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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Portuguese Cinema and Revolution (1974-1982)
Text.Serial.Journal
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Projects & Abstracts
2019-03-01
2021-09-02
2019-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Mickaël Robert-Gonçalves
2019/03/01
Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle
2036-461X
32
en
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Portuguese Cinema and Revolution (1974-1982)
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16209/16674
19
Portuguese cinema and Revolution (1974-1982)
Mickaël Robert-Gonçalves / Ph.D. Thesis Abstract1
Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle




   The Portuguese Revolution, known as the Carnation Revolution, started on
25 April 1974 and has also rolled out in cinematographic institutions and in
the alternative production of films known as “intervention” films. Cooperatives
are the basic structures of this cinematographic production, mostly revolving
around documentaries. Filmmakers would get together in different cooperatives
(Cinequipa, Cinequanon, Grupo Zero) through ties of friendships or because
of political affinity, where they would share their skills and equipment. These
cooperatives of filmmakers produced more than a hundred films and programs
for both cinema and television, up until the end of the 1970s. Focusing on this
short and liberating time of the recent Portuguese history, this work aims to
establish that the idea of revolution, understood as a process, but also as an event
and a rupture, has provoked a specific film production. The chronological area
thus corresponds to the years of the Portuguese Revolution of 1974-1975 and its
upheavals until 1982.
   To grasp this singular moment in all its complexity, cinema and politics are
analysed in their interplay with the balance of power existing between regime,
institutions, and cinema world. The first part is dedicated to the history of the
New Portuguese Cinema of the 1960s, highlighting both the existing dynamics
between different generations of filmmakers and the roles played by the cinema
industry and the State in the debates for a new legislation of Portuguese cinema.
The process started in 1974, and thus appears both as a continuation – the power
was somehow already taken by the filmmakers before 1974 – and as a rupture:
films are different, and filmmakers choose various strategies. Conflicts and power
issues track the urge for a revolutionary cinema able to follow the radical changes
in society. Filmmakers would then question the possibilities of creation in that
context: experiences of collective production, alternative distribution, and new
practices of militant cinema are all examples of different ncreative opportunities
   The study of various films, and the confrontation of cinema with the revolution,
offer many creative potentials: from anticapitalistic movies, which try to take part


1
 Ph.D. Thesis supervised by Professor Nicole Brenez. For information: mickael.robertgoncalves@
gmail.com

                                                   Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIX, no. 32, Spring 2019
                             Mickaël Robert-Gonçalves


in the process by provoking the audience, to the uses of Direct cinema, which was
the main strategy used by the cooperatives for television. At that time, specific
attention was paid to the countryside, especially during the Land Reform, and
some movies were relevant examples of an “ethno-militant” cinema combining
the ambitions of both ethnographic and militant cinemas. The social movements
that occurred in revolutionary Portugal were also interesting material for some
filmmakers, who made the meeting between cinema and feminism, or cinema
and queer movement easier. Finally, the success of Good Portuguese People (Bom
Povo Português, 1981) by Rui Simões, marks an aesthetical rupture in response
to political change.
   This dissertation has a double ambition: first, it is important to shed light on
this underestimated part of Portuguese cinema, which remains unknown, with
the help of testimonies of filmmaker and producers from that period. Then, by
observing the practical and visual exchanges between historical process and
aesthetics, the paths explored here aim to contribute to enriching the history of
engaged cinema.




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