Soldier Monika, the protagonist of Paul Poet‘s new film, embodies the contradictions of the contemporary world across the From the Earth to the Moon section in this edition of Doclisboa. Monika Donner is a former elite soldier, a transgender woman, a former lawyer in the Austrian Ministry of Defence, an author revered by the far right, embodying complexities that defy populist simplifications about our times. In Henry Fonda for President by Alexander Horwarth, the actor’s life and his characters contain the contradictions and paradoxes of a portrait of the United States of America of yesterday and today, that, based on a powerful investigation, open up the keys to read the current moment, on the brink of elections.
Soldier Monika, by Paul Poet
As always, From the Earth to the Moon presents the latest films by key directors on the map of contemporary cinema, such as Lula by Oliver Stone and Rob Wilson, The Invasion by Sergei Loznitsa, Favoriten by Ruth Beckermann and Subject: Filmmaking by Edgar Reitz and Jörg Adolph.
Relationships are drawn between filmmaking from different parts of the world, intuiting a common contemporaneity. Historical-political articulations in landscapes crossed by systems of violence – Landscape and the Fury by Nicole Vögele, in the Bosnian landscape where a still latent war resounds, Under a Blue Sun by Daniel Mann, examining the shooting of Rambo III, filmed in the Negev desert with the support of the Israeli army, revealing the relationship between cinematic fiction and the mechanisms of occupation and territorial control, The Falling Sky by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, based on the book of the same name by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, a journey through a landscape in conflict, to the home of the Yanomami and the assertion of sovereignty by a society that is in direct confrontation with capitalist vertigo.
Dahomey, by Mati Diop
On the other hand, the programme once again looks at the tools of cinema in the work of reconstructing history as a witness. From Mati Diop‘s Dahomey, winner of the Golden Bear at the 74th Berlin Film Festival, which follows the return of 26 royal treasures from the former Kingdom of Dahomey – now Benin – stolen in the 19th century by French marauders, to Voices of the Silenced, by Park Soo-nam and Park Maeui, which tells the story of the strong Korean presence in Japan (Zainichi) through the recovery of testimonies filmed in 1985, and The Words Women Spoke One Day, by Raphaël Pillosio, a search for the Algerian women activists who, in 1962, were filmed by Yann Le Masson upon their release from prison in France.
The war in Ukraine is reflected in the programme through films that point beyond generalizing perspectives, whether through the traumatic dimension of war at the heart of intimacy in Dad’s Lullaby by Lesia Diak, or through the intelligent form of patience of a family in wartime in In Limbo by Alina Maksimenko.
Portuguese cinema is present in this section through two films that, in different ways, through their testimonial dignity, open up our imaginary of history and contemporaneity, questioning identities and narratives. In For You, Portugal, I Swear! by Sofia da Palma Rodrigues and Diogo Cardoso, the Colonial War is reinterpreted through the testimonies of former Guinean soldiers, recruited to fight alongside the Portuguese Armed Forces, later abandoned by the country they fought for and exposed to persecution and firing squads, accused of treason in their homeland. Kora, by Cláudia Varejão, offers the portrait as a gateway to memory, with five women who, refugees in our country, live between what they fled and a future of uncertainty.
Kora, by Cláudia Varejão
exergue – on documenta 14, directed by Dimitris Athridis, intimately follows artistic director Adam Szymczyk and his team of curators over the dramatic arc of their preparations for the controversial 2017 edition of one of the world’s largest art exhibitions. A 14 hour epic exploring the politics and function of contemporary art and its institutions in and with the world, the film will be accompanied by a roundtable discussion at CAM — Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, with the collaboration of Maumaus / Lumiar Cité and the presence of documenta 14’s artistic director Adam Szymczyk, and the film’s director, in a conversation moderated by researcher and curator Luísa Santos. Observing documenta 14’s dramatic course with extraordinarily intimate access, the acute conflicts and paradoxes between the politics and realities of art, its institutions and the world are captured, in an inexorably shifting global landscape.
Always recognising in the history of cinema the gestures that help us think about the present, From the Earth to the Moon will present a session dedicated to the war in the Middle East and the ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people, with Here and Elsewhere (1976), by Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin and Anne-Marie Miéville, and The Palestinians (1975), by Johan van der Keuken.
Restored prints of One is Few, Two Would Fill, by Odilon Lopez, a pioneer of Brazilian black cinema, and The Castle of Purity, by Mexican Arturo Ripstein, will also be shown to mark World Day for Audiovisual Heritage Day, on October 27th.
