There is a very unique environment in Neighboring Sounds, a state of soul that dwells in the neighborhood of noises, strong images and intriguing characters. The spaces surrounding them have a mix of airy and suffocating and there is always a presence lurking on and off screen. In a middle-class neighborhood in the south of Recife, urban interactions are problematized: trust, respect, authority. A military group is to provide public safety and peace, but the waters are choppy and human relations stand complex and basic instincts interfere with the rules. Children play massages on their exhausted mother’s back, adults play casual love and try to keep themselves safe. The architecture, framing the landscape, is explored as a comment and foreshadowing that something isn’t working. (Ágata Pinho)
Haunted by their own directionless lives, two pre-adolescent girls reunite while visiting their ailing grandmother. In the midst of her fantasies of a medieval past ‚ one consumed by fear and desire – the two girls are transformed and confront a legacy of oppression. Love is finally, an entrancement of legs, a union of bellies, a brief tremor of arteries, a confusion of mouths, a battle of veins, a rolling of thighs, whoever says otherwise is a beast. Gregório de Mattos (séc. XVII) (Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt)
In “Sunday, 6th April, 11:42 a.m.” the landscape is considered as a connective system of the relations between people. The video focuses the correspondences between actions and places, between movements and environments. In this sense people are the places they live and the paths produced by these.
Sook Chen quit her job. She decided to go to Peru. Ma could not understand why. In fact, he could never understand what Sook Chen want.
Johan Grimonprez casts Alfred Hitchcock as a paranoid history professor, unwittingly caught up in a Double Take on the cold war period. “Double Take” targets the global political rise of fear as a commodity, in a tale of odd couples and double deals.
In another planet, where the only rule is order… a funny little boy makes troubles around him.
The unexpected music improvisers from Music for one Apartment and 6 Drummers strike again. This time on a retirement home for old people. A Xmas carol? (Possidónio Cachapa)
The film is built as an homage to cinema, with fixed shots that speak piercingly about the present and the supposed progress, with the use of images and time that recalls the early films. A voiceover witnesses the facts, giving us questions to solve. Also there is a mesmerizing final scene. (Miguel Valverde)
“We talk with our eyes and see with our fingers. We think out loud in our dreams and fears … ” A film by the students of the 4th grade of the School EB 1 / JI Real, Vilar do Pinheiro, Vila do Conde, for the music Amigo do Peito by Clã, within the workshop ANIMAR/ESTALEIRO by the Curtas Metragens CRL.
A surprising and enchanting animation, made completely out of wool. A man returns to the nudist camp where he was raised, to spend the last days with his mother. Above all a film about loss and the interior journey that begins when the life of a loved one ends. (Carlos Ramos)
Kalli, a young boy who is brought up by a single mother in the suburbs of Reykjavik gets most of his life experiences through screens: movies, television shows, and computers. When he is sent to spend Christmas with his father and his new family at a remote and isolated farm, the story takes him out of that world and puts him in one where he has to fight “real life” challenges.
“Exotic” is the result of a three-week artistic residence in Maputo (Mozambique) in March 2008. Besides exploring the elements of local culture and its impact on the rhythm and daily routine of the city, it can also touch topics like the movement and the inscription of the body within urban spaces.
Pierre dreams since always going to live in Portugal. He takes his boyfriend to Lisbon, hoping secretly that this city will be also the cradle of their incipient love.
10-year-old Benjamin and his two friends Karl and Julius are filming each other while performing daredevil stunts. On a particularly wild stunt, Benji lands on the ground. But he can’t move. Karl and Julius run for help, but when they return, there is no trace of Benji.
My Dear Friend Chico is a music documentary composed like a letter. An answer to the song Tanto Mar by Chico Buarque de Hollanda through the songs and testemonies of the participating musicians. The purpose is to sketch a portrait of the contemporary Portugal.
Portrait of a film (A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick’s ninth feature film). Portrait of an era (the 60s, marked by the Vietnam War, the protest movements of the youth and the rise of insecurity in Western societies). Portrait of a filmmaker (Stanley Kubrick, a perfectionist filmmaker). A Clockwork Orange is the work of a visionary.
Valérie Massadian pays a visit to her chilhood via a four year old girl named Nana. An impressive debut feature by an exceptional photographer evident by the remarkable compositions of each take in the film. A highly independent Nana, spends time in the country side with her mother and her distant grandfather. One day, she returns home and finds no one, a sense of abandonment is filling the screen while Nana hasn’t realised the emptiness the cruel adult world can provide. Nana will go her own way either we like it or not, with no need for saviours, she is dressing herself up, she is making her own sandwichs, she is taking walks into the woods and she is even reading herself bedtime stories. Nana is free of adults and guidance and Massadian as director reflects this freedom by setting her subject completely free and by letting Nana be herself she created one of the most honest portraits of innocence. (Nina Veligradi)
A young Corean man walks in the streets of Busan filled with rage and will to kill. His never-ending inner speech of hate seems directed to each and every person he crosses in the streets or the metro. However, as he is constantly facing his own reflection we come to doubt the limit between hating and self-hating, between reality and phobic distortion of one’s personality. (Karim Shimsal)
