Paisagem no cinema português de ficção

: projeto litoral

Abstract

This report is divided into two main parts. In the first one, I present the state of the art of the potential of landscape in cinema as an element of expression and meaning. Based on this, I analyse two Portuguese short fiction films, Bunker (Aguilar, 2015) and Through the Haze (Salgado, 2020), chosen for integrating and treating landscape not as a mere scenario of dramatic action, but as a singular entity endowed with agency and personality. In Bunker, the director characterises the landscape through a dark cinematography and underlines its importance in the overall structure of the film, as he distributes, in an exercise of accelerated editing, the same attention between bodies and landscape. In Through the Haze, the director uses the landscape, concrete and visible, as a metaphor for the characters' inner world, volatile and invisible. The landscape exerts its grip through silhouettes, textures and sounds, also becoming a character. Inspired by these two films, I directed the short fiction film Coast. Following similar principles in the way of looking at landscape, it shows the impact and the consequences of the erosion phenomenon which affects a vast expanse of the Portuguese coast. In the second part of the report, I describe the development path of this film, namely the pre-production, production and post-production phases. Coast is the tip of the iceberg of a necessary project which should be much broader, studying landscape as a way of understanding the world, recognising its transformations and foreseeing its consequences.

Date of Award	29 Mar 2023
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Diogo Costa Amarante (Supervisor) & Daniel Ribas (Co-Supervisor)