Manoel de Oliveira’s life and work merged with the history of cinema from 1931 when Douro, Faina Fluvial [Labour on the Douro River] was first exhibited until April 2, 2015, when he died. Considered for many years as the oldest filmmaker in activity (Oliveira’s last film O Velho do Restelo [The Old Man of Belém] dates from 2014 when he was 105), Oliveira’s filmography is definitely marked by novelty and esthetic dissent.
Internationally acclaimed, Oliveira’s filmography is unique and distinctive, since, both within the frameworks of international and Portuguese film, it cannot be considered as belonging to a specific cinematic movement/trend and to a particular category. By excelling both in the domain of documentary and fiction or by subtly and skillfully merging both, by making film enter in dialogue with the literary text, Oliveira’s production from the very beginning interrogates what cinema is and what the cinematic language searches for as if his whole work were an attempt to provide an answer to this concern. Besides this crucial ontological interrogation, his filmography reveals a particular ethos that can be analyzed from a universal and a national perspective, since his compromise with unveiling and dissecting the ambiguities and contradictions of the human soul inevitably leads spectators to question individual and collective identities.
Wishing to pay tribute to the filmmaker when the first year of his death is celebrated, this international conference seeks to analyze the various cycles of Oliveira’s work by examining how and to what extent his cinematography can be considered adversarial, and how it configures a poetics of dissent by addressing, among others, the following issues:
. Oliveira and film criticism
. Oliveira’s work or the cinema of non-illusion
. Oliveira and the word as an esthetic object
. Oliveira and the use of irony
. The role of music in Oliveira’s cinema
. Faith and reason or the religious dimension of Oliveira’s filmography
. Death as a leitmotif in Oliveira
. Oliveira, cinema and theatre
. The mystery of time in Oliveira
. Oliveira and the narratives of frustrated passion
. Oliveira between film and literature
. Oliveira’s films and gender roles
. Oliveira and the construction of Portugal on the screen
. Oliveira’s role in Portuguese and international filmmaking
The Conference’s working languages are Portuguese and English.
Keynote Speakers
– Randal Johnson (UCLA)
– Jacques Lemière (Université de Lille)
– António Preto (Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro)
Screening
A screening of Manoel de Oliveira’s posthumous film, Visita ou Memórias e Confissões, will be screened at the Portuguese Cinematheque on April 8. It will be followed by a debate with several guests.
Paper proposals
Please send the Organizing Committee 300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers, as well as a brief biographical note (circa 100 words), to oliveirapoetics@gmail.com by November 15, 2015. Proposals should list paper title, name, institutional affiliation, and contact details.
Notification of acceptance will be given by December 13, 2015.
Should you have any queries feel free to write us to oliveirapoetics@gmail.com. For more information see https://oliveiraconference2016.wordpress.com/.
Organizing Committee
Adriana Martins, Maria do Rosário Lupi Bello, Daniela Agostinho, Miguel-Pedro Quadrio. Tiago Baptista
Manoel de Oliveira: A Poetics of Dissent
VI CECC International Conference in Culture & Conflict
Research Centre for Communication and Culture – Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Lisbon, 7-8 April 2016
Deadline for paper proposals: November 15 2015