1. Margot Dias was a German-born Portuguese musician, self-taught ethnologist and documentary filmmaker.
17 Facts About Margot Dias
1. 2.
Margot Dias is mainly known for her contributions to Portuguese social anthropological studies in the 1950s and her ethnographic films and photographs on the Makonde people of Mozambique.
3.
Margot Dias's father was a brewer and her mother, who came from a family of craftsmen, worked in a jewellery shop before they married.
4.
Margot Dias completed her piano studies at the Munich Academy of Music in 1940 and met her future husband Jorge Dias at a concert in Rostock.
5.
Jorge Dias taught Portuguese at the University of Rostock from 1938 to 1939, at the University of Munich from 1939 to 1942 and at the University of Berlin from 1942 to 1944.
6.
Margot Dias included these songs in chapter XIV, titled Festivals, Dances, Songs of his PhD thesis about this town.
7.
In 1947, Jorge Margot Dias was appointed Head of the Ethnographic Department of the Centre for Peninsular Ethnology Studies, founded in 1945 at the University of Porto.
8.
Margot Dias officially became his collaborator, thanks to her self-taught experience.
9.
Margot Dias gave her last piano concert in 1956 and from then on devoted herself entirely to ethnology.
10.
Between 1957 and 1961, the Margot Dias couple conducted research campaigns on the Makonde people in northern Mozambique, the Chopi in southern Mozambique and the Khoisan in Angola.
11.
In 1961, Margot Dias returned to Mozambique on her own and for the last time.
12.
Margot Dias took numerous photographs and films, including of the puberty rites of young women, masked dancers, storytellers, pottery and basket weaving and the practices of traditional African healers.
13.
From 1965 until his death in 1973, Jorge Margot Dias worked as the first director of the ethnographic museum, founded as the Museu de Etnologia do Ultramar.
14.
Margot Dias published several ethnological studies about her field research in Mozambique and Angola in Portuguese and German:.
15.
On 4 February 1989, Margot Dias was distinguished as Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry by Portuguese President Mario Soares.
16.
Margot Dias was particularly interested in women from African ethnic groups.
17.
In 2022, Portuguese film director Catarina Alves Costa released the documentary film Margot Dias, which is based on her previous television documentary.