Photography © Tinta-da-China/ DR
Maria do Carmo Piçarra, professor at UAL and responsible for the free course Cinema History(s), presented his most recent book, entitled “Vento Leste: 'Luso-Orientalism(s)' in didatura films”, published by Tinta-da-China.
Analyzing the existing filmography, “Vento Leste” proposes that the scarcity of films about the 'Portuguese East' arises mainly from the symbolic value of these imagined communities, evoked with a certain indefiniteness because their relationship with the metropolis had long been in disintegration, based on projections and ruins. With the emergence of tensions between Portugal and India regarding the autonomy of 'Portuguese India', the filming of the eastern colonies arose from the need for the dictatorship to consolidate a Luso-Orientalist discourse, which, however, ignored local specificities and the myriad of differences between Africa and Asia and between the colonized territories in these regions.
Taking place between January and March 2024, at Escola das Artes, the free course Cinema History(s), guided by the researcher, will address the ways – censorship, financing policy for explicit propaganda or nationalist films, distribution and exhibition (particularly the case of SPN/SNI's Cinema Ambulante) – how the Estado Novo conditioned cinema.
