Lazarus came back from the dead. Where do we go after we’re dead? In the National Museum of History and Science, taxidermy suspends the end and maintains eternity. Between going and staying, there is no on and off button.
Realizador:
A strong sailor gets an autumn leaf from a little girl. It reminds him of his home. So long since he left and he misses home a lot. The sailor rushes to return and meet his old parents. What will he find there?
Science and the occult, UFOs and green lacewings. Life plays tricks on us and not even a brilliant scientist is safe, on that fatidic evening of a picnic by the lake.
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A melancholic and amusing animation about a scientist and his faith. His indecisions become a way to ponder about some of the most urgent issues in our society, from climate change to gender identity. The proposal seems to get even more interesting when most of the film’s questions stay open for the audience to weigh. (Duarte Coimbra)
A melancholic and amusing animation about a scientist and his faith. His indecisions become a way to ponder about some of the most urgent issues in our society, from climate change to gender identity. The proposal seems to get even more interesting when most of the film’s questions stay open for the audience to weigh. (Duarte Coimbra)
The electroacoustic composer Beatriz Ferreyra is a pioneer of early musique concrète during the 50’s and 60’s. Here she discusses her ‘sound hunting’ recording techniques, sound montage and spatialization, in a film full of creaking doors and barking dogs.
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IndieMusic allows for these discoveries. Beatriz Ferreyra, Argentine composer and sound hunter, pioneer of concrete music in the 50s and 60s, as well as Pierre Schaeffer, with whom she collaborated. In this wonderful little documentary, we enter the world of Beatriz, in her ideas and thoughts about sound, explained with practical actions of creaking doors and barking dogs. Aura Satz films everything very close to her, showing her body, her movements, her hands, passing the materiality of the doors, noises and sounds to the film. (Carlos Ramos)
IndieMusic allows for these discoveries. Beatriz Ferreyra, Argentine composer and sound hunter, pioneer of concrete music in the 50s and 60s, as well as Pierre Schaeffer, with whom she collaborated. In this wonderful little documentary, we enter the world of Beatriz, in her ideas and thoughts about sound, explained with practical actions of creaking doors and barking dogs. Aura Satz films everything very close to her, showing her body, her movements, her hands, passing the materiality of the doors, noises and sounds to the film. (Carlos Ramos)
Hondo analyses the social and political conditions of his neighbours in Paris. African migrants, victims of racism and labour exploration, whose situation the director explores with gravity and false lightness.
Mamadou Dia’s first feature film comes to us doubly prized at Locarno Film Festival (Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present competition and First Feature). Shot in his hometown, Matal in Senegal, this is the story of two brothers, Tierno and Ousmane, that clash because of the wedding of their two children. The first wants his boy to marry his brother’s daughter, the beautiful Nafi. What is also at stake is the spreading of fundamentalism in a small village.
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Baamum Nafi is a family tale centered on Tierno, the imam of a Senegalese village, and his daughter Nafi. Neither of them is interested in blindly following the wishes of Tierno’s brother, an Islamic leader who forces his authority on the village, nor of succumbing to religious extremism. Pursuing a marriage-contract between the children of the two brothers and embracing a shift towards hyper-conservative leadership would be a tragedy for all inhabitants. A pulsating first work through the interpretations of Alassane Sy and Aïcha Talla, Baamum Nafi is a cinema lesson and we can only look forward to the next film by Mamadou Dia. Although the works of Dia and Ousmane Sembène (whose work we show this year in the retrospective section) are separated for decades, what moves them, in the heart of Senegal, is still there: a cinema of Good and Evil, of great beauty. (Mafalda Melo)
Baamum Nafi is a family tale centered on Tierno, the imam of a Senegalese village, and his daughter Nafi. Neither of them is interested in blindly following the wishes of Tierno’s brother, an Islamic leader who forces his authority on the village, nor of succumbing to religious extremism. Pursuing a marriage-contract between the children of the two brothers and embracing a shift towards hyper-conservative leadership would be a tragedy for all inhabitants. A pulsating first work through the interpretations of Alassane Sy and Aïcha Talla, Baamum Nafi is a cinema lesson and we can only look forward to the next film by Mamadou Dia. Although the works of Dia and Ousmane Sembène (whose work we show this year in the retrospective section) are separated for decades, what moves them, in the heart of Senegal, is still there: a cinema of Good and Evil, of great beauty. (Mafalda Melo)
Paulo works in a bar and when his shift is over he wonders through the Lisbon night. Between a romantic and desolate tone, Flávio Gonçalves films in the poetry of the night. A poetry made of encounters, ferocious lights and bodies that love and fear.
