Paulo de Medeiros – författare

Offering a range of critical perspectives on a vibrant body of films, this collection of essays engages with questions specific to the various cinemas and films addressed while putting forward an argument for their inclusion in current debates on world cinema.

The collection brings together 11 chapters by recognized scholars, who analyze a variety of films and videos from Angola, Cape Verde, Guiné-Bissau, and Mozambique. It also includes an interview with Pedro Pimenta, one of the most distinguished African film festival organizers. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives, the volume strives to reverse the relative invisibility that has afflicted these cinemas, arguing that most, if not all, Lusophone films are transnational in all aspects of production, acting, and reception. The initial three chapters sketch broad, comparative overviews and suggest theoretical approaches, while the ensuing chapters focus on specific case studies and discuss a number of key issues such as the convergence of film with politics, the question of gender and violence, as well as the revisiting of the period immediately following independence. Attention is given to fiction, documentary films and recent, short, alternative video productions that are overlooked by more traditional channels. The book stresses the need to pay attention to the significance of African film, and Lusophone African film in particular, within the developing field of world cinema.

Bringing together general overviews, historical considerations, detailed case studies, and focused theoretical reflections, this book is a significant volume for students and researchers in film studies, especially African, Lusophone cultural studies, and world cinema.

Offering a range of critical perspectives on a vibrant body of films, this collection of essays engages with questions specific to the various cinemas and films addressed while putting forward an argument for their inclusion in current debates on world cinema.

The collection brings together 11 chapters by recognized scholars, who analyze a variety of films and videos from Angola, Cape Verde, Guiné-Bissau, and Mozambique. It also includes an interview with Pedro Pimenta, one of the most distinguished African film festival organizers. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives, the volume strives to reverse the relative invisibility that has afflicted these cinemas, arguing that most, if not all, Lusophone films are transnational in all aspects of production, acting, and reception. The initial three chapters sketch broad, comparative overviews and suggest theoretical approaches, while the ensuing chapters focus on specific case studies and discuss a number of key issues such as the convergence of film with politics, the question of gender and violence, as well as the revisiting of the period immediately following independence. Attention is given to fiction, documentary films and recent, short, alternative video productions that are overlooked by more traditional channels. The book stresses the need to pay attention to the significance of African film, and Lusophone African film in particular, within the developing field of world cinema.

Bringing together general overviews, historical considerations, detailed case studies, and focused theoretical reflections, this book is a significant volume for students and researchers in film studies, especially African, Lusophone cultural studies, and world cinema.

How can we read twenty-first-century African literatures in Portuguese so that we can properly understand the voices telling us of their particular situation today? In The Late Postcolonial Condition Emanuelle Rodrigues dos Santos deftly shows us how to adjust our perspectives and assumptions from those of the past into the dynamics of the very different conditions of the present. This book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of contemporary African fiction in Portuguese.

(Robert J. C. Young, Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature, New York University)

In The Late Postcolonial Condition, Emanuelle Rodrigues dos Santos counters the perception of the backlash against postcolonial studies by proposing a reconfiguration of its paradigms for studying the African literatures of Portuguese-speaking countries. In doing so, she explores the interpretative perspectives of the longue durée of the past to understand the different levels of coloniality in the studies of the literatures of the Global South, with an emphasis on a main theme in African literatures in the twenty-first century: the role of the nation-state in the contemporary juncture of each postcolonial context. This book is an important contribution to contemporary literary studies, especially to the literatures of Portuguese-speaking Africa that are still peripheral to hegemonic anglophone scholarship. It brings valuable insights into postcolonial studies and debates around identity and narration of the nation in African literatures through the conceptualisation of late postcoloniality.

(Inocência Mata, Professor in the Department of Romance Literatures, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon)

This book provides a unique portrait of the late postcolonial condition in the twenty-first century, shedding new light on complex national and transnational dynamics in the development of postcolonial states in the aftermath of independence. This analysis of fictional narratives from Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe establishes a much-needed critical reassessment of the theoretical framework of postcolonial studies used to trace the development of key tropes within these national literary systems, including nation building, the role of violence and economic exploitation in the postcolonial age. Engaging with a selection of works published at the turn of the millennium by authors such as José Eduardo Agualusa, João Paulo Borges Coelho, Evel Rocha, Filomena Embaló and Albertino Bragança, this study considers the impact of relevant aesthetic, cultural, political and economic circumstances to propose the concept of late postcolonial condition to define their contemporary postcolonial experience.

José Saramago, one of the most critically acclaimed writers worldwide, was distinguished with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. This honour, the first to be bestowed on a Portuguese-language writer, marked one of the high points in a long and manifold career. Largely an auto-didact, Saramago never let fame obscure his clear vision of the world, tempered by a lifelong acquaintance with severe inequality, political struggle, but also success, be it in terms of the 1974 revolution that freed Portugal from nearly fifty years of dictatorship, be it in the growing acclaim he received since deciding to focus on writing. The Nobel Prize provided Saramago with a wider, perhaps more effective, base for expressing his opinions; but it did not bring about a rupture, either with his political convictions, or with his writing. In the large bibliography on Saramago sustained critical studies in English are still relatively scarce. This volume, composed by many diverse voices, and the first to focus on Saramago’s late works, strives to address that gap. As 2022 marks Saramago’s centenary, this volume is dedicated especially to his enduring memory and to all the futures his works made possible to envision.