AS ARMAS E O POVO

Arms and the people is the most famous film of the Portuguese Revolution.
Shot in the week between the 25th April and the 1st May, 1974, it brings together the mass demonstrations and the speeches of Mário Soares and Álvaro Cunhal, the release of the political prisoners and the street interviews made by the Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha. Directed by the Collective of Workers of the Cinematographic Activity, it is a priceless historical document, made on the fly by several Portuguese filmmakers and technicians. An inescapable part of European militant cinema, arms and the
people is also a manifest on the relation between cinema and politics, not only as a mere diffuser of the events, but mainly as an active participant of the revolutionary act.