Research Seminars 50 years of April: Citizenship, Culture, and Memory

The fiftieth anniversary of the 25 April 1974 revolution calls for the need to combine the spirit of commemoration dedicated to the return of a country and its regime to democracy with the necessary exercise of analytical and scientifically supported assessment of the processes and structures that led to the transition from an authoritarian and colonial context to a pluralist regime, which followed the paths of development, decolonisation and European integration.

The Seminar “50 Years of April: Citizenship, Culture and Memory”, organised by CITCOM, was established at these crossroads of reflection, commemoration and critical appraisal. It aims to be a platform for discussion – based on dimensions and themes that define the problems and dynamics of contemporary societies – around the circumstances that led to the 1974 revolution and the journey that April began, during the half-century that is now being celebrated.

The seminars are open to the general public.

Agenda

• Echoes of the 25th of April in the Portuguese Cinema of Austerity - 28 June 2024, 4PM, Online.

Speaker: Iván Villarmea Álvarez , USC.

A The Carnation Revolution did not just happen on 25 April 1974; it continues to happen in the memory of the people who were there, and could even happen every day in the lives of Portuguese citizens, if public policies went in a different direction. So what remains of the 25th of April in the 21st century? How has cinema represented this experience in the present, more than thirty or forty years later?

This presentation proposes an analysis of the unavoidable, but also fading, presence of the Revolution in films such asStill Life (Susana de Sousa Dias, 2005), Slightly Smaller than Indiana (Daniel Blaufuks, 2006), Horse Money  (Pedro Costa, 2014), Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes, 2015) ou The Nothing Factory (Pedro Pinho, 2017).
 

Access: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/97571211628?pwd=jtI6YNfOUioxSLWhniXbzo0F8XkjPb.1

Meeting ID: 975 7121 1628

Password: 161887  

• Revolução e Cidadania Pós-Colonial - 9 April 2023, 16H00-18H00, FLUL Library, room B112.B.

Speakers: Ana Josefa Cardoso, Hélder Lopes, Joãozinho da Costa.

Moderation: Adriana Duarte.

• Fotografar Abril: A memória da memória da Revolução Portuguesa - 20th October 2023, 16H30-18H00, FLUL, room C138.A.

Speaker: Ellen W. Sapega, University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Moderation: Elsa Peralta, Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, FLUL, Universidade de Lisboa.

This inaugural session of the seminar series "50 years of April: Citizenship, Culture, and Memory" will be dedicated to the photographic memory of the Carnation Revolution.

The photographs taken in Lisbon on 25 April 1974 and in the days that followed continue to challenge the viewer almost 50 years later, partly because many of them contain a complicit relationship between subject and object - between the photographer and the authors of the actions they intend to capture. Some of these photographs continue to circulate over the years, sometimes appearing in quite unexpected places and spaces; thus, they have already gained the status of lieux de mémoire that codify and condense the collective memory of the revolution.