Na passada sexta-feira, foi lançado o livro The Ongoing Lecture no Colégio das Artes da Universidade de Coimbra. O volume foi coordenado pela minha colega Ana Rito, verdadeira força motriz deste seminário, que já contou com duas edições, ambas integradas nesta publicação. Fiz parte da Comissão Científica do evento e assinei um dos ensaios incluídos na secção dedicada aos “Contextos”: “A Imagem em Movimento como Investigação”.
O Delfim.
Amanhã será mostrado O Delfim (2002) de Fernando Lopes, com apresentação minha, integrado no terceiro ciclo sobre Manoel de Oliveira e o cinema português. Mais informação sobre esta sessão na Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira no Porto aqui.
O livro electrónico Materialidades da Criação no Cinema: Matérias e Ofícios da Imagem em Movimento saiu recentemente e vai ser apresentado no XV Encontro Anual e Congresso Internacional da AIM, na Escola Superior de Comunicação, Administração e Turismo (EsACT) do Instituto Politécnico de Bragança (Campus do Cruzeiro), no dia 13. O livro foi inicialmente coordenado pela Caterina Cucinotta, o Alfonso Palazón, e por mim, a quem se juntaram a Mirian Nogueira Tavares e a Patrícia Dourado, numa parceria entre o CIAC - Centro de Investigação em Artes e Comunicação e a Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. O meu capítulo tem o título “Jordan Peele, Autor Negro: Foge (2017), da Página ao Ecrã”. A publicação pode ser descarregada gratuitamente aqui.
Scream (1996).
Edited by Sérgio Dias Branco (University of Coimbra, Portugal) and Ana Maria Acker (Ritter dos Reis University Center, Brazil)
We invite chapter proposals for an edited collection titled Metafictional Horror Cinema: The Screen as Mirror, to be submitted to the UWP Horror Studies series. The volume explores how horror cinema reflects on its own formal strategies, lays bare its narrative and technological mechanisms, and confronts viewers with unsettling modes of self-awareness.
The volume will explore the role of metafiction within horror cinema, from postmodern genre revisions and reflexive found-footage films to avant-garde and hybrid works that fracture narrative logic, collapse diegetic boundaries, break the fourth wall, or explicitly implicate the viewer in acts of spectatorship and violence.
Metafictional horror draws attention to the constructed nature of cinema, often blurring boundaries between fiction and documentary, performance and possession, audience and victim. By making genre conventions visible, these films challenge the stability of horror itself. At the same time, self-reflexivity does not necessarily diminish the intensity of the horror experience. Instead, it often produces new forms of affect in which intellectual awareness and visceral response coexist.
We seek contributions that analyse films and audiovisual works in which horror becomes self-aware or formally reflexive, including — but not limited to — the following areas:
• genre parodies and deconstructions (Scream, The Cabin in the Woods, Behind the Mask);
• reflexive found footage and mockumentaries (Lake Mungo, The Poughkeepsie Tapes);
• avant-garde or experimental horror (Inland Empire, Skinamarink, Antrum);
• horror narratives centered on authorship, narrative collapse, or recursive storytelling;
• spectatorship, diegesis, and medium-awareness as mechanisms of fear;
• meta-possession, performance, and the body as sites of narrative rupture;
• horror across digital and multi-platform environments, including desktops, smartphones, surveillance systems, livestreams, and AI-mediated or algorithmic perspectives.
We especially welcome contributions addressing global, transnational, and underrepresented traditions of metafictional horror cinema, expanding discussion beyond dominant Western canons.
Abstracts Due: 8 May 2026 (250–300 words)
Include a short bio (100 words) and institutional affiliation (if applicable).
Notification of Acceptance: 29 May 2026.
Submit proposals or inquiries to: sdiasbranco@fl.uc.pt and ana_acker@yahoo.com.br
Já saiu o último número da revista Colóquio da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Este número é dedicado a Luís Vaz de Camões, “Camões: Novas Artes, Novo Engenho”. Inclui um artigo meu: “O Canto e o Olhar: Luís de Camões e o Cinema Português”. Um agradecimento à equipa da revista, em especial à diretora Joana Matos Frias e à Ana Marques Gastão.
Matewan.
Two recent papers accepted for conference presentation:
• “A Lógica do Indeterminado no Cinema” [“The Logic of the Indeterminate in Cinema”] to be presented at the XV AIM (Association of Moving Image Researchers) Annual Meeting and International Conference in May;
• “Beatitudes of the Coalfields: Prophetic Christianity, Class Solidarity, and Working-Class Thought in Matewan (1987)” to be presented at the annual conference of the WCSA (Working-Class Studies Association) in June.
Informações detalhadas sobre este livro recente e relevante da minha colega da Faculdade de Letras, Susana Araújo, aqui.
Sarah Lahm (University of Leeds) has written a insightful article on Pluribus (2025-present) and slowness for the Critical Studies in Television online blog, in which she references my recent piece on Steven Zaillian’s Ripley (2024) for the same publication. It is well worth reading here.
Ripley.
My new essay on Steven Zaillian’s Ripley (2024) for the Critical Studies in Television online blog is out. Read it here.
November.
November (2017) is an acclaimed Estonian folk horror film written and directed by Rainer Sarnet, based on Andrus Kivirähk’s best-selling novel Rehepapp ehk November (“Old Barny aka November”). It is a tale of unrequited love and untamed violence populated by possessed machines (kratts), spirits, werewolves, plagues, and the Devil. In general, critical acclaim focused on its stylistic qualities, particularly the peasant scenes in vast landscapes reminiscent of Pieter Bruegel’s paintings, and the alluring black-and-white cinematography by Mart Taniel, which received the Spotlight Award from the American Society of Cinematographers. These combined features create a haunting atmosphere that matches the existential angst permeating the film, not unlike that found in Béla Tarr’s post-1988 cinema.
The film can be easily read through the prisms of religion and politics. Sarnet’s social portrait mixes Estonian paganism, the rooted beliefs of peasants, with Lutheranism, the Christian denomination brought by German aristocrats. Yet Lutheranism is also understood and lived in peculiar ways by the rural population—e.g., the pastor is described as “the hand that feeds”, but also as someone who must be turned “stupid” by dark magic. The narrative takes place in the nineteenth century, when Estonian national identity began to emerge in the region between the Baltic Sea and its easternmost arm, the Gulf of Finland—what is called the Estonian Age of Awakening (Ärkamisaeg). At the time, the land was known as the Governorate of Estonia, a province of the Russian Empire where the peasantry was ruled by the German aristocracy. The film connects the emergence of Estonian identity with the popular rejection of a small foreign elite, the German upper class, which lives in a decadent manor where a large table is successively set for banquets that are never shown while the peasants starve outside. It is not just the small farmers who suffer. Class exploitation extends indoors to the housekeeper, who steals dresses from the baroness to sell them, as well as to other servants at the manor. “Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks”, wrote Karl Marx in Capital, Volume 1, chapter 10, section 1. November draws on the tradition of Gothic Marxism exemplified in this passage by employing syncretic religiosity along with supernatural elements to render the dying days of feudalism and the rise of capitalism.
