Estado e resistência cultural: O caso do Neorrealismo português

Abstract

In the beginning of the twentieth century, Portugal underwent a sociopolitical transformation marked predominantly by war, depression, and nationalist politics, contrasting with centuries of a boundless patriotism inspired by the country's bold past. The Neorealist movement emerges in the middle of this turmoil, with a pragmatism that proved to be a powerful tool of class observation-denouncing not only the state's negligent posture toward the reality of its people, but also the state of chaos and hopelessness in which those people were trapped. Through a historical retrospective, this paper revisits the principal documents of the era, as well as the evaluations of past and present critics, that point to the primary events, authors, and works that contributed to make this a universal and timeless movement.