New Visions

As invited directors, we welcome the as much intimate as collective universe of Paula Gaitán and Mika Taanila’s technological experiments between film and performance. In another performance, Jerónimo Atehortúa Arteaga carries on the work developed with Ospina to render new meaning to the history of Colombian cinema. Luciana Fina takes her striking installation Andromeda further, and Edgar Pêra returns with yet another incursion into the universe of Fernando Pessoa. In a space where films take chances and we venture other possibilities by bringing them together, a dialogue between two curators (Cíntia Gil and Jean-Pierre Rehm) resulted in a programme in which cinema is looking for itself—Shadowboxing.

One Screening Only
19 Oct • 18:00 / 90’
Cinema Ideal
One Screening Only
28 Oct • 19:15 / 90’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

Conspiracy gets its title from the 1975 album by Jeanne Lee and is inspired by the practice of burning the Vaval effigy in French Caribbean carnival.
Allensworth is about a lost town in California’s Great Central Valley, built by and for Black Americans in the early 20 th century. The history of the USA is made of circulation, hope, and also forgetfulness.

Conspiracy

Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Simone Leigh

Conspiracy is a collaboration between artists Simone Leigh and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich titled for the 1975 album by Jeanne Lee and inspired by the practice of burning the Vaval effigy in…

Allensworth

James Benning

“Allensworth is about a lost town in California’s Great Central Valley, built by and for Black Americans in the early 20th century. It was shot over a full year and…

One Screening Only
22 Oct • 22:00 / 102’
Cinema Ideal
One Screening Only
29 Oct • 21:15 / 102’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

Two melancholic meditations. An experimental Antigone, shot on graveyards, adapts in a free way Sophocles’ tragedy, trying to find how to live among the dead. Undefined Things is a gentle reflection on the nature of art, telling the story of a film editor who recently lost her friend, and consequently her interest in cinema.

Antigona

Elena Gutkina

A free adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. King Creonte has Antigone imprisoned in a crypt. Buried alive, she looks out at the world from her underground dungeon. According to Elena…

Undefined Things

Maria Aparício

Eva is a film editor. While working with her assistant Rami on a feature film about blind people, she seems to have lost her enthusiasm for cinema. Added to this…

One Screening Only
26 Oct • 22:00 / 109’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório
One Screening Only
28 Oct • 14:00 / 109’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

Three films share one intuition—histories flow through the possibility of place and the circulation of images. From Razi’s astounded question about the Iranian uprising and the history of those who say ‘no’, to Martín’s arena where the speed of a territory being crossed is against those who will not move. In the end, Declan Clarke’s almost-tale starring the musicians of Bremen and the decline of the European left.

At Night, the Red Sky

Ali Razi

On a very dark night, in the boiling atmosphere of the recent Iranian uprising, a woman and a man travel through time and remember. Since September 2022, a large part…

Vuelta a Riaño

Miriam Martín

Moving images shot from the ground against moving images shot from the sky. The words of women, men and children against official speeches. People who don’t want to move, “just…

How I Became a Communist

Declan Clarke

Taking as its starting point the European folktale The Musicians of Bremen, published in Germany in 1819 by the Brothers Grimm, the film reflects on the decline of a unified…

One Screening Only
26 Oct • 20:00 / 81’
Cinema Ideal
One Screening Only
27 Oct • 22:00 / 81’
Cinema Ideal

In Laure Prouvost’s dreamy film, we see grandma growing a pair of wings and floating above a desolate misty landscape. This, obsessed with broken grammar and homeland, moves us by the dictums of a tarot spread through a millennial regicide, or a coup d’état performed against the heart of a very Spanish film.

Every Sunday, Grandma

Laure Prouvost

Grandma grows a pair of wings and transforms into a human bird. She steps out of the darkness of a tunnel into a desolate misty landscape. She is above clouds,…

This

Terrorismo de Autor

Esto is a story of communists and fascists—Indians and cowboys—, of identity as a trench, homeland or death in life. Esto is an intergenerational dialogue where each generation denies and…

One Screening Only
23 Oct • 21:30 / 77’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 2

Accidentes de la historia

Jerónimo Atehortúa Arteaga

In the process of creating Mudos testigos, Colombian films from the silent period, both complete and incomplete, were found and digitised. They will be projected with live music. These works…

One Screening Only
21 Oct • 19:00 / 73’
Cinemateca Portuguesa - Sala M. Félix Ribeiro

Andromeda

Luciana Fina

Evocation of the artistic and cinematic expression of 1960s and 1970s’ public television in Italy. It is the early age of public broadcasting, during which cinema also questions its relation…

One Screening Only
29 Oct • 14:00 / 229’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

Days

Peter Schreiner

Austrian loner Peter Schreiner (1957-2023) created an unparalleled universe (as did his friend Michael Pilz). Tage is his last work, made during a battle with cancer, although it is not…

One Screening Only
22 Oct • 14:00 / 131’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3
One Screening Only
24 Oct • 19:30 / 131’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

De Facto

Selma Doborac

Two actors are seated at a table, on the surface of which their images are reflected like their doubles; three long monologues each, spoken quickly, as if answering an interviewer.…

One Screening Only
22 Oct • 18:30 / 145’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório
One Screening Only
29 Oct • 18:30 / 145’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

