With the programme out and the festival coming up, it’s time to open the IndieLisboa box office! As of today, tickets for the festival are available for purchase at Culturgest’s central box office and at Ticketline. All the films, synopses, sessions and more information are updated on the festival’s website and app, which can be downloaded as of today. And, because this is a time for celebration, we announce more reasons to rejoice – IndiebyNight’s full programme, which returns, after two years.
IndieLisboa’s Warm Up Party is scheduled for Saturday, April 23rd, at the mythical Musicbox. We start the party during the afternoon with the warm-up for IndieJunior, which celebrates coming of age in 2022, in its 18th edition. The first act starts at 3pm, a session to whet the appetite for another edition of the festival and that will recover 6 short films screened last year. In the second act, until 6pm, the dance floor is commanded by Pedro Ramos, radio broadcaster and cultural programmer, in a matinee that opens Musicbox to people under 18.
At night, in the same place, the party anticipating the new edition of IndieLisboa continues from 11 pm with a live performance by Karel, who gets his hands on his synthesizers and drum machines to embroider new wave, indie and contemporary electronica in a patchwork that he can claim as his own. On record – the EPs Life (2018) and The Work (2019) – the sound may be mid-tempo, but live, Karel’s themes take the form of dance floor anthems, catapulted by his energetic stage presence. Then, late at night, the attacking trio Chima Hiro, Telma, and Hadi Zeidan keep up the unstoppable cadence of dancing, sweating, and tears of joy.
The next party is on the 29th, at 11pm, at B.Leza, a tribute to Cesária Évora, with a concert by Lucibela and DJ set by FININHO. The premiere of Ana Sofia Fonseca’s documentary about Cesária is the pretext to celebrate Cape Verdean music and the legacy of the singer, a black African woman, from a poor background, who only had her voice and whose only dream was to be free. Lucibela is a new generation singer, born in 1986, on the island of São Nicolau, in the Cape Verdean windward coast, but her virtuosity and interpretation skills already place her among the great voices of today. In this concert she will count with a group of Cape Verdean musicians for a tribute to Cesária Évora. This will be followed by FININHO, co-founder of Celeste/Mariposa, with a DJ set with the warm sounds of Cape Verde to dance until dawn.
Taking advantage of the world premiere of the film A Escuta, by Inês Oliveira, the Central Atrium of CGD receives the concert of Carlos “Zingaro”, a musician who broke new ground in the Portuguese arts in the 60s and 70s. At the end of his adolescence, still in the 1960’s, after receiving everything school could have given him for his violin, Carlos “Zingaro” created the band Plexus, where he added free jazz and contemporary music to a rock band template, in a bold conviction far ahead of its time. In the late 1970s, his improvisation assimilated new studies and experiences, appearing as a capital figure in the light of European free jazz ever since. In this concert, scheduled for April 30th, he is accompanied by David Alves on violin, Alvaro Rosso on bass, and Ulrich Mitzlaff on cello.
We return to Musicbox on May 6th for a concert by Escape-ism, a project by Alexandra Cabral and Ian Svenonius (founder of The Make-Up and central figure of the Washington punk scene since the 1980s). Their musical aesthetic is “minimal rock’n’roll”; Escape-ism are electric, exciting, and the opposite of insipid corporate indie rock. The band recently released Rated Z on their own label, Radical Elite. The duo also has a film on IndieMusic, The Lost Record, a meditation on the power of the objects that make up our lives.
The following day, St. George’s Church will host a special concert. The early 80’s brought us the unpredictable Telectu, whose mentors, Vítor Rua and Jorge Lima Barreto, were fans of total experimentation. An unavoidable and historical band of the Portuguese musical panorama and one of its most original groups ever. The current line-up, with Rua and Ilda Teresa Castro, goes up to the Igreja dos Ingleses to play themes from Telectu’s first LPs, mainly Belzebu and Off Off. The two musicians, along with Carlos Mendes and Vasco Bação, are part of the team responsible for the film Sonosfera Telectu, a first-person documentary that compiles hundreds of hours of rare and unpublished video recordings made in the 80s and 90s.
Every night of the festival, after the end of the film sessions, Gala Gala bar is the meeting point for festival staff, guests and audience, with music by festival staff and guests. From April 29 to May 8, this is the place to return to the pleasures of having drinks with friends and strangers all night long, with no worries. In addition, there will be seven arcade machines to relive old classics, such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong or Street Fighter.
The complete program for IndiebyNight, as well as ticket information, can be seen at indielisboa.com/indiebynight.
The 19th edition of IndieLisboa will take place between Cinema São Jorge, Culturgest, Cinemateca Portuguesa, Cinema Ideal and Biblioteca Palácio Galveias, from April 28th to May 8th.