The Cinema Festival “Luz e Sombra. Representações da Idade Média no cinema” (“Light and Shadow. Representations of the Middle Ages in cinema”) had its first edition in 2022 at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, Museu do Cinema (Lisbon, Portugal). As part of a collaboration agreement between Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and Cinemateca Portuguesa, a total of twenty-three feature films were shown in their rooms. The cycle was completed with a special session of short films from Portuguese cinematography, which offered a small sample of the richness, in aesthetic and thematic terms, of Portuguese cinematographic creation, very little explored from the point of view of medieval cinema.

The second edition of this cycle, which will take place in Madrid in December 2023 and January 2024, is the result of a broader project, carried out thanks to the collaboration of a significant group of cultural and university institutions. On the one hand, the Spanish Cinematheque and the Círculo de Bellas Artes, in whose rooms the films selected for this occasion are screened. On the other hand, two universities where specialized research is currently being carried out on the Middle Ages: the NOVA University of Lisbon, through two of its research centers, the Institute for Medieval Studies and the Institute of Contemporary History, both based at the Faculty Social and Human Sciences; and the Autonomous University of Madrid, through its Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and the Superior Center for Research and Promotion of Music. Likewise, the Department of Culture of the Embassy of Portugal in Madrid and the Cinemateca-Museu do Cinema de Portugal collaborated with this initiative, which generously donated funds and financially supported the project. In turn, the Madrid headquarters of the Confucius Institute, the Japan Foundation and the National Autonomous University of Mexico allowed the screening of several films from their respective countries. Finally, the collaboration of musician Jorge Gil Zulueta and a chamber music ensemble made it possible to integrate the screening of a film accompanied by live music into the cycle.

This multiple collaboration, in which efforts, support and ideas were combined, will allow the presentation, in the rooms of Círculo de Bellas Artes and Cine Doré-Filmoteca Española, of a total set of more than twenty titles, designed for a very diverse audience, both children and adults, both cinephiles and curious people, both specialists in the Middle Ages and interested in the medieval past.

Poster