Deadline: 30th June, 2015
In 2008 Tiago Baptista published a relevant essay with the suggestive title The invention of Portuguese Cinema. In the form of a photographic album he warned us of the “permanent invention” of an object called “Portuguese Cinema”, which should establish an essentialist idea of identity to the films made in Portugal.
The obsession with finding a national specificity in Portuguese Cinema has been recurrent over the last 120 years of film production in Portugal. The Estado Novo created during its 48 years of dictatorship a specific notion of Portuguese Cinema that was consecrated in 1948 by means of the Law 2027. Its Article 11 defines three criteria that should be kept in mind in a Portuguese film: “to be spoken in Portuguese”, “to be produced in studios and laboratories (…) on Portuguese territory” and “to be representative of the Portuguese spirit, reflecting its psychology, customs, traditions, history, collective soul of the people, or be inspired by its great themes and universal culture.”
Despite variations that are more or less well-known, this idea has generally survived until the present day, surpassing the process of Europeanization within the New Portuguese Cinema, as well as the ruptures and recurrent new beginnings after the revolutionary period. It still remained in the new paradigm of the 1980s and consolidated with the international production system adopted by Paulo Branco, or was defended in the statements with regard to the so-called Portuguese School.
The robustness of many of the aesthetic qualities and particular mode attributed to film productions in Portuguese Cinema from the 1960s to the present day, especially when it comes to critical reception, the canonization of a certain cinephilia and film culture, and the consolidation of distribution circuits, favoured the establishing of genealogies, affiliations and affinities in Portuguese Cinema, framing its portray.
This thematic dossier of Aniki aims to bring together essays that analyze and reflect on the different ideas and conceptions of Portuguese Cinema that have been outlined in events, texts and films over the last decades, taking into account not only critical texts but also film legislation, political projects, public policies, aesthetic references and artistic trends, films produced in international co-productions, authorial projects, among others.
Submitted articles will be selected and subjected to a blind peer review process.
Please consult the Author Guidelines and the Section Policies information page before submitting your complete paper.
The call for papers to Aniki’s different sections is constantly open, including articles not related to this thematic dossier.
To submit or for FAQ go to: aim.org.pt/aniki/