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Cinema as Disquiet

Portugal’s revolution and colonial legacy refracted through the lives of its subjects in the work of Pedro Costa, one of Europe’s most innovative practitioners of an experimental cinema from below.

Luso-Anomalies

How and why has Portugal differed from Spain since the downfall of their respective dictatorships in the mid 70s? The course of political and economic development since the Revolution of 1974 was contained, and its current discrepant outcome: a conventional social-democratic government obliged to break with Euro-austerity under the pressure of a pact with the radical left.

The Portuguese Experiment

The coordinator of Portugal’s Left Bloc traces her trajectory from theatre to the political stage. The prominence of women in the party’s leadership, the social achievements wrested so far from the grip of the Portuguese establishment, and the prospects for extending those gains or seeing them reversed by Brussels and Berlin.

The Test in Portugal

“The Military revolt which seized Lisbon and overthrew the Caetano government on 25 April 1974 toppled in a morning the most long lived fascist State in history and one of the most stable capitalist regimes anywhere this century. By the same stroke it set the stage for the . . .” read more

Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism (Part 3)

“Mass forced labour: de facto pass laws: omnipresent foreign capital: an incendiary white lumpenproletariat: a superstructure of magic: an economic and social machine turning in a void, driven by pure terror. This was the system of Portuguese imperialism at the opening of 1961, the most primitive, the most . . .” read more

Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism (Part 2)

“A preliminary remark on method should be made. The account which follows does not attempt to give an exhaustive description of the whole Portuguese colonial system. The method chosen is rather to select various key sectors which appear to be privileged expressions of the whole, and to show . . .” read more

Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism- Part I

“It is now clear that the Portuguese Empire is coming to an end. In its final days, it may be timely to examine the history and structure of this empire, both for their own interest and for the importance they have for any general account of imperialism. Good . . .” read more