Mariana Liz - Class and Gender in Small Nation Cinemas. Tues 21st Feb @4pm

14 Feb 2023

The Department of Film and Screen Media presents a Research Seminar with Mariana Liz - Class and Gender in Small Nation Cinemas: the case of Portugal and Ana Rocha de Sousa’s Listen on Tuesday 21st of February at 4pm in the FSM Auditoriun - Kane Building Basement Room B10.B.

While there has been a growing attention to small nation, marginal and peripheral cinemas in recent years, not much scholarship has been devoted to the position occupied by women – in terms of filmmaking and representation – in these challenging contexts. This presentation begins with a contextualization of contemporary Portuguese cinema as a “small nation cinema”, and therefore characterised by a history of financial struggle, internal and global marginality, and an independent character. It then examines Ana Rocha de Sousa’s first feature film Listen (2020), which tells the story of a Portuguese immigrant family to the UK, and their battle against social services, who take their children into custody. Representations of the home are a central point for discussion in contemporary Portuguese cinema. From being a prime site for the understanding of gender inequality, to allowing for examinations of untamed urban expansion, the home has also featured in Portuguese films of the past decades as a proxy for social identity. The significance of the home for marginalised communities is the focus of this presentation. In Listen, the home is presented as the family’s last resource, as the space in which they are attacked but also reorganise for retaliation, and thus appears not only as built infrastructure, but also as a signifier for unity, family, and cultural and linguistic identity. Structured around three key plot points of the film that coincide with three keywords featuring in recent feminist scholarship (marginality, resilience and escape), this presentation argues a discussion about Portuguese cinema, and this film in particular, illuminates ongoing debates about the significance of the home and its relationship to class and gender in contemporary European film.

Mariana Liz is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Lisbon, and Vice-Chair of the Film Studies section of ECREA – the European Communication Research and Education Association. She is the author of Euro-Visions (2016), editor of Portugal’s Global Cinema (2018) and co-editor of Women's Cinema in Contemporary Portugal (with Hilary Owen, 2020), among other publications.

All welcome to attend.