Nuno Lisboa, codirector of Doc’s Kingdom Seminar and teacher at Escola Superior de Artes e Design, Caldas da Rainha will join us for a screening of three contemporary Portuguese films: Andrea Sobreira’s ‘1971-1974′, Susana de Sousa Dias’ ’48’, and Salome Lamas’ ‘No Man’s Land’. Each film considers, in contrasting ways individual and collective traumatic memory. This program is presented as a selection from ‘Arrested History: New Portuguese Cinema’ at the Pacific Film Archive, with the support of Camões, Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua and the Department of Portuguese studies at UC Berkeley.

“Portuguese cinema has long been noted for its formal audacity and inventiveness. Yet it is only recently that filmmakers have begun to interrogate the dark period of Portuguese history that “ended in 1974, after four decades of dictatorship and the Colonial War.”
– Kathy Geritz, Film Curator, Pacific Film Archive

Drinks and Portuguese snacks lovingly provided by Elysian.

1971-1974, Andreia Sobreira (Portugal, 2011)

A former soldier during the Portuguese Colonial War describes photographs he took in Mozambique to his daughter, the filmmaker. (38 mins)

No Man’s Land, Salomé Lamas (Portugal, 2012)

A former mercenary in Mozambique, Spain, and El Salvador sits in an abandoned building, and tells the story of his life. (72 mins)

48, Susana de Sousa Dias (Portugal, 2009)

De Sousa Dias’s remarkable, hypnotic film is composed of photographs taken upon the arrest of political prisoners during the forty-eight years of the Portuguese dictatorial regime. (93 mins)