Produced by Fado Films and Gonçalo Galvão Teles, written by Diana Andringa and directed by Teresa Olga, the documentary entitled “Engenho e Obra: Engineering in Portugal in the 20th Century”, which accompanies the exhibition, aims at showing not only what direction engineering took, but also its teaching and the engineering profession itself, over the last century.

Following a chronological sequence, sometimes tortuous due to the internal chronology of each of the sub-areas (corresponding to the different modules of the exhibition), the documentary joins the images of the different periods with the opinions of several engineers who talk about their work, and also of sociologists, historians, and professionals in the areas working in close contact with engineering, be it civil, mining or, most recently, bio-engineering.

With the cooperation of the archive of RTP (Portuguese state television) and ANIM (National Arquive of Moving Images) – to whose professionals we are grateful for their contribution to this project - and of companies, laboratories and institutes that, going against the traditional Portuguese tendency for collective amnesia, preserved their film heritage, the authors of the project, in this documentary, present images that have not been shown in Portugal for a long time, from institutional films, cinematographic news and even advertisements that made history.

It will thus be possible to remember the commotion caused by the first trams in Oporto and Lisbon, the work in the mines of S. Pedro da Cova in the early days of last century, the works of the Junta Autónoma das Estradas, the pioneering work of the National Civil Engineering Laboratory (LNEC), the publicity around the launching of the torpedo-boat destroyers, the CP railroads, the construction of carriages by Sorefame, and the inauguration of the Lisbon underground, and the publicity of the company Oliva. Some engineers who stood out from the usual anonymous condition of their profession, such as Alfredo Bensaúde, Duarte Pacheco, Manuel Rocha, and Edgar Cardoso, will also be remembered. Furthermore, the current trends of engineering will be shown and some who are currently in the frontline of research in Portugal, particularly in telecommunications, robotics and bio-engineering, will be heard.