The Director’s Cut section, dedicated to films about cinema, returns this year with recently restored treasures (Hopper/Welles, Three Days Without God and The Last Stage) and films that rework on the cinematographic heritage. In the Mouth of Madness section, on the other hand, programmed films are unsettling and tear language and genre boundaries, without taboos. IndieLisoa returns to the usual venues from August 21 to September 6, 2021.
In focus in the Director’s Cut section is Hopper/Welles by Orson Welles, premiered in the last Venice Festival – its first public exhibition after 40 years on the shelves. Shot in 1970, this conversation seizes both directors in a crucial moment of their careers: It had been over a decade since Welles had worked within the Hollywood system, and he had begun to strike out on his own as an independent, ruthlessly idiosyncratic artist; Hopper, on the other hand, had just had an unexpected major success with the studio-financed counterculture hit Easy Rider. This unscripted talk on two cameras, in lush black and white, lit only by a fireplace and hurricane lamps is a historic and revealing record of these two film mavericks.
Another surprise is Three Days Without God, the first fiction feature ever directed by a woman in Portugal. Bárbara Vigínia, who was 22 years old at the time, directed the film, co-wrote the script and played the main role. The film premiered on August 30, 1946, in Lisbon’s Cinema Ginásio, and would later in the same year be part of the Portuguese delegation on the second edition of Cannes. At the moment of its first screening, it had approximately 102 minutes (around 2800 metres of film). Of those, only 26 minutes (688 metres of film) were preserved and the soundtrack was lost. The result of the scan and digital restoration of that fragment is now presented in IndieLisboa, on the day marking exactly 75 years since its premiere. Três Dias sem Deus is part of the Director’s Cut In Context selection, co-programmed with the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Lost and Found by Clara Cúllen, a documentary about the director’s grandmother – who was an Argentinean woman filmmaker and Barbara Virginia’s contemporary – will also be screened.
Two other Portuguese are in focus: Samuel Barbosa’s Around Rocha’s Table, an exploration of Paulo Rocha’s creative process, which will be screened in IndieLisboa after its Locarno premiere in August; and Diálogo de Sombras by Júlio Alves, on world premiere, about Pedro Costa’s universe and taking his exhibition in Serralves as starting point. Pedro Costa: Companhia establishes a dialogue between the Portuguese director and the characters that inhabit his world.
Wanda Jakubowska’s The Last Stage is one of the first portrayals of life in concentration camps, shot soon after World War II and now presented in a digitally restored version. Jakubowska herself was a prisoner in the concentration camp she was filming, before its dismantling. The footage is coupled with a fictional narration of what she lived and experienced there. A film that connects with From Where they Stood by Christophe Cognet, programmed in the Silvestre section.
In contrast, There Are Not Thirty-six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse by Nicolás Zukerfeld is an entertaining film, based on an investigation about a quotation identified as Raoul Walsh’s and the resulting attempt to draw it. From a collection of characters riding in Walsh’s films comes a film-essay.
In Mouth of Madness, genre and language boundaries are torn. Among the features, an Italian horror classic celebrates its 50 years: Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood tells the story of a rich countess’s death, which triggers a battle over her heritage and a succession of deaths that doesn’t seem to cease.
She Dies Tomorrow by Amy Seimetz brings together psychological horror and absurd humour. Amy is a girl who has just bought a house, but she is confident that she will die the day after. An ideia that seems to become contagious around her.
In Spree, by Eugene Kotlyarenko, Joe Keery (the friendly boy from the popular TV series Stranger Things) is Kurt Kunkle, a driver obsessed with the idea that you need to register yourself to exist. Told in first-person, the film is a hybrid between comedy and horror, with a caution message regarding social media.
Among the section’s shorts, in Percolate Galactic’s Rendang of Death two friends fight over the last piece of the best rendang ever. You’re Dead, Helene by Michiel Blanchart follows Hélène, who is unable to detach from the love that still unites her with her boyfriend and keeps haunting him after her death. And MeTube3: August sings „Una furtiva lagrima“, by Daniel Moshel, is the third chapter of a series of shorts marked by humour and the love of opera.
As of today, professional and student accreditations are open and can be purchased at a special price here.
PROGRAMME
DIRECTOR’S CUT
- Amor Dentro da Câmera, Jamille Fortunado/Lara Beck Belov, doc., Brazil, 2021, 85’
- Around Rocha’s Table, Samuel Barbosa, doc., Portugal/Japan, 2021, 94’
- Diálogo de Sombras, Júlio Alves, doc./exp., Portugal, 2021, 60’
- Edge of Doom, Michaela Grill, doc./exp., Austria, 2020, 3’
- Fitas Cirúrgykas, Edgar Pêra, exp./fic., Portugal, 2021, 10’
- Forensickness, Chloé Galibert-Laîné, doc., France/Germany, 2020, 40’
- Hopper/Welles, Orson Welles, doc., USA/Poland, 2020, 130’
- The Last Stage, Wanda Jakubowska, fic., Poland, 1948, 109’
- Lost and Found, Clara Cullen, doc., Argentina, 2020, 35’
- Lotte Eisner. A place, nowhere, Timon Koulmasis, doc., France/Germany, 2021, 60’
- Patent Nr. 314805, Mika Taanila, doc./exp., Finland, 2020, 2’
- There Are Not Thirty-six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse, doc./exp., Argentina, 2020, 63’
- Thinner Than Two Ten-thousandths of a Millimetre, Gregor Eldarb, exp., Austria, 2020, 8’
- Watching the Detectives, Chris Kennedy doc./exp., Canada, 2017, 36’
Director’s Cut In Context
- Blood, Pedro Costa, fic., Portugal, 1989, 95’
- The Green Years, Paulo Rocha, fic., Portugal, 1963, 91’
- Silver River, Raoul Walsh, fic., USA, 1948, 110’
- Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, F.W. Murnau, fic., USA, 1931, 81’
- Three Days Without God, Bárbara Vírgina, fic., Portugal, 1946, 25’
MOUTH OF MADNESS
- A Bay of Blood, Mario Bava, fic., Italy, 1971, 87’
- Bobby Pinwheel, Rob Kleinschmidt, Anim., USA, 2020, 4’
- Flex, Josefin Malmen, David Strindberg, Fic., Switzerland, 2020, 4’
- Flick, Ariel Zengotita, Fic., USA, 2019, 10’
- Kindred, Joe Marcantonio, fic., United Kingdom, 2020, 100’
- MeTube3: August sings „Una furtiva lagrima“, Daniel Moshel, Fic., Austria, 2020, 10’
- Mosquito State, Filip Jan Rymsza, fic., USA/Poland, 2020, 100’
- Rendang of Death, Percolate Galactic, anim., Indonesia, 2020, 7’
- She Dies Tomorrow, Amy Seimetz, fic., USA, 2020, 86’
- Spree, Eugene Kotlyarenko, fic., USA, 2020, 93’
- A Stranger from the Past, Jan Verdijk, fic., Netherlands, 2020, 5’
- Survivers, Carlos Gómez-Trigo, fic., Spain, 2020, 7’
- The Thing That Ate the Birds, Sophie Mair, Dan Gitsham, fic., United Kingdom, 2021, 12’
- Thirst, Steinþór Hróar Steinþórsson, Gaukur Úlfarsson, fic., Iceland, 2019, 90’
- You’re Dead, Hélène, Michiel Blanchart, fic., Belgium, 2020, 24’
- Wood Child and Hidden Forest Mother, Stephen Irwin, anim., United Kingdom, 2020,10’
- 50 (or Two Whales Meet at the Beach), Jorge Cuchí, fic., Mexico, 2020, 122’