Werner Herzog’s bleak vision of a rebellion and the resulting mayhem in an institution. The entire world is inhabited by midgets.
Archives: Filmes
Kali is the story of a boy who dreams of a place in the sun, but it is in the shadow that he finds the light he searches for. This is the last chapter of a trilogy and the result of a reflection on the themes and aesthetics that have inspired me: childhood and its fears, difference, loneliness, light and shadow. In the background is reconciliation with childhood, accepting adulthood, no longer escaping our fears and being able to see them from another angle. (Regina Pessoa)
He likes her. She likes the boy playing football in the park and watches over his backpack. While waiting, she swings upside down in a merry-go-round. She sees the world bottom up, he tries to convince her of his point of view and the film dwells on the tension between them. Tomorrow, if they meet again, maybe she’ll change her mind. (Ágata Pinho)
A film about children soldiers tragically caught up in the Miskito Indian resistance of Nicaragua.
It’s a drama where passion, altruism, crime and hidden racism are intrinsically intertwined. The gliding perception of the main character is captured in the jarring but playful compositions and elaborate dialogue that turns the apparent kitchen sink realism into existential psycho-sink.
During an ordinary evening in front of a soap opera, a young girl rejects her mother’s constant signs of affection. The warm family environment becomes asphyxiating.
A concert film on Sigur Rós’ INNI, filmed over two nights at Alexandra Place in London, England, toward the end of the band’s 2008 tour, INNI is a unique rockumentary. INNI transports the viewers right on stage with its intimate and, at times, claustrophobic shots. A visionary film.
A poetic understated movie about tragedy and reconciliation in the Mississippi Delta. Lawrence and his brother live together in a small town next to young James and his mother Marlee. She is a single mother struggling to scratch a living for herself and her son. James roams the rural landscape getting into trouble. The brother’s death causes a profound ripple effect in their lives. Marlee confronts Lawrence using this opportunity to take over the property, but hope rises when she helps Lawrence in reopening his convenience store. The three of them learn gradually to get past their issues and deal with life – as a family.
Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos (1931-2008), engraver, painter, is one of the great artists of the 20th century. His world is the crepuscular world of the end of the Portuguese Empire, he who created the first metaphors against the Portuguese Colonialism. And who, with constant vitality, has opposed himself against the New World Order. Knowing, with Eliot, that “the past and the future time are both always present on the present time”.
Honored as Independent Hero in IndieLisboa 2009, Werner Herzog is back with his most recent work, a documentary that shares conversations with a young killer, Michael Perry, days before his death penalty, and with all the ones who were affected by the crimes he commited – his family and the families of the victims -, and makes us reflect about the act of murder. Herzog examines in a sharp way the different perspectives of the crimes – the one of the killer who is condemned to death, the one of those who cry the loss of their loved ones, the one who registered and investigated the crime scenes, the one who, abiding the law, executed the sentence. Questioning the act of killing, illicit or ordered by law, Into the Abyss turns into a film-inquiry that both interrogates the killer and the penalty condemning him. (Catarina Cabral)
Nicole Brenez (professor at the Sorbonne) and Philippe Grandrieux started a serious portraying great, heroic but little known figures of the avant gard political cinema. The first film is an essay on Masao Adachi, the Japanese independant filmmaker, experimental artist, activist and revolutionary combatant, political prisoner.
On a rainy afternoon, a child plays with his snails. He falls along with them with a dreamy snail circus.
Final film in Nolot’s trilogy on aspects of gay life. 58-year-old Pierre (Nolot), a former gigolo turned author who is HIV-positive, finds himself increasingly unable to cope with loneliness and the outside world. It’s his reaction to an old friend’s death. The film it’s a caustic comedy-drama where no one grows old gracefully.
In a Trás-os-Montes jail, preparation starts for the Way of the Cross staging and the prisioners, as if they were students again, gather in the classroom to receive instructions. The documentary watches them since their first rehearsals until the procession, with a detailed insight into the process: the dramaturgy taken very seriously, the image of Jesus’ wounds painted carefully, the making of the wooden crosses that close the film in a geometrical shot, the elderly witnessing the developments and singing about life and time never going back. The directors uses summary shots, filled with incisive, curious notes ‚ a poster of Jesus Christ on a door, as if he was a celebrity to be embodied. The quietness of the countryside and the peaceful life of the rural community form a contrast with the latent tension, the uncertainty of the future and ensure the nostalgia of tradition. (Ágata Pinho)
The director of this film-performance faces the power of nature as she is trying to convince a waterfall to turn into a power plant. Her discourse, the arguments she uses, her supposedly ecological and well sustained reasoning can’t but hide our lack of most basic common sense. What has humanity to do with nature? Are we trying to do our best or to dominate? (Karim Shimsal)
“Green Waters” is the name of the seaside resort where Juan plans to spend the summer holiday with his wife and children. But things go wrong. Sexual temptation is everywhere. Juan is consumed by fears of being pushed aside by his family and not being able to protect his daughter from lurking dangers. His Freudian wife explains to him that his fears are a projection of his desire for sex with another woman and urges him to go to a therapist. Juan ignores her. The camera shares Juan’s grotesque-neurotic perspective and in the classic suspense-movie style of past eras the film score evokes the inner life of a paranoid capable of anything.
Using a minimalist dialogue, the story follows the travels of Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of conquistadors down the Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. A whole army disappears into the jungle without a trace. A story of power and madness.
Turning a city into an anthill is just a question of perspective. The way you see one thing determines the signification of the very same object. Entire lives through one day. The energy turned into futility, the everyday objectives turned into a senseless agitation. (Karim Shimsal)