UC Portuguese Cinema, Culture and Identity

Lectures and Screenings

Lecturer: Miguel Cardoso

This theoretical course examines the historical conditions for the emergence of the most widespread representations of Portugal as an “imagined community”, and its place within a world system. It draws on Portuguese cinema, but also on a variety of cinematic and visual culture concepts to interrogate the ideas of coherence, continuity and closure that the idea of “Portugal” implies. 

Rather than a linear progression through Portuguese history and cinema, lessons are organised thematically, offering multiple and interconnected entry-points, and allowing for a continuous crossing over between films and other discourses and objects, both within and beyond the cultural field.  

Although they are interconnected, the course is divided between in-class lessons, where the main focus is on Portuguese culture, history and identity, and screenings at the national film archive (Cinemateca Portuguesa) and at the campus' cinema theatre, followed by a discussion focused mainly on the selection of films watched to approach their positioning in terms of aesthetical and period contexts and/or from cultural, sociological, political and historical perspectives.

Notwithstanding the exclusive presentation of local films, these classes aim to foster the students’ ability to develop a sense of critical analysis on a range of cinematic topics that echoes in other contemporary western European film production in the XX century.