Fifty years ago, the “Carnation Revolution” ended four decades of fascism in Portugal and initiated an experiment that fascinated the Western world: an “Ongoing Revolutionary Process” to bring about a utopian sociopolitical structure. Another revolution was also underway by 1974: a wave of films that, under the weight of censorship, broke distinctions in how reality and fiction were framed onscreen. Before the notion of “hybrid cinema” gained traction worldwide, Portuguese cinema was using tools from documentary filmmaking to create fiction (and vice-versa) and offer a new realm for the senses; like a revolutionary process, it threaded a link between daily lives and the political confluences affecting their course.
Under the influence of Manoel de Oliveira—who was continually questioning the lines between life and its representation—the “Cinema Novo” generation expanded upon the international “new wave” innovations of the 1960s amid a suffocating social environment at home and a brutal colonial war in Africa. After the revolution, the movement focused on working-class communities with renewed dignity, and attracted foreign filmmakers, such as Robert Kramer and Thomas Harlan, to capture Portugal’s feverish political atmosphere.
The independent spirit of Portuguese cinema would continue to break new ground with João César Monteiro’s fable-inspired works, as well as documentaries by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, Manuela Serra, and António Campos, which redefined the art of the real, and in turn influenced filmmakers like João Pedro Rodrigues, Pedro Costa, and Miguel Gomes. This series brings light to an aesthetic tradition wherein making films—and watching them—becomes a political, existential gesture and creates a space of resistance to homogeneous, oppressive forces that constrict us in our lives—a pursuit, in a word, of freedom.
Organized by Francisco Valente, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film. Thanks to Rui Machado, Tiago Baptista, Joana de Sousa, Arquivo Nacional de Imagens em Movimento, Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema, and José Manuel Costa.
Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL.
Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black, with major funding from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), and The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
