DocLisboa dedicates cycle to the colonial past of France and Portugal
The DocLisboa film festival returns in October for its 20th edition, which will include a cycle “which unfolds between the colonial past of France and Portugal”, the organization announced today.
“Under the title ‘The Colonial Question’, the festival will propose a film cycle that unfolds between the colonial past of France and Portugal, two countries that coincide in the period of war with the African territories that claimed for themselves and that was camouflaged in benign narratives, resisting a confrontation with their own history”, says the DocLisboa organization, in a statement released today.
The 20th edition of the festival dedicated to documentary cinema takes place between the 6th and 16th of October in the rooms of Culturgest, Cinema São Jorge, Cinemateca Portuguesa and Cinema Ideal, all in Lisbon.
Cited in the statement, the curator of “A Questão Colonial”, Amarante Abramovici, considering that “the sequence of Atualidades at the end of ‘Ato da Primavera’, by Manoel de Oliveira, somehow represents everything that transpired from the colonial war to the Portuguese cinema until very recently is there, and almost not”.
“The war that was not called ‘war’, pierces the censorship, and, in the same gesture, reveals it. In France, where the Algerian war was reduced to the term ‘évènements’, not to mention the previous conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa – these notoriously hidden ones”, he said.
“A Questão Colonial”, according to the organization of DocLisboa, “will explore the diversity of cinematographic representations made and about the various protagonists of these wars, as well as their connections and differences, summoning the direct testimonies of those who lived the colonial period and revisiting them as memories and wounds of colonialism that continue to surface and mark the present day”.
This festival cycle is part of the Portugal-France 2022 Season, which takes place between February and October this year, and “will have a second part to be held in France, in collaboration with Shellac Films, during the month of October”.
The organization of DocLisboa recalls that the registrations for the 20th edition of the festival “already meet with the edition of May 2022”.