The oral history project of Raquel Rato, titled “Palavras em Movimento: Testemunho Vivo do Património Cinematográfico” [Words in Motion: Living Witness of Cinematographic Heritage], was aproved for funding by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation within the framework of the Gulbenkian Program of Portuguese Language and Culture.

The fundamental goal of the project is to collect memories of the main actors of Portuguese Cinema Novo and, in this way, to reveal experiences from oral testimonies and to highlight realities that rarely appear in written documents. The materials gathered will be the foundation for a digital platform with an audiovisual archive of Portuguese cinema.

Raquel Rato and her team – researchers Luís Trindade and Caterina Cucinotta, and archivist Manuel Mozos – intend to rescue the unofficial Portuguese cinematographic history and to promote Portuguese cinema and its authors through the promotion of research and publications on this topic, as well as its dissemination, both via the digital platform and via school audiences.

The project will have an initial duration of twelve months and will have, as partners, the National Cinema Plan of the Direcção-Geral da Educação and UNICAMP – Federal University of Campinas (Brazil).