East Timor in Margarida Gil’s bitter flowers : the power of the unrooted underdog

Soares, Ana Isabel

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/26750

Use this identifier to reference this record.

Name:	Description:	Size:	Format:
PS 40-2 SOARES.pdf		126.45 KB	Adobe PDF	Download

Send Feedback

Authors

Soares, Ana Isabel

Abstract(s)

Flores Amargas [Bitter Flowers] (1989) is a medium feature made for television and Margarida Gil’s fifth film. It appeared after Gil had released her first feature film for the big screen, Relação Fiel e Verdadeira [True and Faithful] (1987) and a documentary series for television, Olho de Vidro: Uma História da Fotografia [Glass Eye: A History of Photography] codirected with António Sena (1979 to 1982). Bitter Flowers originated from a commission by the Portuguese State TV broadcast company (RTP) for a series of television programmes, Fados, achieving ‘o casamento do Cinema com a Televisão’ [the marriage of TV and Cinema].1 This combination is at the core of much of the director’s work2 — in the particular case of Bitter Flowers, it was clear that Margarida Gil wanted to set a personal point of view on a topic that was not central to the concerns of the average Portuguese citizen, but which she deemed relevant. The film responded to the need Gil identified for a Portuguese awareness or awakening to the problem of East Timor; the television format served this aim.