Country: Portugal
Year: 2009
Duration: 93'
48 Forty-eight years of Salazar dictatorship and Portugal and its colonies are represented by the faces that reflect the humiliation and atrocities of torture and political persecution. Faces that echo the abuse carried out by the members of PIDE, the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, which, from 1945 until 1969, had full power to investigate and arrest anyone who was suspected of subversive activity against the state. These faces have been returned to the memory of their descendents, along with their stories and that of their torturers; neutral images, in black and white, full face or in profile – it takes only a glance at them to recall the horror of the authoritarian regime. “These photographs are also time: the time contained within that fraction of a second in which prisoners confront their jailers; the time that enables us to enter into the claustrophobic universe of political prisons and be there at the instant the past interweaves with the now; a multiple time that hollows out notions as to the past, present and future.”
Biography
film director
Susana de Sousa Dias
Susana de Sousa Dias (Lisbon, Portugal, 1962) graduated in Fine Arts and Cinema from the University of Lisbon and in 2001 founded the production company Kintop. In 2005, her film Natureza Morta - Visages d’une dictature was presented at numerous international festivals and won various prizes, including the Prémio Atalanta Filmes at the Festival Internacional de Cinema Documental in Lisbon and, in 2006, the Merit Price at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival. 48 won the Grand Prix at the Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris.
FILMOGRAFIA
filmografia/filmography
Enfermeiras no Estado Novo (doc., 2000), Natureza Morta - Visages d’une dictature (Still Life, doc., 2005), 48 (doc., 2009).
Cast
& Credits
regia, sceneggiatura, montaggio/director, screenplay, film editing
Susana de Sousa Dias
fotografia/cinematography
Octávio Espírito Santo
suono/sound
Armanda Carvalho
produttore/producer
Ansgar Schäfer
produzione, vendita all’estero/production, world sales
Kintop