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Flávio Gonçalves’ beautiful and inspired return to behind the camera is made in the night-time continuity and in the (mis)match of male bodies. Paulo sends home his last customer at the bar and goes meet the boy of the intense gaze. The seeking carries on and the nocturnal lights of Lisbon do not let him down. Is this the time that love, pleasure and peacefulness finally align? A short film in multiple rounds, with a winning result. (Ana David)
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Flávio Gonçalves’ beautiful and inspired return to behind the camera is made in the night-time continuity and in the (mis)match of male bodies. Paulo sends home his last customer at the bar and goes meet the boy of the intense gaze. The seeking carries on and the nocturnal lights of Lisbon do not let him down. Is this the time that love, pleasure and peacefulness finally align? A short film in multiple rounds, with a winning result. (Ana David)
In the last years, Anabela Moreira and João Canijo have been documenting villages in the north and centre region of Portugal (Portugal – Um Dia de Cada Vez, 2015; Diário das Beiras, 2017). This recent film is shot in Castro Laboreiro, in the far north of Portugal, where one observes the daily life of its inhabitants and the overshadowed presence of the wolves that leave their lairs to attack the prey. One calls the land the end-of-the-world’s pit.
We know that members of certain religious cults tend to live withdrawn from reality. Kristoffer Borgli (Whateverest, IndieLisboa 2013) film is about one of these young women that had never heard music before. Until this day.
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One of the rare cases in which the title of the film is the synopsis itself. We are witnessing a sociological experience in which a former cult member, who lived isolated from the world, hears music for the first time. And the power of music is enormous and unpredictable. Borgli builds an intelligent and daring comedy, with tragic consequences, which is also a satire on North American society. (Carlos Ramos)
One of the rare cases in which the title of the film is the synopsis itself. We are witnessing a sociological experience in which a former cult member, who lived isolated from the world, hears music for the first time. And the power of music is enormous and unpredictable. Borgli builds an intelligent and daring comedy, with tragic consequences, which is also a satire on North American society. (Carlos Ramos)
The film that culminates the so-called “tetralogy of frustrated love”, based on Agustina Bessa Luís’s novel Fanny Owen, represented a second wind for the master Manoel de Oliveira’s. career. It narrates the loves and disputes, vaguely real, vaguely mythic, in particular of José Augusto (Diogo Dória) and Camilo Castelo Branco (Mário Barroso) towards the beautiful Francisca/Fanny (Teresa Menezes). Restored version.
When children play, adults play as well: some are DJing with microwaves, the others turn themselves to bacon snacks. This is the Nordic humour of two directors whose work we previously met in 2016, with the short Small Talk.
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It’s Saturday afternoon in a Norwegian play-land. Children play uninhibited while an adult couple watches and eavesdrops on a conversation between three women about the existence of bacon on chips. That same couple decides to meddle in the conversation where they are not wanted instead of resolving their own issues. In great Noewegian humor awkwardness ensues while we sink lower in our chairs until it’s over. (Rui Mendes)
It’s Saturday afternoon in a Norwegian play-land. Children play uninhibited while an adult couple watches and eavesdrops on a conversation between three women about the existence of bacon on chips. That same couple decides to meddle in the conversation where they are not wanted instead of resolving their own issues. In great Noewegian humor awkwardness ensues while we sink lower in our chairs until it’s over. (Rui Mendes)
Literal symbolism. In Canapa’s hands, the roots of cinema become slices of black radish on unexposed film. Sonorous explosions of light piercing the photochemical emulsion, a journey to the end of material, the optical unconscious of a cosmological epic.
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Cinema as an experience able to throw us in a trance. A trance as close to the materiality of cinema as possible. Following “A Radical Film” (2017), Stefano Canapa experiments again with black radish on unexposed film to fabricate a sonic and visual symphony of galvanizing intensity. As the film explodes in our faces in black and white and violently morphs untamable patterns into others, one wonders what kind of cosmic body one is being pulled into, if a lunar surface or a black hole. Or is it the cinema screen? (Ana David)
Cinema as an experience able to throw us in a trance. A trance as close to the materiality of cinema as possible. Following “A Radical Film” (2017), Stefano Canapa experiments again with black radish on unexposed film to fabricate a sonic and visual symphony of galvanizing intensity. As the film explodes in our faces in black and white and violently morphs untamable patterns into others, one wonders what kind of cosmic body one is being pulled into, if a lunar surface or a black hole. Or is it the cinema screen? (Ana David)
Fussel, the friendly monster, is going on an adventurous journey. His goal? To find out what’s at the end of the red string.
