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Mémoires cinématographiques de la Révolution portugaise et de la décolonisation

[Cinematic Memories of the Portuguese Revolution and of Decolonization]

Edited by Benjamin Léon, Mickaël Robert-Gonçalves and Raquel Schefer

This thematic issue proposes, through several cases studies, to look back on depictions of the Portuguese Revolution of 1974-75 and of decolonization and its consequences in cinema from those years until today. Since the 1970s, sometimes conflicting memories of the so-called Carnation Revolution have continued to be a stimulus to the imagination of filmmakers and artists. For Paul Ricoeur, “rethinking has to be a way of annulling temporal distance.” To rethink the Revolution would thus be to make it live in the present, to bring together past and present and interrogate the effects of the passage of time on images, narratives and cinema itself. It is also a question of situating this history in a process of geographical and trans-disciplinary imbrication. By taking into account the process of decolonizing countries formerly controlled by Portugal, along with an analysis capable of seeing the effects of this in the arts and the media, it becomes possible to blend multiple methodological approaches and thus to understand the ties between cinema, art and politics.