The fortieth anniversary of Portuguese decolonisation of Africa has acted as a catalyst in discussing how Portugal “imagined” colonial politics through moving images and how these propagandist portrayals began to be questioned by the Portuguese “Novo Cinema”. This can be seen in works that were censured and prohibited. Portuguese colonial cinematographic representations were later challenged by films made in the context of the liberation movements and by images that emerged out of the national cinematographic projection (Frodon) of the new Portuguese-speaking African countries. This conference intends to go some way in highlighting common aspects in the emergence of cinema in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, which have all been studied individually.

Argument 

The fortieth anniversary of Portuguese decolonisation of Africa has acted as a catalyst in discussing how Portugal ‘imagined’ colonial politics through moving images and how these propagandist portrayals began to be questioned by the Portuguese ‘Novo Cinema’.  This can be seen in works that were censured and prohibited. Portuguese colonial cinematographic representations were later challenged by films made in the context of the liberation movements and by images that emerged out of the national cinematographic projection (Frodon) of the new Portuguese-speaking African countries.  

This conference intends to go some way in highlighting common aspects in the emergence of cinema in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, which have all been studied individually.  In addition, it will provide a reflection on the roots of the emergence of the ‘New Cinema’ from the militancy that uses film as a means of changing society and focussing on the birth [in images] of new nations, being projected by the programs of the Marxist parties that assumed power. The aim of the conference is also to analyse how, through ‘Third Cinema’, the ‘Cinema Novo’ of Brazil and Cuban Cinema, more specifically, in addition to the authors of the French ‘Rive Gauche da Nouvelle Vague’, all played a role in questioning and rupturing the colonial representations of the Portuguese dictatorship and, most of all, in the formation of the projects and cinematographic archives of emerging African nations. 

This conference also intends to question, apart from the reasoning of nationalist propaganda, how did these new countries tell the story of their own history through film and cinema (Godard/Ishaghpour)?  Finally, it will be discussed how, given the ‘urgency of the present’, the redemption of the past (Benjamin) is realised through a ‘cinema of resistance’ (Deleuze), such as that of Pedro Costa, and by other moving images artistic practises? 

Submission guidelines

Communication proposals (of up to 300 words) will be received

until the 21^th November 2015

through the conference email address (alephconferencia@gmail.com).  Proposals will be reviewed and decisions communicated early December.

Main topics

Examples of topics can be found below:

• Internationalist cinema and the filmed emergence of nations
• “Imagined” colonialisms. From colonial and militant propaganda cinema to a “cinema of resistance” (Deleuze)
• Contributions towards a genealogy of New Cinema(s). From nations to people
• (Post-)Colonial representations
• Intermediality on colonial and post-colonial representations and decolonization of the moving images
• From censorship processes to images “in spite of everything” (Didi-Huberman).
• (Post)colonial genre(s)
• Artistic practices and investigations regarding the “colonial archive”
• Neocolonialism in moving images

Coordinator

Maria do Carmo Piçarra

Organising committee 

• Lúcia Nagib, director of the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading
• João Paulo Silvestre, Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture, King’s College London
• Rosa Cabecinhas, Head of the PhD Program in Cultural Studies (University of Minho and University of Aveiro) and Associate Professor at the Social Sciences Institute, University of Minho
• Maria do Carmo Piçarra, postdoctoral researcher, Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading / Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho / CEC – FLUL / University of Lisbon
• Abdoolkarim Vakil, Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies & Department of History, King’s College London
• José da Costa Ramos, Professor at ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa 

Specialists and invited artists 

• Ana Balona de Oliveira, postdoctoral researcher, CEC – FLUL / University of Lisbon / Institute for Art History of the New University of Lisbon
• Catarina Laranjeiro, filmmaker and doctoral researcher, CES – University of Coimbra
• Daniel Barroca, artist
• Filipa César, artist
• José Manuel Costa, director of Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema
• Lee Grieveson, director of the Graduate Programme in Film Studies at University College London and co-principal investigator of  ‘Colonial Cinema: Moving Images of the British Empire’
• Maria Benedita Basto, professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 8
• Paulo Cunha, researcher, CEISXX – Universidade de Coimbra
• Pedro Costa, filmmaker
• Raquel Schefer, artist and professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
• Robert Stock, professor, University of Konstanz
• Ros Gray, theorist and lecturer in Fine Art (Critical Studies), Goldsmiths College, University of London
• Teresa Castro, art historian and professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3  

Supporting institutions

• Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading
• Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture, King’s College
• Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho
• Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema
• Aleph - Rede de investigação e conhecimento crítico da imagem colonial