Clandestina review – artists fighting fascists in Portugal in the 1950s – and the present day

Anchored by the personal writings of 20th-century Portuguese revolutionary Margarida Tengarrinha, Maria Mire’s feature debut attempts to create a bridge between the history, the present and the future of political activism in Portugal. Told through voiceover, Tengarrinha’s extraordinary experiences describe an engaging relationship between crafts and activism. Along with her fellow members of the then-banned Communist party, she was forced into a clandestine existence for much of the 1950s. Out of a humble flat in Lisbon, Tengarrinha and her partner José Dias Coelho operated a secret forgery studio. Having studied art, both used their finely tuned skills to produce fake passports for their persecuted comrades on the run.

As the past is resurrected on a sonic level, Mire brings an intriguingly anachronistic approach to the visuals, which imagine the modern-day counterparts of Tengarrinha and her associates. When the voiceover speaks of employing lithography or engraving techniques, on screen we see young people working with laptops, smartphones and digital cameras. The film occasionally takes an even bigger experimental leap with stop-motion interludes that centre on 3D-imaging of different objects – a compass, a circuit board and more – which are seen floating against a cosmic background.

As with the rest of the film, these abstract sequences describe a lineage of political dissent, even if these modern-day reenactments stray on the side of simple decorativeness. Tengarrinha’s historical accounts are grounded in specific antifascist struggles, but the visuals are unmoored with few indications to what contemporary activists in Portugal are organising against. As a result, the onscreen activists are strangely entombed in abstraction, like rebels without a cause.

• Clandestina is at the ICA, London, from 23 August.