Gestos & Fragmentos – Ensaio Sobre os Militares e o Poder

Three variations on the theme of the relationship between the military and power in Portugal in the 20^th century. Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho talks of the long march that brought him to the movement of the captains – from the colonial war to the coup d’état of April 25, 1974 to the crisis that destroyed the unity of the armed forces and brought on the end of the revolution in November, 1975. A professor (Eduardo Lourenço) analyzes this descent of the military from the “non-political” havens to very revolutionary politics. Like in a detective movie, an American reporter (Robert Kramer) tries to put his finger on the ones guilty for the failure of the April revolution. Finished only in 1982, Gestos & Fragmentos is the film epitaph of the Portuguese revolution, it is the last production from one of the film cooperatives (Grupo Zero) created during the revolutionary period, as well as the last film of the Cinema Novo, which developed in the 1960s.