After the Crisis: Europe and Nationhood in Twenty-First-Century Portuguese Cinema

Abstract

Arguing for the importance of studying the crisis within specific contexts, and adding to the analyses focused on the crisis and austerity in Portugal in this ten-year period as social, political and cultural facts, this chapter uses the contemporary crisis to explore visions of nationhood in twenty-first-century Portuguese cinema. It considers both the changing notions of Portugal, Portuguese culture and Portuguese cinema in the past two decades, and the extent to which, through economic, political and social indicators, the country, its culture and cinema have changed. As such, it discusses the link between visions of Portuguese nationhood in the twenty-first century, particularly since 2007, and conceptions of periphery, smallness and nostalgia developing within cinema. As the examination of an auteur and a popular film will show, a cinematic engagement with political and cultural ideas of Portugal and the crisis suggests new conceptions of Europe and globalisation are emerging. These carry significant implications for the definition of Portuguese nationhood in the twenty-first century.