13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

The result of a year-long collaboration between Ana Vaz and two high school students, Vera Amaral and Mário Neto, this is a kaleidoscopic film about what it is to look, to be looked at and about the latent potential of cinema.

The filmmaker and a group of students process thoughts about the act of seeing, of composing images and achieving things. 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens is the poetic motif triggering this collective experience. The eyes of imagination, the silence, resting one’s look on an infinity of questions translate a pictorial mapping, just as a stylo-camera writing the thoughts of images and feelings in a fantastic mise en abîme - “a film is music that you can see”. (Carlota Gonçalves)

Director's Bio

Ana Vaz was born in 1986 in Brasília. Her critical and speculative filmography is underpinned by experimental collages of images and sounds, to reflect upon situations which are historically and geographically marked by narratives of violence and repression. The impact of colonialism and ecological ruin are the backdrop of her immersive “film-poems”, which have been screened in festivals such as the Berlinale,TIFF or CPH:DOX.