One of the fundamental ideas running through the historiography of Portuguese film is that it has settled itself in passivity and apathy, be it from a narrative point of view, or even for the melancholic construction of its mise-en-scène. If, on one hand, we can acknowledge as evident a form of cinematic composition based on ellipses and omissions; on the other, there are also many other examples in which Portuguese cinema has been violent, revealing a cruel form in its images and sounds, as much from the perspective of plot development as of physical, graphic violence. We think it is important to show this other side, because it subverts other ideas that have been inculcated through our cultural representations.

For precisely this reason, this constellation bears the title “Brandos Costumes” [“Mild Manners”], because it seems to us that Portuguese cinema — and the dominant idea we have of it — has also been rooted in this common sense about what makes us “Portuguese”. The “populace of mild manners” was an invention of the Salazarist propaganda machine, whose structural influence was felt across all sectors of society, concealing what societal history already revealed: the existence of an inherent violence, which is, indeed, common to all societies. But we are not interested only in that violence: there is also something in the concept of “brandos costumes” that normalised behaviours, constructing an image of a country — catholic, family-oriented, rural — with a stratified social order and crystal clear gender roles.

Portuguese cinema, however, has also opened its images and sounds up to other ways of living, revealing realities that were hidden by the all-encompassing ideological apparatus. For that reason, this constellation begins with two milestone films in the history of Portuguese film. A Caça, by Manoel de Oliveira, is perhaps the first truly modern film in our cinema, in which an existentialist vision is shown alongside an intrinsically violent vision of community life. Characteristically, though, the regime obliged Oliveira to create a happy ending (the copy we will show includes both endings). On the other hand, Brandos Costumes, by Alberto Seixas Santos, produced before and after the revolution (and for that reason remaining uncensored), clarifies, in a Brechtian manner, the essential elements of the ideological edifice of the family, and the father as the “exemplary”, dominant figure in all power relationships.

Portuguese cinema, however, has also opened its images and sounds up to other ways of living, revealing realities that were hidden by the all-encompassing ideological apparatus. For that reason, this constellation begins with two milestone films in the history of Portuguese film. A Caça, by Manoel de Oliveira, is perhaps the first truly modern film in our cinema, in which an existentialist vision is shown alongside an intrinsically violent vision of community life. Characteristically, though, the regime obliged Oliveira to create a happy ending (the copy we will show includes both endings). On the other hand, Brandos Costumes, by Alberto Seixas Santos, produced before and after the revolution (and for that reason remaining uncensored), clarifies, in a Brechtian manner, the essential elements of the ideological edifice of the family, and the father as the “exemplary”, dominant figure in all power relationships.

Following this opening session, we propose to pass through different moments in Portuguese cinema — from 1970 to 2016 — and hear a range of voices that address another Portugal, where violence persists as a means of survival, or where other ways of life are put forward that contradict the family ideal of Salazar. The land and its ownership are featured in the second and third sessions, with films by Mariana Gaivão, João Mário Grilo and Fernando Lopes. These works are very different from each other but, in their spaces and characters, they question the rural landscape and its structures of domination and power. They are also films about solitary characters whose worlds crumble through the force of explicit and brutal violence. The death that opens O Fim do Mundo is paradigmatic in this sense: there, in the rural interior, a dispute over the distribution of water is the motive for an absurd crime.

Two films in this constellation look back at the past (Nojo aos Cães and Dina e Django), showing how daily life was violent, harsh and impoverished. On the other hand, more recent films — Setembro, Relatos de uma Rapariga Nada Púdica, Odete — expose our eyes to a world that usually goes unseen, featuring different organisational forms of families, affects and subjectivities. This constellation could not exist without a film by João Pedro Rodrigues, the filmmaker who broke the silence around homo-affective narratives and showed how other ways of life and desire are possible. The constellation would also not be possible without the work of João Canijo, author of a handful of films in which we are challenged by intense and graphic narrative violence. Noite Escura — here in a never-before-seen director’s cut — is the greatest example of this cinema: a family-run strip club, the site of all kinds of violence — sexual, domestic, psychological. We close this constellation with one of the most fascinating debuts of Portuguese cinema: A Idade Maior, by Teresa Villaverde, a film in which we observe, through the eyes of a child, the complexity of a world shattered by the trauma of war and the collapse of social and community relationships. A film, then, about the end of the illusion of brandos costumes.