Archives, memory and colonial resistance in the work of the Portuguese filmmakers Margarida Cardoso and Filipa César

In the years immediately following the end of Portuguese colonisation in Africa in 1975, a silence about the colonial war prevailed in Portugal to the point of turning the subject into a taboo. However, a number of Portuguese artists, particularly in literature and cinema, have engaged with the past in ways that seek to (re)write history. The filmmakers Margarida Cardoso and Filipa César are two of these artists. This article will study the devices they use to revisit that period and its aftermath and to provide a re-reading of what took place. It will argue that their engagement with the past through archive materials to identify colonial resistance is a valid approach in their postmemory re-enactment of the past. By doing so, the study concludes that they challenge not only the use of archive material as sources but also the very notion of historical truth.