The exploratory project FILMASPORA — Popular Diaspora Films: Towards a New Cine-Geography of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, coordinated by Catarina Laranjeiro, has received around 50,000 euros in funding from the Foundation for Science and Technology.

Catarina Laranjeiro identified a gap in academic knowledge about what she calls ‘popular diaspora cinema’ in Portugal, unlike what already happens in other regions of Europe or Latin America. That’s why she proposed FILMASPORA’s main objective to study this ‘peripheral cinema’ made by communities of African descent in Portugal, i.e. films produced with small budgets and low-cost equipment by amateur filmmakers. The focus of the project will be to study the themes of these films, as well as their means of production and distribution.

One of the questions posed by FILMASPORA is ‘Which identities do communities of Afro-descendant in Portugal materialise through audiovisuals?’. In an attempt to answer this question, the project team ‘will shed light on an unusual public face of Portugal, in this case, as a country of immigration and of identities that are typically concealed from authorized narratives around being Portuguese and representing the Portuguese.’ As an exploratory project, it will be centred on the Lisbon metropolitan area.

In addition to Catarina Laranjeiro, the project will have a multidisciplinary team of researchers, including Gabriela Rocha (CES — University of Coimbra), Otávio Raposo (CIES — Iscte-IUL), and Ruy Llera Blanes (CRIA — Iscte-IUL). Ana Rita Alves (CES — University of Coimbra), Fabian Cevallos Vivar (FBAUL), and Inês Sapeta Dias (IHC — NOVA FCSH) will also collaborate. FILMASPORA is part of the broader topic that Catarina Laranjeiro is researching in her CEEC project — ‘African Modes of Self-Filming: Popular Films in Transnational Flow’.

Picture: Still from the film ‘Político Cabo Verdiano’, directed by the Nos Manera collective and produced by Filma Ideias. France, 2018. (Source: YouTube)