele-querido-mesde-agosto-iv/ (accessed 25 January 2016). Sotinel, Thomas (2013), ‘La concierge est dans l’ascenseur … social’, Le Monde, 24 April. Sousa Santos, Boaventura de (2002), ‘Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism and Inter-identity’, Luso-Brazilian Review 39(2), pp.9–43. Steiner, George (2006), Una Certa Idea di Europa, Milano: Garzanti. Suchenski, Richard (2009), ‘100,000 Cigarettes: Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth’, Pedro Costa, Jeonju: Jeonju International Film Festival, pp. 270–283. Tarr, Carrie (2014), ‘Looking at Muslims: the visibility of Islam in contemporary French cinema’, Patterns of Prejudice, 48(5), pp. 516–533. Teffi (2014), Subtly Worded and Other Stories, London: Pushkin Press. Tomaz, Cláudia (2013), Email interview (20 May). Traquina, Nelson (1994), ‘Portuguese Cinema:  In the Doldrums of Neglect’, European Journal of Communication 9, pp. 291–309. Tribalat, Michèle (2009), ‘Mariages “mixtes” et immigration en France’, Espace populations sociétés, 2009/2, pp. 203–214. ——— (2015), ‘Une estimation des populations d’origine étrangère en France en 2011’, Espace populations sociétés, 2015/1–2. Available at http://eps.revues.org/ 6073 (accessed 1 July 2016).

274

Bibliography Ursini, Nathalie (2013), ‘Lei de cotas nacionais na TV paga vai bem’. ANCINE, 8 August. Available at http://www.ancine.gov.br/sites/default/files/clipping/201308- 08- Lei%20de%20cotas%20nacionais%20na%20TV%20paga%20vai%20 bem.pdf (accessed 20 November 2014). Vale de Almeida, Miguel (2004), An Earth-Coloured Sea: ‘Race’, Culture and Politics of identity in the Post-Colonial Portuguese-Speaking World, New  York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Vanoye, Francis (2005) [1979], Récit écrit, récit filmique, Paris: Armand Colin. Varela, Raquel (2014), História do Povo na Revolução Portuguesa 1974–1975, Lisbon: Bertrand. Vidal, Belén (2012), Heritage Film:  nation, genre and representation, London; New York: Wallflower. ——— (2014), ‘Introduction:  The biopic and its critical contexts’, in Tom Brown and Belén Vidal (eds), The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–32. Vieira, Estela (2013), ‘Politics and the Aesthetics of Absence in Margarida Cardoso’s Cinematic Work’, Hispanic Research Journal, 14(1), pp. 67–85. Vieira, Patrícia (2013), Portuguese Film, 1930–1960: The Staging of the New State Regime, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. ——— (2015), ‘Imperial Remains: Post-Colonialism in Portuguese Literature and Cinema’, Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 14(3), pp. 275–86 Villa-Lobos, Francisco (2013), Personal interview (Cascais, 11 February). Villarmea Álvarez, Iván (2016), ‘Mudar de Perspetiva: A Dimensão Transnacional do Cinema Português Contemporâneo’, Aniki 3:1, pp. 101–120. Available at http://aim.org.pt/ojs/index.php/revista/article/view/212/pdf (accessed 5 September 2016). Villarmea Álvarez, Iván and Horacio Muñoz Fernández (2014), ‘Un cine nacional para una época transnacional’, in Iván Villarmea Álvarez and Horacio Muñoz Fernández (eds), Jugar com la Memoria:  El Cine Portugués en el Siglo XXI, Shangrila/a cuarta parede: Santander, pp. 198–210. Vincendeau, Ginette (2015), ‘From the Margins to the Centre, French Stardom and Ethnicity’, in Alistair Fox, Michel Marie, Raphaëlle Moine and Hilary Radner (eds), A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 547–569. Wenders, Wim (2006), ‘Giving Europe a Soul?’, Speech at the Berlin Conference ‘A Soul for Europe’, 17–19 November 2006. Available at http://www.asoulforeurope.eu/category/mediabox/wim-wenders (accessed 16 May 2016). Wheatley, Catherine (2007), ‘Les Yeux sans Visage’, Senses of Cinema 42. Available at http://sensesofcinema.com/2007/cteq/yeux-sans-visage/ (accessed 26 May 2016).

