Susana de Sousa Dias

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Susana de Sousa Dias (Lisbon, Portugal) is a Portuguese independent filmmaker.

Contents

Biography

After receiving a degree at Lisbon Theatre and Film School she took on another degree course in Painting at Lisbon Fine Arts School where she graduated in 1991. In 2005, she received a M. Phil in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art with a dissertation on Cinema, Archive and Memory that accompanied the making of her first long feature essay documentary film Natureza Morta (Still Life). [1] In 2014, she received a PhD in Fine-Arts Video from the University of Lisbon, with a thesis on Archive footage and Decelerated Movement, a theoretical work that accompanied the making her second long feature essay documentary 48. [2]

She is co-founder of the film production company Kintop. From 2010-2012, she was a member of the board of the Portuguese Documentary Association APORDOC and in 2012, she formed a women's collective who directed for two consecutive years the Lisbon International Documentary Festival Doclisboa. [3] She engaged particularly in the creation of new sections of the festival such as "Cinema of Urgency" and "Passages" (Documentary and Contemporary Art). [4] One of the most notorious aspects of her work is the artistic integration of archival footage dating from the Portuguese dictatorship (1926-1974).

Filmography and awards

A turning point in De Sousa Dias's cinematographic work was her contact with the material gathered in archives of the Portuguese political police (Arquivo Pide/DGS) while preparing her documentary Processo-Crime 141-53 (Criminal-Case 141-53). The film was, at the same time, the starting point for questioning the role and the usage of archival footage in documentaries and history writing. [5] The first film she made that can be considered as a direct reflection of the experience was Natureza Morta (Still Life) (2005), a Portuguese French co-production, only consisting of archive footage and sound, that deliberately renounced on the usage of spoken discourse. The film was awarded with the Merit Award at Taiwan Documentary Film Festival in 2006 and the Atalanta Films Award at Doclisboa 2006.[ citation needed ]

48 (2010) is her best-known feature. On the film, Scott MacDonald writes: "Nearly all the images in De Sousa Dias's remarkable third feature, 48, are extended close-ups of the mugshots of political prisoners during which we hear the political prisoners' memories of the humiliations they endured. The visual challenge in 48 was how to make a moving film from still photographs." [6] De Sousa Dias developed an approach through montage which she calls a "montage within the shot" in "temporal depth". [7]

For this film, she was awarded several prizes such as the Grand Prix 2010 Cinéma du Réel,[ citation needed ] the FIPRESCI award at DOK Leipzig 2010,[ citation needed ] the Grand Prize 2011 at Mar del Plata International Independent Film Festival, Argentina,[ citation needed ] Special Mention 2011 Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival,[ citation needed ] Opus Bonum Award for Best International Documentary, 2010, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival,[ citation needed ] and the Don Quijote Award 2010 of the International Federation of Film Societies.[ citation needed ]

Besides her career as a film director, De Sousa Dias works also in the field of visual arts. In 2010, she presented for the first time an installation in three screens and Dolby 5.1 sound of Natureza Morta – Stilleben (2010) in the National Museum of Contemporary Art - Chiado Museum in Lisbon. [8] In 2017, she finished her film Luz Obscura (Obscure Light) that was awarded with a Special Mention at the International Festival Documenta Madrid of the same year, for the "unique aesthetical and narrative approach". [9] The film was later awarded with the Prix Spécial du Documentaire Historique (les Rendez-vous de l'Histoire, Blois) [10] and the Best Sound Award at the Festival Caminhos do Cinema Português.[ citation needed ]

Her latest work, Fordlandia Malaise (2019), premiered at the 69th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival. [11] De Sousa Dias's works have also been shown in film festivals worldwide such as the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema,[ citation needed ] Viennale,[ citation needed ] Visions du Réel,[ citation needed ] Sarajevo International Film Festival,[ citation needed ] Torino Film Festival,[ citation needed ] RIDMontreal,[ citation needed ] Dok Leipzig,[ citation needed ] Dockanema Maputo,[ citation needed ] and the Mar del Plata Independent Film Festival,[ citation needed ] and in the context of contemporary arts exhibitions like PHotoEspaña (official selection 2011) [12] and Documenta 14 (Keimena). [13]

Teaching and writing

She teaches New Media at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon,[ citation needed ] and is an author of diverse essays on cinema, mainly dealing with subjects related to her own work, such as "(In)visible Evidence: the Representability of Torture" in A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, [14] and "A sort of microscope of time: decelerated movement and archive footage" in Thinking Reality and Time through film, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2017. [15]

She is regularly invited to present master classes or participate in seminars and conferences in several art, film and teaching institutions, such as the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba, La Fémis in Paris, University of California Berkeley, São Paulo University, Université Paris 2, Pantéon-Sorbonne, and Sciences-Po, Paris.[ citation needed ]

Bibliography

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References

  1. ↑ Online, LabCom - Laboratório de Comunicação e Conteúdos. "Do inventário à invenção - cinema, arquivo, memória - Imagem em Movimento". Bdim.org.pt. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  2. ↑ "Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa: Abrir a história : a imagem de arquivo e o movimento desacelarado : um estudo teórico-prático a partir dos filmes Natureza Morta e 48". Repositorio.ul.pt (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  3. ↑ "DocLisboa anuncia nova direcção que conta com Susana de Sousa Dias - PÚBLICO". Publico.pt. 2012-02-28. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  4. ↑ Lapa, After You, Interactive Solutions and Gráficos à. "doclisboa - Festival sections". Doclisboa.orgt. Retrieved 2017-06-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ↑ "CINÉMA DU RÉEL: SUSANA DE SOUSA DIAS (I)". Elumiere.net. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  6. ↑ Scott MacDonald, "Susana De Sousa Dias" in Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema, NY, Oxford University Press, 2015.
  7. ↑ Susana de Sousa Dias, "(In)visible Evidence: the Representability of Torture» in A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film", Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow (eds.), West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, P. 497
  8. ↑ "Natureza Morta/Stilleben (Still life)". MUSEU NACIONAL DE ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA DO CHIADO.
  9. ↑ "Palmarés - DOCUMENTAMADRID 2017". Documentamadrid.com. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  10. ↑ http://www.generiques.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/programme_chronologique_2017.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  11. ↑ "Fordlandia Malaise".
  12. ↑ "El retrato, protagonista de PHotoEspaña 2011". Masdearte.com. 5 April 2011. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  13. ↑ "#19 48 - documenta 14". Documenta14.de. 2016-12-19. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  14. ↑ "Wiley: A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film - Alexandra Juhasz, Alisa Lebow". Eu.wiley.com. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
  15. ↑ "Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Thinking Reality and Time through Film". Cambridgescholars.com. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
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