Easterly Wind: Luso-Orientalisms in Portuguese Dictatorship Films

The filmography representing the ‘Portuguese Orient’ during the Estado Novo (1933–1974) is scarce and late, employing a simplified Luso- tropicalist rhetoric that repeatedly actualises the myth of a vast, long-lost, territory. This book examines the impact of cinematographic representations of the former Portuguese territories in the Orient on socio-cultural memories and narrative identities, through a critical exhumation of the archives and analysis of existing filmography. The analysis reveals that films of the ‘Portuguese Orient’ depict this imagined community with a certain degree of vagueness. This is largely a consequence of the prolonged disintegration of the metropolis’ relationship with this imagined community, a relationship that was mainly based on projections (about their alleged Portuguese identity) and ruins.