General Consul of Portugal Visits Campus to Attend Film Festival, Meet with HFA Community Members
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Tiago Araujo, the General Consul of Portugal in Boston, recently visited campus to participate in the opening ceremony of the 2nd Lusophone Film Festival at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and meet with members of the College of Humanities & Fine Arts (HFA) community.
During a meeting with HFA Dean Joye Bowman, Consul Araujo emphasized the importance of the direct collaboration between the representatives of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the Camoes Institute and the HFA Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Program at the university.
He praised UMass Amherst for its efforts in educating the younger generations of Portuguese, Cape Verdean, and Brazilian-Americans on campus, and for promoting the Lusophone culture in our region.
Consul Araujo also met with undergraduate students in the HFA Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Program for a Q&A session, during which he discussed Portugal-U.S. relations; international collaborations among the Portuguese-speaking countries; and career opportunities for Portuguese speakers in states such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where the language is among the most spoken, following English and Spanish.
In his meeting with the leadership of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, he discussed ways to further improve collaborations between the Portuguese Consulate in Boston and language instruction at UMass, including ways to improve recruitment efforts among the more than 10,000 Portuguese language learners in schools across the Commonwealth.
Consul Araujo finished his day meeting participants of the 2nd Lusophone Film Festival and delivering opening remarks before the audience watched the first film of the week-long event.
The film festival was sponsored by the Lidia Jorge Chair in Portuguese Studies with money provided by the Portuguese Government, through the Camoes Institute, and the Luso Development American Foundation.