Portugal's Global Cinema

Industry, History and Culture

Mariana Liz

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786722751
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Portuguese cinema has become increasingly prominent on the international film festival circuit, proving the country's size belies its cultural impact. From the prestige of directors Manoel de Oliveira, Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes, to box-office hit La Cage Doree, aspects of Portuguese national cinema are widely visible although the output is comparatively small compared to European players like the UK, Germany and France. Considering this strange discrepancy prompts the question: how can Portuguese cinema be characterised and thought about in a global context?
Accumulating expertise from an international group of scholars, this book investigates the shifting significance of the nation, Europe and the globe for the way in which Portuguese film is managed on the international stage. Chapters argue that film industry professionals and artisans must navigate complex globalised systems that inform their filmmaking decisions. Expectations from multi-cultural audiences, as well as demands from business investors and the criteria for critical accolades put pressure on Portuguese cinema to negotiate, for example, how far to retain national identities on screen and how to interact with `popular' and `art' film tropes and labels. Exploring themes typical of Portuguese visual culture - including social exclusion and unemployment, issues of realism and authenticity, and addressing Portugal's postcolonial status - this book is a valuable study of interest to the ever-growing number of scholars looking outside the usual canons of European cinema, and those researching the ongoing implications of national cinema's global networks.

1

Filming Narratives Becoming Events: Documentary and the ‘Emplotments’ of the Carnation Revolution

Luís Trindade

This chapter analyses the ways in which documentary film engaged with the 1974–75 Carnation Revolution in Portugal through both the direct involvement of filmmakers in the events and in more recent efforts to critically revisit the militant images shot at the time. Whereas the former has led to the creation of important documents for the history of this political event and of the forms of activism (political and aesthetic) that pervaded it, the latter constitute good opportunities to question the role of documentary film in the social memory of the revolution. These films go well beyond a mere representation, or commentary, of the event. In fact, they contribute to the event’s ‘emplotment’, a concept Hayden White (1987) uses to ground historical knowledge in narrative forms, thus establishing a close relationship not only between historiography and literature, but also between all kinds of fictional and non-fictional narratives. In this sense, the chapter’s main argument is that even in self-reflexive films, as the ones we are discussing, the ways in which the event presented itself dramatically had a decisive impact in the forms films dramatized the Revolution by giving it a plot. In other words, even when filmmakers positioned themselves critically in relation to the revolutionary process, the latter’s development played a constitutive role in the final structure of the narratives. But before discussing these films and their impact on history and memory, it is useful to discuss how complex the Carnation Revolution really was, in order to then be able to assess how its complexity represented a challenge to both historical and filmic narratives.

Narratives of the Carnation Revolution: an introduction

The military coup of 25 April 1974 was highly unexpected. Not only did the regime seem to have been taken by surprise, the people came out to the streets not knowing what to anticipate. As soon as the movement of the captains (Movimento das Forças Armadas, from here on, MFA) made public its very limited programme – the end of the dictatorship and of the colonial wars in Africa – a bond was immediately established among improbable allies: the soldiers and the crowd, as well as several political forces which, in normal circumstances, would stand in opposition to each other. In this atmosphere, during the first couple of months after the coup, the country experienced what many describe as a honeymoon period: a consensus over the end of 48 years of authoritarianism and 13 years of war. Political activity was intense, but the spirit was celebratory and fraternal.

Over the summer, however, the mood started to change. The captains’ minimal programme started to be perceived as too broad, and the initial consensus hid important disagreements over key aspects of the process. Gradually, two political lines, clearly defined against each other, started to form: the designated president, general Spínola, and his military and political entourage, on the one hand, and the MFA, on the other. At stake was the issue of decolonization and the different solutions to be found after the cease-fire in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. Whereas the captains seemed, in their majority, to favour the full independence of the colonies, the old general championed a transcontinental federation, or what he envisaged as a Portuguese-speaking Commonwealth. The revolution, in this initial context, had two heads and two voices.

This mounting tension would come to a closure on 28 September 1974: the president precipitated the confrontation by calling a demonstration in Lisbon with what he defined as the ‘silent majority’ of the Portuguese population – an initiative the MFA took as a covered counter-coup, blocking the access to the capital, and forcing Spínola to resign and leave the country. From then on, the general would continue to act as a hidden player, conspiring from the outside.

Meanwhile, the political situation was becoming more complex, as economic and social issues would soon add to the colonial question as sites of struggle. At the same time, however, the ideologies in contention were becoming better defined. From a contention between a conservative general and a group of inexperienced young captains – both with hidden and/or undetermined political agendas – the split was now, and increasingly so, between communists and their model of socialism, on the one hand, and social-democrats (even if these called themselves socialists too) in favour of Europeanization and parliamentary democracy, on the other.

