The revisitation of landscape in Manuel Guimarães’ feature films

Abstract

Manuel Guimarães’ films stand out in Portuguese cinema as a new and singular way of representing the national reality, which had previously been too much forged according to the principles and values defended by the New State (Estado Novo). In this context, the landscape is a crucial element in both the subversion of the human relations with the territory and  the representation of the physical environment. Manuel Guimarães’ films  aim at a new perspective of space, giving new meanings to the territory while introducing very different characters  to those that inhabit the cinema of the period. The revisitation of the landscape in Manuel Guimarães’ feature films seeks to analyse the way in which the filmmaker recodifies  landscape in an attempt to counter the utopia established by the regime.