Shades of Grey

How is 1960s Lisbon represented? How, indeed, can the experience of any city be embodied in the artistic media? Castro examines three case studies: Jose Cardoso Pires' novel "Balada da Praia dos Caes", Eduardo Gageiro's photobook "Lisboa no Cais da Memoria", and Fernando Lopes' film "Belarmino". Here, in the declining years of Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship, we see literature, film and photography used to challenge received ideas of national history. But here too we see the very personal figure of the flaneur, the mobile individual who provides a narrative mechanism, a way of reading the city. Castro's innovative readings are augmented by theoretical approaches to topics such as history and postmodernist literature, street photography, everyday life, documentary film and urban space.