Doclisboa announces the first confirmed titles for its next edition – its twenty-first, that will be taking place between 19 and 29 October. Five films from the Heart Beat section and five films programmed in the section From the Earth to the Moon draw up a unique, rhythmic, varied landscape; from dance to literature, to music and the pleasures of the palate – and from the stage to the deep green jungle. The names revealed today include the late, great and irreverent Luís Ospina, a director that is of crucial importance for the festival. Doclisboa dedicated a retrospective to Ospina in 2018 – followed by a tribute in 2019. Ospina Cali Colombia, by Jorge de Carvalho, focuses on a meeting with the director in Lisbon, and follows him as he talks about his life and his prolific work. The film will be screened in the festival’s Heart Beat section – and has its perfect counterpoint in Ospina’s posthumous film, Silent Witnesses (Jeronimo Atehortua Arteaga, Luís Ospina), a cinematic collage that (also) tells a story, of Colombian silent cinema in the first half of the 20th century, built from all the surviving material from the time.
From the Earth to the Moon presents director Sara Dolotabadi‘s intimate vision of her father, Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi – author of the longest narrative written in the Persian language – doubly blessed and cursed by the path of writing and that of the history of his country, in An Owl, A Garden & The Writer. The Chamber – by Cristiane Bernardes and Tiago Aragão – a world premiere at Doclisboa, follows elected women from different political spectrums in Brazil, who hold office in the Chamber of Deputies during the last year of Jair Bolsonaro’s government.
L’amitié, by Alain Cavalier, a fundamental filmmaker, depicts, with a nostalgia clean of sentimentality, the indelible ties that bind him to those who know how to share and hold space with him, whether in front of or behind the camera. The selection of films confirmed for this section of the festival also includes Frederick Wiseman‘s latest: Menus Plaisirs – Les Troigros, a long tasting of the atmosphere and the pleasures of Troigros seen from various perspectives at the crucial moment when the famous restaurant is passed on to the next generation of the family, which has run it for four generations.
Ospina Cali Colombia, Jorge de Carvalho, Portugal, 2023
In addition to the aforementioned Ospina Cali Colombia, by Jorge de Carvalho, Heart Beat, the section that symbolises Doclisboa’s pulsating life, showcases Joan Baez I Am Noise, by Karen O’Connor, Maeve O’Boyle and Miri Navaski. A searing personal portrait of the soul of folk legend and activist Joan Baez, the film is an immersive experience that follows the singer on her last tour and retrieves precious documents from her extensive archive. Joan Baez is unique – not least in the way she chooses to tell, for the first time, the whole truth about her life, including the fight for civil rights, and her romance with a young Bob Dylan. Nôs Dança, by Rui Lopes da Silva, is a journey led by dancer and choreographer António Tavares to the islands of Cape Verde, as he discovers – through other dancers, as well as through people who preserve stories and knowledge – the dances spread across the archipelago, from traditional rhythms to contemporary styles. Asif Kapadia, in a film that is a beautiful union of the languages of dance and cinema, captures, and expands on, a choreography by Akram Khan: Creature is the unfolding of a fascinating conversation between two genres and between two creators; it is also a powerful reflection on authoritarianism, the climate crisis, love and loss.
Finally, Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV, by Amanda Kim, tells the story of how the most celebrated Korean artist and video art pioneer rose to fame in New York, and of how he predicted a future where “everyone will have their own TV”. The twists and turns of how we got here, to our present times, described in the future tense by the visionary Paik.
In October, the whole world fits in Lisbon.