275

Bibliography White, Hayden (1987), The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Wigon, Zahary (2012), ‘The Pact: Miguel Gomes on Cinema and Tabu’. Available at http://filmmakermagazine.com/61331-the-pact-miguel-gomes-on-cinemaand-tabu/#.VpJIzV6zlEM (accessed 10 January 2016). Young, Gwenda (1998), ‘The Cinema of Difference:  Jacques Tourneur, Race and I Walked with a Zombie (1943)’, Irish Journal of American Studies 7, pp. 101–121. Young, Robert (1995), Colonial Desire:  Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London and New York: Routledge. ——— (2001), Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, London: Wiley Blackwell.

276

Index 11 September 2001, 58, 75, 84 16mm, 35, 225, 228 25 April 1974, 1, 10, 16, 17, 19, 25, 55, 58, 115, 140, 144, 185, 202, 245 35mm, 140, 143, 225 1001 Nights, 175 Abraham’s Valley (Vale Abraão), 76, 79 Africa, 5, 16, 18, 53–57, 60, 61, 64, 74, 105, 115, 116, 155, 189, 202, 206, 207, 210, 221, 223–230, 233, 234 African independence, 18, 27, 115 Africanness, 217 Alex (A Idade Maior), 151, 154, 155, 157, 158, 206 Alfama, 91, 124 Almeida, Joaquim de, 99, 107, 152, 155 Alves, Ruben, 99, 101, 106, 113 Amadora, 144 Amália, 6, 87–98, 113 Amour, 105 ANCINE, 228, 240–244, 247, 248, 251, 253 Andrade, Joaquim Pedro de, 52 Angola, 5, 16, 18, 27, 56, 57, 105, 115, 207 Aniki-Bóbó, 49, 50, 69–72, 78, 82, 126 animation (film genre), 242 Another Country (Outro País), 24, 26, 31 anti-imperialism, 26

Aqui d’el Rei, 206 Arab, 103, 104 Arabian Nights (As Mil e Uma Noites), 2, 6, 34, 45, 120, 254 Arabic, 60–62 Aranjuez mon amour (song), 94 Argentina, 248, 251 Art of Amália, The, 93 art cinema, 4, 6, 8, 12, 89, 95, 96, 127, 129, 137, 142, 148, 158, 169, 171, 176, 180, 189 art-house, 2, 148 ARTE (television channel), 146 Asia, 5, 62, 115, 137, 210 Atlantic Ocean, 54, 171 auteur, 4, 9, 96, 102, 113, 119, 129, 132, 138, 154, 169, 224, 246 authenticity, 10, 13, 101, 106, 168 avant-garde, 48, 69, 126, 180, 200 Badiou, Alain, 13, 226, 235, 236 Batarda, Beatriz, 153 Bazin, André, 232 Beckett, Samuel, 2, 77 Belém Tower, 60 Belgium, 96, 117 Belle Toujours, 81 Belo, Sandra Barata, 87, 97 Benilde or the Virgin Mother (Benilde ou a Virgem-Mãe), 52, 72, 73 Berlin (film festival), 2, 3, 246

277

Index Berlin-A city symphony (BerlinSymphonie einer Stadt), 69 Bessa-Luís, Agustina, 72, 79, 81, 129 BFI London Film Festival see London (film festival) biopic, 6, 87, 89, 90, 92–98, 113 Blade Runner, 53 Blanco, Rita, 99, 101, 105, 107 Blood (O Sangue), 157 Blood of My Blood (Sangue do Meu Sangue), 246 Bones (Ossos), 135, 140, 141 Botelho, João, 132, 253 Box, The (A Caixa), 76, 79, 119 Branco, Camilo Castelo, 52, 72, 79, 176, 180, 181 Branco, José Mário, 29, 30 Branco, Paulo, 113, 139, 169, 176, 177, 182 Brazil, 2, 8, 13, 75, 84, 96, 129, 168, 181, 223, 224, 227, 228, 239–255 Buñuel, Luis, 51, 170 Busan (film festival), 246 Bush, George W., 63 Caetano, Marcelo, 117 Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 36, 146 Camões, Luís Vaz de, 55, 68, 76, 95, 203, 223 Canijo, João, 105, 120, 246 Cannes (film festival), 2, 177, 246 Cannibals, The (Os Canibais), 50, 51, 72, 76, 78, 83 Cape Verde, 13, 115, 139, 144, 185–188, 190, 191, 194, 196–199, 201–203, 207, 224, 228

