* Talk with miguel bonneville, Odete and António Manso Preto, moderated by Ricardo Braun

Once the author has died, we (the heirs) begin to write – or rewrite – their life (to prolong it, as we hope, and bring it into our midst): but what does this writing entail, or how do we go about it? How do we focus it (which is our aim here, throughout this week) on what was, or might be, queer about it? We often feel this (at least, I do) when we watch films, fiction or documentaries, about queer writers: that, in trying to recount a life and a body of work (which, it must be said, are not the same thing), one and the other inevitably become smoothed over; that one tends to choose a thread, easy to follow: and that, along the way, what was rough or complicated about that life—what is difficult to explain—gets lost or is erased. Which leads us to another question: who gets to tell these life stories, and to whom, and with what aims? Or rather: what harm can we do when we think we’re doing good? This is what we will be discussing: miguel bonneville, Odete and António Manso Preto, who write and make films, and myself, Ricardo Braun; the people portrayed in these four documentaries – Paul and Jane Bowles, Mary Oliver, McKenzie Wark and Agustín Gómez-Arcos; and other people, each other's dearly departed; the lives they led and the works they left behind; of how they recounted their lives in their writing; of what they concealed, for one reason or another; and of how we, in turn, recount those lives today in our own writing. (Ricardo Braun)