Screening and discussion by Professor Carolin Overhoff Ferreira: Labirinto da Saudade

Film screening and discussion of Saudade's Labyrinth/Labirinto da Saudade -a documentary essay by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes
1hour 7 minutes (in Portuguese with English subtitles)
 
 
The filmic essay ‘Saudades’ Labyrinth (O Labirinto da Saudade), is an adaptation of a book of the same name by Portuguese scholar Eduardo Lourenço. The author of the original work himself is its main character. It runs through the space of his memory as if he were sleepwalking and explores the history of Portugal and Portuguese identity in search of what it means to be Portuguese. The documentary thus surveys key episodes in the history of Portugal, Spain and their former colonies in Latin America and Guinea Bissau. In lyrical scenes we learn about Lourenço’s interpretation of Portugal’s meandering path from its origin as a kingdom to world-spanning empire, to dictatorship and, finally, to being a small, less powerful, European nation. ‘Saudades’ Labyrinth examines memories of Portuguese colonialism and slavery, and how their afterlives continue to inform the present.  
 
The screening is part of ‘African Resistance, History and Culture in Lusophone Film,’  a joint research project conducted by Professor Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Federal University of São Paulo, who is visiting as a  Distinguished Benjamin Maeaker Visiting Professorand her host Dr. José Lingna Nafafé.  
More details can be viewed on Professor Ferriera's web profile page here.

José Lingna Nafafé is Senior Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies and co-Director of Teaching for Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at University of Bristol. Dr Lingna Nafafé’s academic interests embrace a number of inter-related areas, linked by the overarching themes of: the Black Atlantic abolitionist movement in the 17th Century; the Lusophone Atlantic African diaspora; seventeenth and eighteenth century African, Portuguese and Brazilian histories; slavery and wage-labour, 1792-1850; race, religion and ethnicity; Luso-African migrants’ culture and integration in the Northern (England) and Southern Europe (Portugal and Spain); ‘Europe in Africa’ and ‘Africa in Europe’; and the relationship between postcolonial theory and the Lusophone Atlantic. Dr Lingna Nafafé has previously been Programme Director of the MA in Black Humanities at the University of Bristol. He was nominated on ‘The BME Power List 2018 – Bristol’s 100 Most Influential BME People’ for having “advanced the history on resistance to enslavement through ground-breaking research which African Voices Forum shared at the Afrika Eye Film Festival in 2017.” Dr Lingna Nafafé’s second monograph Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the 17th Century was published with Cambridge University Press in August 2022 (- part of the Studies on the African Diaspora series and feature in the Cambridge lists in Atlantic history, Latin American history, African history, and the history of slavery).

Carolin Overhoff Ferreira is an Associate Professor (Livre-Docente) at the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, where she teaches contemporary film and art from a decolonial perspective. She holds an MA in History of Art and Theatre Studies/Seminar in Film (1993), and a PhD in Theatre Studies (1997) from Freie Universität Berlin. During her undergraduate years she studied at the University of Vienna, University of Bristol and Humboldt University Berlin. Carolin has taught at Hannover University for Applied Arts and Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Portuguese Catholic University in Porto and Coimbra University. She was a Research Fellow at the University of São Paulo, a Visiting Researcher at the Portuguese Sub-faculty/University of Oxford (TORCH) and Visiting Fellow at Jesus College/Cambridge University. Carolin also has a career in the arts as a dramaturge, curator and theatre critic. She worked at German national theatres, and for Portuguese and Brazilian fringe groups, curated several film shows on African and Luso-African cinema and contemporary film in Portugal and Brazil, and wrote weekly theatre reviews for the prestigious Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

Contact information

please email irp-admin@bristol.ac.uk