Cardoso, Margarida, 3, 13, 220, 230, 240, 252, 254 Casal da Boba, 144, 147 Catholic, 18, 54, 71, 74, 78, 81, 104 Catholic Church, 27, 30, 57, 72, 73 Cavaco Silva, Aníbal, 185 Chaimite, 206 Chile, 168–174, 182, 248 Christian, 60, 68, 70, 72, 82–84, 105, 170 Christianity, 53, 58, 60, 78 Christopher Columbus, the Enigma (Cristóvão Colombo – o Enigma), 75, 82, 84 Cinema Novo (New Portuguese Cinema), 11, 73, 95, 118 cinéma vérité, 186 Cinemateca Portuguesa, 228 cinephilia, 39, 225, 236 Cintra, Luís Miguel, 56, 57, 60, 65 Citizen Kane, 87 citizenship, 104 City of Pirates (La Ville des Pirates), 167, 168, 171–173, 175 city symphonies, 69 class, 21, 23, 26, 28, 30, 79, 81, 82, 101, 103, 104, 112, 124, 130, 162, 227 Claudel, Paul, 54, 74 Colo, 151 colonial war(s), 16, 53, 105, 117, 219, 231 colonialism, 13, 55, 58, 74, 116, 181, 202, 206–208, 210, 212–221, 223, 224, 226, 228–230 Colossal Youth (Juventude em Marcha), 140, 144–147 comedy (film genre), 40, 95, 99, 101, 102, 113

278

Index comedy of integration, 102, 112 Contracosta Produções, 142, 146, 147 Convent, The (O Convento), 76 co-production(s), 2, 6, 73, 75, 77, 119, 120, 139, 142, 146, 207, 221, 239–243, 247–255 Cordeiro, Margarida, 138 cosmopolitan, 7, 11, 69, 111, 130, 131, 182 Costa, João Bénard da, 53 Costa, José Filipe, 21–24, 31 Costa, José Manuel, 69 Costa, Pedro, 2, 6, 7, 8, 12, 37, 132, 133, 135, 136, 139–149, 157, 159, 182, 183, 185–194, 198–202, 228, 246 CPLP, 251 Creative Europe, 120, 249, 251 Crime do Padre Amaro, O, 247 crisis, 4, 6, 11, 117, 120, 242, 244, 245 Cunha Telles, António da, 95 Cunhal, Álvaro, 19 Day of Despair (O Dia do Desespero), 76, 79 democracy, 1, 11, 17, 18, 63, 115, 133 Deneuve, Catherine, 59 Denis, Claire, 157, 158 digital era, 1 digital filmmaking, 147, 148 digital technology, 12, 125, 136, 138, 144, 148 digital video, 135, 136–142, 144, 146, 186 displacement, 12, 102 Divine Comedy, The (A Divina Comédia), 76, 78–80, 83 docudrama, 38 docufiction, 144

documentary (film genre), 9, 15, 21, 23–26, 33–35, 41–46, 48, 69, 77, 93, 113, 126, 137, 138, 143, 146, 155, 182, 186, 189, 225, 231, 232, 235, 236, 242 Doomed Love (Amor de Perdição), 52, 72, 177 Douro (region), 69, 100, 110 Douro River, 48, 130 Down to Earth (Casa de Lava), 9, 12, 139, 140, 144, 147, 185–192, 197, 199, 200, 201, 203 dysnarrative, 156, 157 dystopian, 201, 203 Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura), 81, 82 EMBRAFILME, 244 emigrant(s), 33, 35, 80 emigration 91, 198, 200, 202; see also immigration, migration Erice, Victor, 132, 133 essay film, 126, 229 ethics, 84, 186, 187, 229 euro (currency), 140 euro-zone, 4, 11, 117, 120 European Capital of Culture (initiative), 11, 116, 120–123, 125, 126, 129–133, 147 European cinema, 1, 11, 137, 148, 239, 249, 250 European Commission, 122 European Economic Community (EEC), 69, 73, 83, 84, 116, 118, 120, 206 European Film Award, 99 European Heritage Label, 125

