What can a portrait tell us about the police system? What can a photograph taken 35 years ago reveal about a dictatorship that is now finished? What can it say about contemporary society? How can photographs kindle the memories of their protagonists?
“48” is a portraiture of the 48-year dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, the longest dictatorial government in twentieth-century Europe, through the stories of some of the victims and photographs from police records. Women and men, young and old, peasants, workers, and bourgeois… a multi-voiced tale of the opposition to the dictator and an accurate yet compassionate description of repressive techniques. The documentary value of photographs and the releasing capacity of memory stories brought together in perfect harmony.
