Memories of the Change: the Post-Revolutionary Period and Portuguese Cinema

Abstract

Almost four decades after the 1974 revolution, it seems increasingly imperious to carry out a critical analysis of the mainstream discourses on the transformations that occurred in the Portuguese cultural field. Following from recent researches regarding the arts of that period, this paper aims to revisit the continuities and changes in the national cinema produced since then. Simultaneously, it is intended to question the broader relation between political revolution and artistic/intellectual production in the post-revolutionary Portugal. In a first moment, a contextualisation concerning the diverging views of the role of the artists/intellectuals in the Portuguese public sphere after the 1974 revolution will be made. Then, those perspectives will be confronted with recent studies on post-25th-of-April Portuguese cinema, in order to analyse the relations between political change and cinema in the period under consideration.