279

Index European integration, 1, 115, 118, 120, 124, 125, 129, 130, 131, 132 European Union (EU), 5, 11, 112, 116, 120, 125, 129, 254 Europeanization, 9, 11, 17, 121, 125 Europeanness, 12, 124, 217 Expo’98, 121 Eyes without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage), 189, 198, 199, 203 fado, 6, 89–97, 106–110, 123, 124, 127 Fado: Story of a Singer (Fado: história d’uma cantadeira), 89, 90 Feitiço do Império, 206, 207, 228 Fifth Empire (myth), 57, 63 Fifth Empire, The (O Quinto Império: Ontem como Hoje), 53, 63–65, 75 film policy, 247 Fontaínhas, 139–141, 144, 145, 147, 185, 187, 228 Foreign Land (Terra Estrangeira), 253, 254 France, 43, 75, 84, 99, 101–113, 117, 122, 132, 139, 168, 169, 177, 181, 199, 248, 254 Francisca, 72 freedom, 36, 37, 49, 50, 63, 69, 115–117, 135, 136, 139, 144, 148, 153, 161, 162 Freyre, Gilberto, 187 Fundação de Serralves, 146 Gama, Vasco da, 60, 62, 63, 110, 203 Gaslight, 193 Germany, 117, 124, 132, 139, 143, 163, 248, 254 Get a Life (Ganhar a Vida), 105, 113, 120

Gilded Cage, The (La Cage dorée), 7, 9, 11, 99–113 globalization, 2–9, 12, 13, 69, 76, 84, 116, 240 Godard, Jean-Luc, 132, 157, 159, 160, 228 Gomes, Miguel, 2, 6, 9, 33–46, 120, 221, 224–232, 240, 245, 246, 254 Gomes, Rita Azevedo, 159 gothic, 51, 164, 171, 189, 195, 197–199 Gramado (film festival), 242, 246 Guimarães, 51, 121, 132, 133, 147 Has, Wojciech, 176, 177 heritage, 11, 85, 111, 117, 125, 128, 130, 132, 253 heritage cinema (film genre), 129 heterotopia, 213 highbrow, 130 Historic Centre (Centro Histórico), 133, 147 Hollywood, 6, 93, 96, 189, 191, 197, 200, 225, 227, 232, 247, 250 horror (film genre), 170, 189, 193, 194, 198 Horse Money (Cavalo Dinheiro), 133, 144, 147 humanism, 63, 76 I Walked with a Zombie, 188, 189, 191, 192, 199 I’m Going Home (Vou Para Casa), 76, 80 IBERMEDIA, 249, 251 ICA (Portuguese Film Institute), 142, 143, 146, 240, 242, 245–248 identity

280

Index European, 11, 120, 125 national, 2, 7, 101, 108, 116, 253 Portuguese, 80, 111 sexual, 194, 198 immigrant(s), 89, 102, 105, 108, 117, 120, 139, 182 immigration 102, 105, 108, 111, 112, 144; see also emigration, migration imperialism, 74, 75, 83, 84, 202 In Vanda’s Room (No Quarto de Vanda), 136, 140–147, 186 Instituto Camões, 246 internationalization, 2, 6–10, 13, 241, 246, 248 intertextual (also intertextuality), 78, 83, 144, 146 Islam, 53, 54, 58, 65 Islamic, 54, 60, 61 Island of Love, 203 Italy, 143, 163, 242, 248 Jane Eyre, 188 Jeonju (film festival), 146, 147 Jew(s), 57 Jewish, 79, 103, 104, 117 Journey to the Beginning of the World (Viagem ao princípio do mundo), 75, 80, 81, 84 Judeo-Christian, 68, 77, 85 Kaurismäki, Aki, 132, 133 King Sebastian, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 63–65 La Vie en Rose (La môme), 96 Labour on the Douro River (Douro, Faina Fluvial), 10, 48, 69, 70, 126 Lacan, Jacques, 229

Latin American cinema, 13, 239, 246, 250 Lemière, Jacques, 36, 37, 46, 119 Letter, The (A Carta), 76, 80, 81 Levinas, Emmanuel, 186 Light Drops (Gotejar da Luz), 13, 206–220 Lisbon, 11, 17, 18, 40, 44, 54, 58, 59, 62, 91, 92, 94, 120–125, 128–132, 139, 140, 144, 185, 188, 190, 191, 202, 207, 214, 224, 225, 227, 231, 232, 234, 235 Lisbon Story, 116, 122–125, 128, 130–132 literary adaptation(s), 74, 78, 253, 254 Llull, Ramon, 174–175 Locarno (film festival), 2, 144 London (film festival), 176, 246 Lopes, Fernando, 39, 44, 95, 118 Lopes, Nuno, 6 Lourenço, Eduardo, 117–118 Love Torn in Dream (Combat d’Amour en Songe), 168, 173, 174, 177 low-budget, 135, 136, 138, 141–143, 147 Lusiads, The (Os Lusíadas), 54–56, 59, 223 Lusitania Illusion (Fantasia Lusitana), 133 Luso-African, 221 Luso-Brazilian, 2, 239–243, 248–255 Lusophone world, 133, 239, 240, 252, 253, 254 Lusophony, 220 lusotropicalism, 208, 228 Luxembourg, 117 Maastricht Treaty, 118, 120 Macedo, António, 95, 96 Madredeus, 124

