CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Lobo Vasconcelos Letria, Catarina |
|---|---|
| Title | 'It Is Not Everyday That One Witnesses the Birth of a Country': The Independence of Mozambique as Seen on Portuguese Television |
| Summary | Abstract Uma Lança em África (A Spear in Africa) was a special report aired by the Portuguese national television (RTP) on June 25, 1975, Mozambique’s Independence Day, during the most turbulent phase of the Portuguese revolutionary period. It was part of more comprehensive programming the station devoted to the Portuguese decolonization process in 1974 and 1975. The role of television during this process has been absent from the historiography of Portuguese decolonization. Adopting a metropolitan rather than peripheral perspective, this thesis aims to analyze how RTP interpreted and mediated the independence of Mozambique, helping to make sense of it for domestic audiences. This study focuses on analyzing the formal and discursive content of Uma Lança em África. However, the special report will be historically read from its insertion within the programming RTP devoted to Mozambican independence in June 1975, as well as from the wider context of RTP and Portugal during the revolutionary period. Apart from audiovisual sources available in the RTP Online Archives, written sources from the RTP Audiovisual Archives – Program Schedules, News Line Ups, Yearbooks, and Internal Directives issued by the RTP Administration – will be reviewed. In addition, the written press coverage of that time and four interviews with journalists who worked for RTP between 1974 and 1975 conducted for this thesis also were crucial sources. RTP mirrored the general tendency to support decolonization and openly condemn colonialism, attuned to the decolonization policy defined by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and as conveyed in the television and cinema productions in the first years following the Carnation Revolution. Nevertheless, Uma Lança em África does not present a univocal perspective on the Mozambican independence as it contains three interviews with prominent figures of Mozambican decolonization, which are included in dialogue through montage. |
| Supervisor | Aires Oliveira, Pedro |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/letria_catarina.pdf |
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