Screening

RUINAS/RUINS

Screening + Q&A

Friday 1 March 2013, 6pm

Hitchcock Cinema (Arts One G.19)

Queen Mary, University of London

Mile End Road

London E1 4NS

As part of the Research Seminar on ‘Fantasy vs. Reality in Contemporary Portuguese Cinema’, QMUL will be screening the documentary film Ruinas/Ruins (Manuel Mozos, Portugal, 2009; with English subtitles).

Manuel Mozos was born in Lisbon in 1959 and has been making films since the 1980s. A graduate from the National School of Theatre and Drama, he has worked as an editor and as an actor in films by directors such as Miguel Gomes. A retrospective of his work was presented in the 2012 edition of the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival). Ruins is his 10^th film, “a wonderful entwinement of image and language about the decay and disappearance of everyday architecture in his home country”, as described by the Austrian initiative (http://www.viennale.at/en/series/focus-manuel-mozos)

We are delighted to announce the director will be in London to introduce his film. After the screening, Manuel Mozos will be joined by Kieron Corless (Sight and Sound), who will lead a Q&A session.

You can read more about the film here: http://mubi.com/films/ruins and here: http://www.indielisboa.com/news_detail.php?lang=2&id=160

Provisional Programme

Rooms and Times tbc; subject to changes.

Friday, 1 March 2013

14.00-15.00 Registration

15.00-17.00 Session 1: Portuguese auteurs and national identity

·       Paulo Viveiros (Lusófona) - The Portuguese film animation in the 21st century. The case of José Miguel Ribeiro.

·       Daniel Ribas (Bragança/Aveiro) - The Splendor of Portugal: identity and violence in João Canijo

·       Paulo Cunha (Coimbra) - Our beloved Portugal: identity, memory and fantasy in Miguel Gomes

·       Ana Isabel Soares (Algarve) - The Cine-Portugal of Edgar Pêra

18.00-20.00 Screening: Ruínas/Ruins (Manuel Mozos, 2009) – followed by Q&A with the director and Kieron Corless

Saturday, 2 March 2013

10.00-11.30 Session 2: Landscape and Cinema

·       Filipe Costa Luz (Lusófona) - Boundaries beyond space and sea: animated Portuguese landscapes

·       Filipa Rosário (Lisboa) - Landscape and Space in Zéfiro

·       Ana Francisca de Azevedo (Lisboa) - Screening the postcolonial encounter: landscapes of suture and politics of strangeness in contemporary Portuguese cinema

11.45-13.15 Session 3: Melancholy in Portuguese Film

·       Possidónio Cachapa (Lusófona) - The Melancholic Tendency For A Metaphorical Approach In Portuguese Cinema

·       Rita Benis (Lisboa) - Fantastic vs. documental: an ‘air de famille’ in Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angélica

·       Bárbara Barroso (Bragança/Vigo) - ‘Is it snow yet?’ The death of the author, the fantastic characters and the melancholic intertextuality of Snow White

13.15-14.15 Lunch Break

14.15-15.15 Session 4: Postcolonialism and the fantasy of the past

·       Nuno Barradas Jorge (Nottingham) - Life on the Island of the dead: Casa de Lava (1994) and the Portuguese postcolonial imagination

·       Glòria Salvadó-Corretger and Fran Benavente (Pompeu Fabra) - Fantasy as the other side of Reality. Phantom and History in Contemporary Portuguese Cinema

15.30-17.00 Session 5: The limits of cinema – locating realism

·       Vitor de Sousa (Minho) – Fantasia Lusitana by João Canijo: the fictional Portugal vs. the real country and the construction of identity

·       Inês Gil (Lusófona) - The atmosphere of sacredness in Gonçalo Tocha’s É na Terra não é na Lua

·       Edmundo Cordeiro (Lusófona) - Ventura: the stratigraphic character [*video presentation]

Flyer

Registration

Attendance to this event is free. All welcome! If you would like to participate, please register by emailing Mariana Liz at m.liz@qmul.ac.uk

Accommodation in London

Queen Mary's Mile End campus is located in the East End of London. For a list of hotels near Queen Mary University please visit: http://www.residences.qmul.ac.uk//alternative/hotels/index.html

You may also choose to stay in central London (the campus is easily reached by bus and tube, c. 15 minutes on the Central Line from Holborn). Accommodation options include:

International Hall
http://www.halls.london.ac.uk/visitor/international/Default.aspx

Imperial Hotels
http://www.imperialhotels.co.uk/imperial

Travel and Location

Queen Mary University is located in Mile End, in the East End of London. The University is easily reached by Bus and Tube (Mile End station). For more information please visit: http://www.qmul.ac.uk/about/howtofindus/mileend/index.html

Submission

Thank you for your submissions for the seminar on 'Fantasy vs. Reality in Contemporary Portuguese Cinema'. You will be notified by Friday 18th January. Happy New Year!

Call for Papers

Traditionally an example of what Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie have dubbed the “cinema of small nations”, Portuguese cinema has generally been characterised by low production numbers. In recent years, Portuguese filmmakers have seen their work celebrated at a series of prestigious international events, from João Salaviza’s Golden Palm in Cannes to Miguel Gomes’ presence at the Berlin Film Festival with the critically acclaimed Tabu.

This seminar wishes to explore the new international interest in the cinema made in Portugal by being particularly focused on the dichotomy between fantasy and reality. On the one hand, Portuguese cinema often questions whether the events and spaces portrayed on screen really happened or exist, being characterised by a sense of reverie, as in Gomes’ A Cara que mereces/The Face You Deserve (2004). On the other, documentary has been expanding dramatically, in terms of production (48, by Susana de Sousa Dias, was awarded de Cinéma du Réel Grand Prix in 2010) and exhibition (when we consider for instance the success and fast growth of the international film festival DocLisboa), and there is a sense in which the real country must be featured on screen.

This seminar wishes to question the pervasiveness of fantasy and reality as foundational themes in Portugal’s contemporary cinematic identity. We are interested in both short and feature films, including fiction, documentary and animation. We particularly welcome papers on popular cinema. Topics may include but are not limited to:

-       dreams and visions in Portuguese film

-       re-imagining the past

-       Portuguese national identity and the notion of illusion

-       fantastic characters and events

-       the “real” Portugal

-       the limits of cinematic representation

Please submit an abstract (max. 250 words), contact information and short bio (max. 100 words) to Mariana Liz: m.liz@qmul.ac.uk. Submission Deadline: 3 January 2013.

The seminar will begin with a screening of Ruínas/Ruins (2009), followed by a Q&A with director Manuel Mozos in conversation with Kieron Corless from the BFI.