Contraplà amb la mort : imatge i història en el cinema portuguès contemporani

The thesis exposes that images of Portuguese contemporary cinema
show a fissure. On the one hand they reveal the fingerprints of a missing
past that reactivates (the history) and for other one they summon the indeterminate
thing, a mystery that inhabits beyond the shot and that is coded
in the counter shot: the counter shot with the death. The research departs
from three images that notice the presence of an underground, common
imaginary linked to the idea of death in the work of three Portuguese filmmakers
of different generations: Manoel de Oliveira, João César Monteiro
and Pedro Costa. The work reveals that this idea of death is related to two
key elements for the history, the politics, the art and the thought of Portugal:
the sea and the navigator. From the dialog that is established between
the shots filmed by these filmmakers; the images that belong to the historical,
artistic and political past of Portugal; and the visual compositions of other
previous cinematographic universes, its possible to draw an aesthetic
map of Portuguese contemporary cinema.