Weak Memories: Archives of Futurability

Abstract

The Portuguese documentary filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias offers a comprehensive overview of her career over the past fifteen years, beginning with Natureza Morta (Still Life, 2005) through her current project, Estação Total (Total Station, working title). She explains that her films aim to reflect on authoritarian systems—especially the forty-eight year rule of Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar—and to shed light on the present through the materials of the past. In terms of her cinematic praxis, she discusses the vital importance of two techniques: “montage within the shot”—that is, a montage with visual, spatial, and temporal depth—and “decelerated movement,” which describes her approach to time and duration. Her most recent film, Fordlandia Malaise (2019), extends her work on repressive regimes to encompass current geopoliticals tructures with their underlying colonialist and imperialist heritage, whether derived from a European origin or from the ruth less capitalism of the New World.