The second important moment of clarification came, once again, as the result of a period of mounting tension and by the hand of general Spínola: on 11 March 1975, ‘Spínolist’ parachutists flew over Lisbon and tried to topple the revolutionary government. The coup was however soon dismantled and more radical groups involved in the process, including the Communist Party and the most ‘progressive’ members of the MFA, gained the upper hand. Only a few days after these events, the banks and other key sectors of the economy were nationalized and the country semi-officially started a path towards socialism. It was the beginning of PREC, the Processo Revolucionário em Curso (literally translated as the ‘ongoing revolutionary process’). Meanwhile, the MFA had committed itself to elections to the constituent assembly, symbolically scheduled for 25 April 1975 – the first anniversary of the revolution. The victory of the moderate forces (socialists and popular democrats) over the communists and the far left, however, complicated the situation further. Not only was the revolution divided between two opposing legitimacies – the majority in parliament and the government of General Vasco Gonçalves, close to the Communist Party – but also, and even more dramatically, those same divisions were projected onto the MFA, which, from then on, became a broken army.

This was the situation during the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975. While, in Africa, new countries started celebrating their independence (Mozambique in June, Angola in November), Portugal was in turmoil: in parallel with mounting tension on the streets, the occupation of houses, land estates and factories, contention between reformist social democrats and revolutionary communists spread from parties to the government and split the MFA into two increasingly incompatible sides. Events succeeded vertiginously and the order of political institutions was challenged to the limit, sometimes with dangerous consequences, other times leading to bizarre events: the siege of parliament by construction workers is a good example, as are the episodes in which the government went on strike or decided to bomb the transmitter of a Catholic radio broadcaster, which was occupied by workers.

The country seemed on the verge of civil war and, in fact, events precipitated on 25 November 1975. In what remains a very confusing episode, an act of provocation by the conservative forces of the MFA led some radical officers to occupy strategic targets in Lisbon. The conservatives, well prepared, as if waiting for the first opportunity, responded vigorously. The radicals, weakened by the decision of the Communist Party not to intervene (or allow its units to do so), were easily dismantled. Meanwhile, on TV, a leading figure of the moderate MFA, Ernesto Melo Antunes, declared the Communist Party ‘fundamental’ to the future of Portuguese democracy. This was a compromise that, by removing the most radical officers (and their socialist project) paved the way for parliamentary democracy, including the communists in the new regime and thus avoiding what would probably become a civil war.

It could be argued that the most relevant aspect of the narrative I have just told is the way in which it struggles with both the frenetic succession of events and the multiplicity of protagonists involved. What I have presented so far is an effort to reproduce the most familiar, although not necessarily neutral, account of the PREC (cf. Rezola 2007). The weight given to some episodes and characters or the terminology used may differ whether one adopts a more reformist or a more revolutionary perspective. What I mean by a familiar account of the PREC, however, does not depend on political interpretation, but rather on its historical meaning. What is familiar, then, is this idea that the revolution was frantic, exhilarating or frightening, but always somehow excessive. Frenzy, or excess, is thus what makes the narrative so challenging, with so many protagonists and episodes populating one single plot. Among the protagonists we find: Spínola and his nemesis, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, as well as the other key officers involved, president Costa Gomes, prime-ministers Vasco Gonçalves and Pinheiro de Azevedo, well known members of the MFA like Melo Antunes, not to mention all the politicians representing the most important political forces, like the communist and socialist leaders Álvaro Cunhal and Mário Soares. And then, the dates and events: 25 April 1974, 28 September 1974, 11 March 1975, 25 April 1975, the ‘Hot Summer’ of 1975 and 25 November 1975.

Despite this proliferation of figures and events and the narrative challenges they pose, one may wonder what this same narrative would look like without them. For it may actually be the case that these people and what they represent, these moments and what they mean, work as a metonymy for much broader phenomena; they are narrative crutches that allow us to make some sense of the very complex whole that is the Carnation Revolution. In other words, despite the hectic narrative they compose, these names and dates may hide an even bigger multiplicity of events and protagonists. With all its profusion of facts, my initial narrative may, after all, be seen as a simplification. For successive generations of Portuguese people, this simplification was mainly experienced through the broadcast of brief five-minute summaries encapsulating the whole of the revolutionary process, year after year, on national TV on the occasion of the anniversary of the 25 April. The journalistic rhythm imposed on the short piece, just as the short narrative summarizing the whole revolution, necessarily selects one dimension and leaves out other important aspects of the historical event. It is not only that a proper articulation of the process would require a slower pace, but also that given the historical specificity of the PREC, the confinement of its history to a linear narrative is in itself a choice that leaves out important elements. In other words, more than a narrative with more names and dates (or other names and dates), a proper narrative of the Carnation Revolution would probably have to stand without identifiable particular events and individual protagonists altogether.

This is my key argument: as a restricted aspect of the PREC, the political and military protagonists and the important dates are truly just the tip of the iceberg of something much more intense and widely participated. I am of course referring to the vast grassroots activism that is usually ignored, or only very superficially mentioned in the histories of the revolution, starting with my own initial narrative: the mounting tension on the streets, the occupation of houses, land and factories, that is, the generalized challenge to private property and capitalism that made such an impression on those who witnessed the revolution at the time.¹ The PREC, from this perspective, would be less the institutional process of politicians, militaries and political turning points, and more of a massive and constant collective participation, impossible to quantify and with no distinctive protagonists; forms of activism unfolding in the everyday, with no easily identifiable chronological markers or breaks. More than a question of numbers or even rhythm, what historical narratives find difficult to come to terms with, is the account of the depth and intensity of such a sudden transformation in Portuguese society. Depth and intensity, here, can only be truly measured against its own historical background, that of a country that seemed lost to twentieth-century history and of a society perceived as immobile. To put it very bluntly, the PREC seems to require a narrative-shock enabling us to tell the history of a social eruption that tried to carry out in only 18 months political transformations that had been on hold for 48 years (which also brings us back to the ways in which the dramatic presentation of the event constituted a challenge to filmmakers and other narrators, as mentioned in the introduction).