The Diagonal Force

Julie Morel, Annik Leroy

In La Force diagonale, several men and women reflect on how to live with a turning point in their life and possibly be transformed by it. The film weaves subtle…

One Screening Only
22 Oct • 21:45 / 104’
Culturgest - Auditório Emilio Rui Vilar

Frente a Guernica

Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi

“While Lucrezia Lerro, one of the two narrators, talks about the ‘case’ of Osip Mandelstam, I read from the diary of Mikhail Koltsov on the arrival of the writers for…

One Screening Only
27 Oct • 20:15 / 196’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

The Last Days of Humanity

Enrico Ghezzi, Alessandro Gagliardo

Enrico Ghezzi, a critic and curator, created Fuori Orario and showed enough films to change the life of generations. Another side of his passion is being the man with a…

One Screening Only
20 Oct • 11:00 / 101’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3
One Screening Only
21 Oct • 16:45 / 101’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

Losing Faith

Martha von Mechow

In a room where time seems to have slowed down for a moment, a mother rests on a couch while a baby sleeps and the other daughter draws and asks…

One Screening Only
25 Oct • 19:00 / 92’
Culturgest - Auditório Emilio Rui Vilar

Não Sou Nada – The Nothingness Club

Edgar Pêra

A ‘cinenigma’ by Edgar Pêra, starring the most complex ‘word artist’ of his time—Fernando Pessoa. A journey through the mental universe of Fernando Pessoa and his many heteronyms, substantiated in…

One Screening Only
23 Oct • 19:45 / 71’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3
One Screening Only
28 Oct • 19:45 / 71’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

National Anarchist: Lino Brocka

Khavn De La Cruz

Did Lino Brocka really die from a car accident? Or was he murdered by one of his enemies in the government? This is Brocka like you’ve never seen him before.…

One Screening Only
21 Oct • 18:00 / 75’
Cinema Ideal
One Screening Only
28 Oct • 21:30 / 75’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

Revolution+1

Masao Adachi

The protagonist’s mother joins a religious group after her husband’s suicide and makes a large donation. He believes that this group has ruined his life and family, so he creates…

Invited Director Paula Gaitán

One Screening Only
20 Oct • 21:45 / 105’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

O Canto das Amapolas

Paula Gaitán

The visual nature of the sound of a mother’s voice summons historical and affectional landscapes. Long discussions between a daughter—the director—and her mother. The images are as free as the…

One Screening Only
21 Oct • 21:45 / 83’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

Noite

Paula Gaitán

During one night, a woman walks through Rio de Janeiro, and listens to the music around: jazz, rock, electronic. The film shows a sensory record of bodies and urban sounds.

Invited Director Mika Taanila

One Screening Only
20 Oct • 14:00 / 72’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3
One Screening Only
21 Oct • 19:30 / 72’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

Monica in the South Seas

Sami van Ingen, Mika Taanila

July 1975. Monica Flaherty, daughter of Robert and Francis Flaherty, cinéma vérité pioneer Richard Leacock and Sarah Hudson – Ricky’s student at MIT –travel to Samoa, to the island of…

One Screening Only
20 Oct • 19:00 / 56’
Cinema São Jorge - Sala 3

This meta-narrative about cinema and the role of a camera is preceded by a live performance, I Might Be Stuck. The ballet of robots in the real space of the cinema is certainly something that you haven’t seen yet!

I Might Be Stuck

Mika Taanila

Too many messages received. Where there is no problem, there is no solution. “The vacuum robots are almost the closest thing to a human consciousness. It is at their height…

RoboCup99

Mika Taanila

A film about a particular human utopia: the man-made autonomous machine. It was shot during the 1999 robot football World Cup. The standard rhetoric is all there: the slow-mos, the…

Shadowboxing

One Screening Only
23 Oct • 22:00 / 110’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

The Connection

Shirley Clarke

The Connection, Shirley Clarke’s first feature film, already contains the author’s passion for jazz’s experimentation, featuring legendary musicians such as Freddie Redd and Jackie McLean in the cast. Based on…

One Screening Only
24 Oct • 21:45 / 103’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

Notes for a Film

Ignacio Agüero

Belgian engineer Gustave Verniory went to Chile in 1889 to build the railway through the Mapuche territory. Freely based on Verniory’s diary, director Ignacio Agüero explores the act of filming…

One Screening Only
25 Oct • 21:45 / 97’
Culturgest - Pequeno Auditório

Four films that look for the possibility of cinema—of an image, a movement, a velocity, a passion, a terror, a light. The possibility of an image is a depth, an unattainable and vital mystery. From Kerr’s precise observation to Bahri’s abyss, opening up to the glorious scores of Duras and Dépardieu: “Yes, this would be a film. This IS a film”.

King Kong

Peter Friedl

Crashing Waves

Lucy Kerr

“There is always this paradoxical contrast between the surface of an image, which appears to be in control, and the process which produces it, which inevitably involves some degree of…

Apparition

Ismaïl Bahri

Two hands hold a photograph in front of the lens. It is so violently lit from both sides that it is impossible to distinguish any image. Only the shadows cast…

Le Camion

Marguerite Duras

Sitting at a table, holding a script, Marguerite Duras and Gérard Depardieu read a dialogue, the story of a woman who addresses the truck driver that picked her up from…