281

Index Magic Mirror (Espelho Mágico), 81 Malkovich, John, 59 Manoel’s Destinies (Les Destins de Manoel), 183 Medeiros, Maria de, 113, 127, 152 MEDIA, 120, 249, 251 melancholia, 94, 155, 220, 221 melodrama (film genre), 6, 33, 34, 38, 40, 42, 93, 101, 157 Memory of Appearances (Mémoire des apparences), 167, 173, 174 Middle East, 62 migrant(s), 11, 102, 105, 110, 117 migration, 12, 80, 250, 254; see also emigration, immigration minimalism, 135 modernity, 11, 80, 85, 107, 108, 112, 115, 116, 124, 233 Monteiro, João César, 44, 45, 51, 138 Moreira, Ana, 152, 153, 159, 162, 163 Mouraria, 91 Mozambique, 16, 18, 27, 105, 115, 206–209, 212, 225, 254 Murmuring Coast, The (A Costa dos Murmúrios), 220, 230, 233 Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm, 225 Muslim(s), 57, 74, 103, 104 Mutants, The (Os Mutantes), 152, 156–164 My Case (Mon Cas), 53, 76–78, 83 Mysteries of Lisbon (Mistérios de Lisboa), 12, 167–183 neoliberalism, 5, 119, 133, 241, 251 Netherlands, 117 New State (Estado Novo), 31, 39, 40, 47, 50, 71, 87, 95, 115–129, 187, 206, 212, 228, 241

New York, 91 New York (film festival), 45, 246 Nights (Noites), 142 No, or the Vain Glory of Command (Non, ou a Vã Glória de Mandar), 53, 54, 60, 63, 64, 75, 78 Nós por Cá Todos Bem, 39, 44 nostalgia, 104, 108, 111, 206, 225 Of Time and the City, 131 Old Man of Belém, The (O Velho do Restelo), 126 Old Man of Restelo, 54, 55 Oliveira, Manoel de, 4, 7–10, 11, 39, 47–65, 68–84, 113, 126–130, 132, 133, 159, 177, 182 Ornithologist, The (O Ornitólogo), 2 Oú Gît Votre Sourire Enfoui?, 146 Oulman, Alain, 95 Our Beloved Month of August (Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto), 2, 9, 10, 33–46 Our Man (O Nosso Homem), 140, 147 PALOPs, 207 Pandora Films, 143 Papas, Irene, 59 Paris, 96, 99, 101, 105, 108, 110, 112, 118, 178 Party, 76, 79, 80 Past and Present (O Passado e o Presente), 50, 72, 73 period drama (film genre), 178 Pessoa, Fernando, 67–69, 74–76, 85 Phantom, The (O Fantasma), 2 Piaf, Edith, 96 pimba (music genre), 33, 34, 40, 41, 109 Pimentel, Vasco, 40, 43

282

Index Poland, 171 Porto, 11, 47, 48, 69, 121, 126–132, 146 Porto of my Childhood (Porto da minha infância), 11, 116, 126–132 Portuguese Cinematheque 245; see also Cinemateca Portuguesa Portuguese School, 7, 138, 182 post-colonialism, 9, 12, 13, 116, 133, 205, 207, 209, 219, 220, 221, 240 post-imperial, 206, 209, 220 postcard(s), 110, 122, 123 Prague, 54 prestige, 96–98 Preto e Branco, 220 propaganda, 95, 115 Rabbit Hunters, The (Caça ao Coelho com Pau), 140, 146 racism, 102, 105, 112, 199, 200, 211, 215, 224,  Rancière, Jacques, 10, 30, 34, 35, 37, 41–45, 186 Ray, 96 realism, 7, 12, 51, 113, 126, 156, 159, 181, 224, 225 Rebecca, 193 Red Line (Linha Vermelha), 9, 10, 21–26, 31 Redemption, 34 Régio, José, 52, 53, 63, 72, 77–79 Reis, António, 138 Restlessness (Inquietude), 76, 80, 81 Rite of Spring (Acto da Primavera), 39, 44, 50, 53, 71, 72, 75, 77, 82, 84 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 12, 156, 157 Rocha, Paulo, 95, 118 Rodrigues, Amália 6, 87, 89, 90, 97, 106, 109, 110, 113