I am aware of how schematic this temporal quantification is. Chrono-logically, 48 years and 18 months are of course incommensurable. Yet, in terms of the narrative, one is entitled to ask what impact a five-minute TV summary, or a brief written introduction such as this one, has on the historical perception of an event as participated and as intense as the PREC. To start with, it necessarily dramatizes it, as my initial pages demonstrate. It is often said that the revolution resembled a film. It was, in fact, the object of many spectacular films (see Costa 2002): it had a plot filled with sudden shifts and uncertain outcomes; protagonists, both heroes and anti-heroes; dramatic settings; moments of humour; violence and emotion. But what we should be asking is whether the PREC was filmic because it had drama, plot or protagonists, or because drama, plot and protagonists were the easiest forms film found to narrate the PREC. The answer is both. The documentary films narrating the revolution would not have been able to become the figuration of this event if the elements of the narrative were not somehow in the actual event in the first place. Conversely, however, we are entitled to suspect that what became the dominant narrative representing the revolution, and thus the ways in which the latter was historicized and appropriated by social memory, was precisely the combination of those aspects of the event that lend themselves more effectively to filmic representation: dramatic events and protagonists.

In what follows, I will start by discussing two recent documentary films that try to grasp some of the challenges posed to filmmakers in 1974–75, before moving, in the last section, to a close analysis of two of the most relevant films made during that period.

Scenes from the class struggle in Portugal

José Filipe Costa critiques these filmic narratives in his meta-docume- ntary Linha Vermelha/Red Line (2012), where the impact and making of Thomas Harlan’s Torre Bela (1977), one of the most emblematic films ever made about the PREC, are closely analysed (see Baptista 2015). In Red Line, Costa explores the twofold relationship between revolutionary events and militant cinema – a good example of the PREC as a historical challenge to filmmakers and, simultaneously, their films as a historical ‘emplotment’ (White 1987) of the PREC – by looking in detail at the ways in which Harlan, filming a very specific episode (a case study, one might say: the occupation of a large aristocratic landed-estate by peasants and the following creation of a cooperative) interfered in the course of events by triggering actions, inventing protagonists and thus dramatizing the whole story of the occupation. Harlan’s problem – the specific challenge posed to his film by the form of the event – was to do with the routines of the cooperative: in between the more dramatic, but infrequent, moments of actual occupation, discussions, assemblies, etc., not much happened. As such, what went on in the estate during the occupation – the repetitive, dull, tasks of rural life – did not constitute the matter of a good plot.

Costa does all he can to emphasize the distance between his own film and Harlan’s, not only by historicizing it – namely by confronting the utopian drive behind the occupation with an utterly apolitical present – but especially by disclosing the procedures of his own work in research, shooting and editing: the voiceover directly addresses the figure of Harlan, the presence of Red Line’s camera (and microphone) is given away more than once, and the editing table and both films’ reels are allowed to become protagonists in their own right (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1Red Line: critical visions of Torre Bela

What Costa is most concerned with, however, is the deconstruction of Harlan’s own work procedures and ethos. It is particularly interesting to notice how Red Line’s reflexivity contrasts with the transparent relation Thomas Harlan tried to establish between Torre Bela, the film, and the occupation of the eponymous property. In this ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author Bio
• Endorsement
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Framing the Global Appeal of Contemporary Portuguese Cinema
• 1 Filming Narratives Becoming Events: Documentary and the ‘Emplotments’ of the Carnation Revolution
• 2 Our Beloved Month of August: Between the Filming of the Real and the Reality of Filming
• 3 Political Oliveira
• 4 Portugal, Europe and the World: Geopolitics and the Human Condition in Manoel de Oliveira’s Films
• 5 Amália (2008): Stories of a Singer and Tales of a National Cinema
• 6 La Cage Dorée/The Gilded Cage: A Franco-Portuguese Comedy of Integration
• 7 Cinema and the City in European Portugal
• 8 Contextualizing Pedro Costa’s Digital Filmmaking
• 9 Broken Links: The Cinema of Teresa Villaverde
• 10 Mysteries of Raúl Ruiz’s Portugal: Territory, Littoral, City and Memory Bridge
• 11 White Faces/Black Masks: The White Woman’s Burden in Pedro Costa’s Down to Earth
• 12 Light Drops: Portugal Critically Reviewing the Colonial Past?
• 13 Colonialism as Fantastic Realism in Tabu
• 14 Luso-Brazilian Co-Productions: Rescue and Expansion
• Bibliography