Dissemination

Ana Isabel Soares takes part in the colloquium ‘Unfinished Conversations: Literature and Cinema in Portugal’

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CIAC researcher Ana Isabel Soares is taking part in the colloquium ‘Conversa Inacabada: Literatura e Cinema em Portugal’. She will be taking part in Panel 1 – The writing of the image, the image of writing, with the theme The literariness of Portuguese cinema.

The colloquium, which proposes a dialogue between literature and cinema, dates back to the emergence of the seventh art, when characters and episodes from the world of books were brought to the silent screen. In the early decades of the 20th century, filmmakers such as D.W. Griffith, Louis Feuillade and Victor Sjöström began to use literary texts as the basis for their films, consolidating the first processes of adaptation at the same time as establishing the narrative model in the cinematographic medium. At a time when cinema was not yet considered an art form, but more of an ‘attraction’, the link to literature became a means of legitimising cinema and elevating it to the status of an art form in the eyes of cultured and potentially sceptical viewers.

At the same time, several literary writers began to take an interest in cinema. Some wrote about the new medium (Máximo Górki, Robert Desnos, Virginia Woolf…), while others saw it as a theme or source of inspiration for their creations (Luigi Pirandello, Ramón Gómez de la Serna…).

The fruitful relationship between literature and cinema is explored in academic circles from points of view that are increasingly aware of its complexity, especially in the field of adaptation studies, and more specifically in the Anglo-American, French and Italian cases. In the Portuguese context, several important steps have been taken to deepen this field of research in recent decades, although the vision and recognition we have of it today remains fragmented and scattered.

Inspired by the title Conversa Acabada (1981), João Botelho’s film about the correspondence between Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá-Carneiro, this symposium aims to make a necessary contribution to consolidating reflection on the long, complex and multifaceted dialogue between literature and cinema in Portugal, from its beginnings to the present day.

The symposium will take place at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, in Amphitheatre III, on 10 and 11 April 2025. The panel in which Ana Isabel Soares will take part will start at 9.30am on 10 April.

Organisers: Amândio Reis (CEComp | University of Lisbon), José Bértolo (IELT | New University of Lisbon), Rita Novas Miranda (CRIMIC | Sorbonne Université)

More informations (here).

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This work is financed by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the scope of projects UIDB/00509/2020 and UIDP/00509/2020. This work is funded by National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under project UID/00657, Instituto de Estudos de Literatura e Tradição – Patrimónios, Artes e Culturas.