Filming Narratives Becoming Events: Documentary and the ‘Emplotments’ of the Carnation Revolution

This chapter analyses the ways in which documentary film engaged with the 1974-75 Carnation Revolution in Portugal through both the direct involvement of filmmakers in the events and in more recent efforts to critically revisit the militant images shot at the time. Whereas the former has led to the creation of important documents for the history of this political event and of the forms of activism (political and aesthetic) that pervaded it, the latter constitute good opportunities to question the role of documentary film in the social memory of the revolution.