Exhibiting an Interdisciplinary Archive: Curatorial practice of the essay film as a way of reassessing cinematic works, with a case study of Margarida

My research will consider how curatorial and transdisciplinary frameworks can help in reassessing and recontextualizing film history and archives in relation to other disciplines and domains.

I will focus on the essayistic films by Portuguese auteurs Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis (1963- 1989), pursuing different ways to display the duo's works beyond standard forms of cinematic projection, reflecting on how the gallery space and the book format can help us to explore their sources in the fields of literature, ethnography, painting and psychiatry.

This curatorial-based, transdisciplinary project aims at:

To advance knowledge of how curation is key in reimagining archives, and challenging categories related to authorship, genre, nationality;

To understand how curatorial studies, by drawing on different disciplines, can establish innovative connections and concepts, thus advancing theoretical thinking; To propose original forms of curation considering the concept of the essay film.