In the city, chaos devours and transforms everything with its unrest. One night, Reine, a young loner, becomes attracted by something mythical, a sort of a guide, a supposed oneness.
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In classical Roman religion, a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. Reine is the main character of the film who can be said to live a spiritual experience of the city for one night. Reine looks for something, but doesn’t quite know what she is searching for. A night adrift, with heightened senses. A tremendously delicate animation, with different techniques and textures and with the recognizable visual universe of illustrator Brecht Evens (Marona’s Fantastic Tale). Adrien Merigeau moves, with this animation, to another level. (Carlos Ramos)
The cinema of Bas Devos is particularly attentive to imperceptible movements and overshadowed identities. Ghost Tropic, shot in just 15 days, follows the night journey of Khadija, a 58-year-old woman that realises she lost her last subway and has to walk home. This is a minimalist portrait and a humane adventure that looks at the night of the homeless, the securities, the night as a space for discovery, vulnerability and bonds between people
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An evening light floods a room in an old house. Twilight is an indicator of change, of something that may not be right. And it is in this unstable atmosphere that the Belgian Bas Devos presents his character. An Arab woman who is unable to return home at the end of a working day. Our senses are immediately alert because something is going to go wrong. These thoughts that assault us that are part of the narrative but are not written or filmed. Together with the film, they allow the establishment of new codes and this is where originality takes over the film. The attentive and active spectator is in the film, by its main character, with her pains and illnesses, in short, with her life. That is why it is so beautiful to go back to that first room and feel an emerging light, so clear that almost blinds us. It is our heart beating. Devos (from whom IndieLisboa had already shown the short film We Know) is clearly a filmmaker to follow. (Miguel Valverde)
An evening light floods a room in an old house. Twilight is an indicator of change, of something that may not be right. And it is in this unstable atmosphere that the Belgian Bas Devos presents his character. An Arab woman who is unable to return home at the end of a working day. Our senses are immediately alert because something is going to go wrong. These thoughts that assault us that are part of the narrative but are not written or filmed. Together with the film, they allow the establishment of new codes and this is where originality takes over the film. The attentive and active spectator is in the film, by its main character, with her pains and illnesses, in short, with her life. That is why it is so beautiful to go back to that first room and feel an emerging light, so clear that almost blinds us. It is our heart beating. Devos (from whom IndieLisboa had already shown the short film We Know) is clearly a filmmaker to follow. (Miguel Valverde)
The classic Direct Cinema musical documentary Gimme Shelter is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Considered one of the best rock films of all time, it chronicles the last weeks of The Rolling Stones US tour in 1969. With special focus on the tragic incidents that led to the death of a fan at the hands of Hell’s Angels, responsible for the security of the famous Altamont concert.
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A retrospective look at the year 1969 shows how it was remarkable in world history. For the first time a human being stepped on the moon, the Woodstock festival took place and it was the year when the internet is considered to have been born. December 6 of the same year was marked by another event, the Altamont festival at the end of the American tour of The Rolling Stones, which brought together about 300 thousand people. It is said that the 60’s dream died here. Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers and the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young also played at this festival. This was the so called Woodstock West. There are several myths about what happened. The Stones hired the Hell’s Angels for the security of the festival. But things rushed in and the violence took the place of peace and love, culminating in the death by stabbing of Meredith Hunter, a moment captured by the documentary cameras and later used as evidence. Gimme Shelter is the film of these events, considered by many to be the best rock film of all time, shown here as part of the celebration of its 50th anniversary. (Carlos Ramos)
Cinema as God’s nightmare. In this metaphysical comedy, God fears the fall from his superior condition. Fragments from the history of cinema are the hallucinatory mirror of that inferior form, that of being a man.
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God’s Nightmares appropriates imagery of other films, to think about what God’s sleeping images and ideas would be like. An amusing and hallucinated film, driven by editing that finds its sense in God’s weird interior monologue, where the biggest fear is to be just another earthling. (Duarte Coimbra)
This comedy of errors starts with the death of Guelwaar (translated as “noble one”), a catholic activist priest. When the family comes to the morgue to claim the body, they realise he is gone and was buried by mistake in a muslin cemetery. This a satire to an Africa ridden with small conflicts, a paralyzing bureaucracy and the clashing religious dogmas and beliefs. The subtle irony and the small details reveal Sembène’s masterful skills.