Rodrigues, João Pedro, 2, 6, 246 Ruiz, Raúl, 12, 167–171, 174–183 Russia, 57, 153, 163 Salazar, 53, 70, 84, 89, 95, 105, 117, 187, 198, 206, 212 Salazarista, 89 San Sebastián (film festival), 176 Sandrelli, Stefania, 59 São Paulo (film festival), 176 Satin Slipper, The (Le Soulier de Satin), 53, 54, 73–78, 83 Schengen Agreement, 118, 120, 254 Sebastianism 54; see also King Sebastian Second Life, 119 Shakespeare, William, 63, 79, 115 Silveira, Leonor, 58 Sintra, 170, 171, 173 slowness, 141 small nation(s), 1–6, 9, 10, 132 Soares, Mário, 19 Soares dos Reis, António, 130 Song of Lisbon (A Canção de Lisboa), 9 Sousa Santos, Boaventura de, 118, 124, 213 Spain, 5, 54, 75, 122, 123, 248, 254 State of Things, The (Der Stand der Dinge), 169, 225 Stromboli, 189, 195, 196 surrealism, 170 Suza, Linda de, 106, 109, 110 Swan (Cisne), 153, 156, 162–165 Sweet Exorcism (Sweet Exorcism Lamento da Vida Jovem), 140, 147 Sweet Nightmare (Pesadelo Cor-de-Rosa), 119 Switzerland, 117, 143

283

Index Tabu, 2, 9, 13, 221, 223, 224, 227–231, 235–237, 240, 243, 254 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, 225 Tagus River, 58, 59, 122 Talking Picture, A (Um Filme Falado), 53, 58–63, 65, 75, 84 Tarrafal, 140, 146 Tarrafal (prison), 187, 198, 200, 202 Tarzan do 5º Esquerdo, O 227, 228 Teles, Leonor, 3 Territory, The, 167, 168–170, 176 terrorism, 27, 30, 62 Three Crowns of the Sailor (Les Trois Couronnes du Matelot), 171 Three Lives and Only One Death (Trois vies et une seule mort), 174 Time Regained (Le Temps Retrouvé), 176 Tomaz, Cláudia, 142 Torre Bela, 21–25, 31 tourism, 11, 59, 125, 130, 131 touristic, 122, 124 tradition, 6, 25, 28, 33, 89, 90, 93, 96, 97, 99, 109, 110, 124, 132, 159, 164, 169, 228, 229, 254 Trance (Transe), 153, 155, 161–165 transnational, 1, 2, 8, 11, 69, 73, 76, 77, 83, 84, 113, 116, 117, 124, 132, 168, 181, 182, 239, 240, 241, 242, 247, 251, 253–255 transnational cinema(s), 13, 240, 242 trauma, 13, 93, 133, 202, 206, 218, 220, 221 Trêpa, Jorge, 127, 128 Trêpa, Ricardo, 63 TV, 18–20, 24, 25, 39, 75, 77, 99, 103, 143, 146, 176, 177, 245, 247

Two Brothers, My Sister (Três Irmãos), 152, 155, 157, 160 UK, 176 Uncertainty Principle, The (O Princípio da Incerteza), 81 universalist, 11, 68, 71, 82, 83 Urbano, Luís, 245, 246 USA, 2, 27, 76, 84, 117, 176 Vendrell, Fernando, 13, 206, 207, 220 Venice (film festival), 2, 6, 10, 63, 245, 246 Ventura Films, 144 Vieira, António, 55, 57, 63, 68, 76 Vieira, Maria, 101, 107 Villaverde, Teresa, 3, 7, 12, 151, 152, 154–166, 206 Walk the Line, 96 Wallenstein, Catarina, 109–111 Water and Salt (Água e Sal), 152, 153, 162–164 Wenders, Wim, 11, 116, 122, 125, 128, 130, 131, 169, 170, 225 Word and Utopia (Palavra e Utopia), 75 world cinema(s), 2, 8, 74, 75 World Trade Center, 75 World War I, 125 World War II, 117 Yvone Kane, 13, 240, 252, 254 zombie (film genre), 189, 201

284