International Conference Images of Asia in Portuguese Cinema – Comparatistas

Dates: March, 16th – 17th, 2017
Venue: University of Lisbon | School of Arts and Humanities (Anf III)
Website

The International Conference Images of Asia in Portuguese Cinema, an initiative under the research line of the Centre for Comparative Studies ORION – Portuguese Orientalism, will be held on March 16 – 17, 2017, at the Auditorium III of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, with a set of sessions taking place at the Portuguese Cinematheque – Cinema Museum. A book will result of this Conference as part of CEC’s book series ACT – Alterities, Crossings, Transfers.
Since the ﬁrst decades of the 20th century — cases of Macau (1924) and more than a dozen documentaries of M. Antunes Amor throughout the 20s and 30s, or the documentaries of Miguel Spiguel —, going through ﬁlmmakers such as Paulo Rocha (A Ilha dos Amores, 1982; A Ilha de Moraes, 1984; O Desejado ou As Montanhas da Lua, 1987; Portugaru San – O Senhor Portugal em Tokushima, 1993), Luís Filipe Rocha (Amor e Dedinhos de Pé, 1991) or João Mário Grilo (Os olhos da Ásia, 1996), to the most recent years — such as with Ivo M. Ferreira (O Homem da Bicicleta – Diário de Macau, 1997 e Em Volta, 2002), the ﬁlmography of João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata (China China, 2007; Alvorada Vermelha, 2011; A Última Vez que Vi Macau (2012); Mahjong, 2013; IEC Long, 2014), or the very recent Ama-San (2016) by Cláudia Varejão — it is possible to observe a series of gestures that, passing through the postcolonial transformations, bring the Portuguese ﬁlmography closer to Asian culture and spaces to which the country has been linked since the Discoveries. Asia is, in so many of these ﬁlms, interpreted and problematised through a set of images and categories dating back to the 16th century. Going from an interest in the inaugural moments of this encounters to an interest in contemporary migratory movements, a discreet but consequent permanence of the topic in Portuguese cinema is revealed, even in authors for whom it is not a central topic. This phenomenon opens a panorama in which the cinema, like literature, stays connected to a regular and continuous process of reﬂection on Portugal, which intensiﬁes with the representation of the Other and the proximity to the Eastern imaginary. For this Conference, proposals offering transdisciplinary, comparative and innovative perspectives on the representations of Asian alterity in Portuguese cinema are particularly relevant.

Deadline for abstract submission: January 31, 2017
Notiﬁcation of acceptance: February 5, 2017
Registration deadline: February 10, 2017
Students (MA and PhD) – 50 €
Non students – 70 €

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

BRUNO BÉU | CEC – University of Lisbon
CATARINA NUNES DE ALMEIDA | CEC – University of Lisbon

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Initiative under the project ORION Portuguese Orientalism of the research group LOCUS from the Centre for Comparative Studies.