Intermedial dialogue in A Costa dos Murmúrios / The Murmuring Coast (Lídia Jorge 1988 / Margarida Cardoso 2004)

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This article proposes an approach to literary adaptations in film as a multidirectional dialogue between media. Crucial to the construction of this dialogue between Lidia Jorge’s 1988 novel and Margarida Cardoso’s 2004 film adaptation is the presence of a third medium, photography. In the novel, photography allows Jorge to explore the memory of the Colonial Wars through questions of censorship – in connection with the construction of a photograph – and trauma – in connection with the photographic flash. In the film, Cardoso develops these through exploring photography as a ‘memory’ of film’s development, in conjunction with other memories. Through the intermedial dialogue between the two texts emerge a novel in which the previously overlooked as supposedly objective Part 1 is crucial for reading trauma and memory in the more widely admired Part 2, and a film that offers an alternative Part 2 to the novel and self-reflexively intertwines memory with cinematic history.