A Revolutionary Decade

This open access book is the first cultural history of women’s contributions to, and experiences of, Portuguese cinema and television work in the crucial decade of the 1974 Revolution and the transition to democracy.

The 1970s, the decade of Portugal’s democratic transition, was also foundational for Portuguese cinema and TV. After the 1974 Revolution, two female directors made landmark documentaries, and women were active founder members of film cooperatives, but most women still worked in traditionally ‘below-the-line’ roles such as editing, continuity, production, secretarial assistance, costume and set design, props and makeup.

This book brings these women’s stories to light as it foregrounds their perspectives on this transformational decade in Portuguese filmmaking. Relying on new interviews and archive research, the book reads between the lines of the male-authored histories, documents and films which built the national cinema canon to unearth female experiences and women’s creative input. The films discussed include: Nojo aos Cães (António de Macedo), O Recado (José Fonseca e Costa), Bom Povo Português (Rui Simões), Francisca (Manoel de Oliveira) and Silvestre (João César Monteiro), as well as collective cooperative work, such as As Armas e o Povo (Colectivo dos Trabalhadores de Actividade and A Lei da Terra (Grupo Zero), and TV series.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by United Kingdom Research Innovation (UKRI - Arts and Humanities Research Council).