Changing Perspective. The Transnational Dimension of Contemporary Portuguese Cinema

Abstract

Portuguese film tradition has been marked by a series of thematic and aesthetic features that appear, as signs of identity, in the films of its main filmmakers, such as Manoel de Oliveira, Paulo Rocha, Fernando Lopes, João César Monteiro, António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, Pedro Costa and Teresa Villaverde. Film critics usually study the relations and similarities in the work of these and other filmmakers in order to point out the elements that distinguish Portuguese cinema from other national cinemas. This approach, however, is incomplete in the context of globalization and post-modernity, because nowadays the present and future of national cinemas rely on their greater or lesser connection with the main global aesthetic and economic networks: thus, the greater the connection, the greater the distribution of films, which consequently helps a country and a culture to achieve a significant place in the contemporary geopolitics of cinema. Following this logic, the aim of this paper is to reverse the traditional approach of studies on national cinemas to rather explore the transnational linkages of Portuguese films and filmmakers.

Keywords

• Cinema Português, Cinema Nacional, Cinema Transnacional, Cinefilia, Cosmopolitismo