On Friday, June 21, 2024, Cineclube da Maia hosted once again a session of the JRAAS Non-Places in Hitchcock cinema cycle. The screened film was North by Northwest, the thriller follows the story of an advertising executive who finds himself caught up in an espionage conspiracy.
This session constituted – just as the last one did – an exercise in the outreach of university activities, bringing these cultural initiatives outside of the environment of academia and reaching a wider, more diverse audience. The introductions remarks were done by the influential author, journalist and film critic Mário Augusto.
What Mário Augusto explained in his introduction, as an expert in film and the process of filmmaking, is that the art of filmmaking itself constitutes the construction of a non-place: filmmakers build these spaces through which the audience is only allowed to travel for a couple of hours at a time. In that way, the public is a transient entity in the theater, letting go of them ‘selves’ and being absorbed by the narratives, sounds and visuals of this piece of art.