The empire strikes back: the secret production of propaganda by foreign directors to gain international projection for the “Portugal of the overseas”

Abstract

When the United Nations began to question the possession of colonies by Portugal, how were films used by Estado Novo to project a luso-tropical rhetoric?
From 1965, documentaries directed by French filmmakers Jean-Noel Pascal-Angot and Jean Leduc were showed internationally in cinemas, film festivals, televisions and were presented to the major non-governmental organizations. The Portuguese regime’s funding to this production supposedly independent - in which Brazil was appointed as the social model in recreation in Angola and the functioning of the Commonwealth was presented as inspiring for Mozambique – was kept confidential. “From Minho to Timor we are all Portuguese” was the “evidence” that this commissioned film production wanted to impose.
Through the analysis of these international colonial propaganda films commissioned by Portuguese regime, I question, however, if Salazar’s claim of Portugal standing “proudly alone” was a rhetorical declination, only to affirm internally the colonial policy, while abroad it was being projected an image of another Portugal, less corseted in terms of customs, and open to foreign capital.