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Publication
Portuguese cinema and its discontents: a view from the film archive
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Abstract(s)
The article revisits the main arguments and underlying premises of the protracted debate on ‘national art cinema’ that has shaped Portuguese film studies for many decades. Drawing on international scholarly work on national cinemas and on my own experience as a researcher in the National Archive of the Moving Images (ANIM) of the Portuguese Cinematheque (Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema), I argue for a definition of ‘Portuguese cinema’ that takes into account the vast collections of non-fiction films that have been excluded from this debate. My proposal entails a shift away from prescriptive to descriptive understandings of Portuguese cinema, thus recognising its diversity, in the past as well as in the present. I therefore endorse a conception of national cinema that takes heed of wider and deeper historical processes, international ‘constellations’ and other (often contested or unacknowledged) traditions and practices. The argument builds on the analysis of Adriano Ramos Pinto – Vinho do Porto (attributed title), a short non-fiction utility film made in the late 1930s that belongs to ANIM’s holdings.
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Keywords
film archive film history national cinema non-fiction Portuguese cinema utility film
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Sampaio, S. (2024). Portuguese cinema and its discontents: a view from the film archive. Studies in European Cinema. (Published online: 26 Oct 2024). DOI: 10.1080/17411548.2024.2420451