Silence from beyond the abyss in Manoel de Oliveira's A Talking Picture

Hilary Owen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article explores Manoel de Oliveira's travelogue film Um Filme Falado/A Talking Picture, released in 2003, the year in which Portugal joined the US-led coalition in the Iraq War. Here I discuss the ways in which the film recycles and subverts Portugal's fifteenth-century maritime expansionist narrative and Sebastianist mythologies of the Crusade, as a means of exposing and criticizing Portugal's late twentieth-century global alignment with post-9/11 anti-Islamicism. The result of this is a subtle remapping of the conventional West-to-East voyage of discovery in terms that actually underscore the origins of what the sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos terms the 'abyssal lines' delineating a globalizing North against a globalized South. © 2011 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)115-126
Number of pages11
JournalNew Cinemas
Volume9
Issue number2-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2012

Keywords

  • 9/11
  • Empire
  • Filme Falado/Talking
  • Islam
  • Manoel de Oliveira
  • Picture
  • Portuguese cinema

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