Acting
"The Conspiracy", a documentary series directed by AntĂłnio-Pedro Vasconcelos, is the result of a meticulous investigation that includes exclusive testimonies from protagonists who managed to achieve in less than 24 hours, something that many others had not achieved in 48 years. From the secret meetings to the key characters, we are shown the extraordinary conspiratorial process that began in the summer of 1973 and culminated in the early hours of April 25, 1974, with the overthrow of the Estado Novo and the conquest of freedom. The rest, as they say, is history.
Using film and television footage taken during the revolutionary movement of April 25, 1974 in Portugal, and mixing it with music and live interviews with common people, the director conveys a vivid account of the period in which a military coup evolved to a socialist revolution, then was tempered into a formal European style democracy.
Film directors with hand-held cameras went to the streets of Lisbon from April 25 to May 1, 1974, registering interviews and political events of the Portuguese "Carnation Revolution", as that period would be later known.
The film revives the name of a show staged in 1977, the same year the film was produced, which brought together an impressive cast of singers, poets, and composers in a moment of reflection and evocation of the revolutionary process. With music and lyrics by artists such as José Mário Branco, Zeca Afonso, Paulo de Carvalho, and Fernando Tordo, and performances by Carlos Paredes, Tonicha, Ary dos Santos, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, and the Mineiros de Aljustrel.
In 1972, Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa published the book As Novas Cartas Portuguesas [New Portuguese Letters], addressing topics forbidden and censored during the Estado Novo regime such as the colonial war, adultery, rape and abortion. The book was immediately banned and the writers were prosecuted for crimes against morality. The legal proceedings caused waves of protest around the world, giving rise to an international network of solidarity. In the film, the “three Marias” tell their story, before and after one the first major feminist struggles in Portugal.
Documentary about the life, convictions and career of Portugal's first and only female Prime Minister. Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo believed that "women can be a force for radical transformation of the institutionalised irrationality in which we live. The multifunctionality of their existence, the diversity of the planes on which they move, their daily lives give them a special capacity to find a new understanding and a new effectiveness for governance in the midst of complexity". Unlike many other women who have the same conviction, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo turned her life into a praxis of her own belief.
