Amadeo was not only a great painter but also a total artist. Trapped by the country where he was born, by the time of destruction in which he lived and by himself, he had a short life and the international recognition that few Portuguese artists could have had was not assented to him.
Secção: Observatório
The collective Flatform has been a part of IndieLisboa’s memory for a long time. Movimenti brings us a wonderful sucession of weather events that take part of a dreamlike sequence shot. A string quartet creates specific sound environment for each weather fluctuation. The sound of Ravel endures even after the film is over. (Miguel Valverde)
“This is a sublimation film of notes, watercolours, travel diaries. In 1989-90, we filmed the last survivors of the Russian avant-garde movements of the 1920s and ’30s in Leningrad-Saint Petersburg, the city of Osip Emil’evic Mandel’≈°tam ‚ the author of the poem Journey to Armenia. The film is a fragment of a vast fresco recorded during the fall of the Soviet Union, with the portraits of the last witnesses of a great history that no-one had registered and who are now dead.” (Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci-Lucchi)
For a long time I had been dreaming of depicting Camargue, the way I feel it to be and the way it is inhabited. It is an uncertain, incomplete territory still in the making. [‚Ķ] How to make this landscape ‚Äòtouchable’ even if it is elusive, maintaining this sensation of inaccessibility, its invisible dimension, those moments of the imperceptibility of sounds and of the images that are brought and then taken away by the wind? (Khristine Gillard)
We are acquainted with Klahr’s ingenious work of collage and subversion of traditional animation. In this music video made for Gabriel Kahane (album: Where are the Arms), we see the melancholic and pessimist sound pervade the image as we gain an admirable synthesis set. (Miguel Valverde) “On my visit to Lisbon and IndieLisboa a few years ago I bought a number of old magazines that had foto-romans. The protagonist of this film is a cut out of photographs used in these comic books.” (Lewis Klahr)
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)
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)
13 paintings by Edward Hopper come to life in a film that tells the story of Shirley, a woman whose gaze, thought and emotions lead us to the American historical context from the 30s to the 60s. Director of Film ist. A Girl and a Gun, which screened in IndieLisboa in 2009, Gustav Deutsch delves deep into the aesthetics of the works of Edward Hopper to recreate it in cinema, with an absolutely wonderful film, happily intersecting painting with the moving image. Hopper’s work, highly influenced by cinema, has inspired filmmakers like Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmush. It is the aesthetic theme for Deutsch’s film, which gives life to the characters and places depicted by the painter without neglecting any brushstroke”. The shadows are there to recreate the environments, but also the movement of a curtain, the reflections of light and sound, leading to a close relationship between inside shots and off camera exteriors. (C. C.)
Visual musical poem, in which Sakda tells us who he is while his sound spreads to the flow of the Mekong River. We feel in each shot of this short film the heartbeat of its unique filmmaker – Joe, whose red-eye ghosts accompany us through a sensorial film experience. (M. V.)
The third in a series of five films entitled “Compound Eyes”, commissioned by the San Francisco Exploratorium. More than a scientific, this experimental film takes us on a journey to the macroscopic world of pollination by flies and butterflies in a transcendental and alien tone. (Rita Figueiredo)
A thirtysomething guy with arrested development falls for a thirtysomething girl with arrested development, but moving out of his junior high school bedroom proves too much and tragedy ensues.
The first film in a trilogy that is, one might say, about love. Desperate in Love, obsessive, in Faith, naive, in Hope. The three parts have other connecting elements. Not just the three protagonists, the family tie, but the same caustic sense that comes from Seidl’s previous filmmaking, the same pleasure to operate on the grotesque mercilessly. Teresa wants to be looked in the eye while being touched and forget that she does this in exchange for thousands of shillings just steps away from a Kenyan resort. On the beach, the geometric shots divide tourists and locals, like a rope that separates territories and that few dare to cross. Somewhere between flesh and colors, Seidl positions the hunting game and enjoys changing its direction whenever he pleases. (M. M.)
Sorry, this entry is only available in European Portuguese.
Se para Teresa o paraíso seria ter um amor terreno, para a sua irmã, Anna Maria, a felicidade suprema tem de vir da fé. Radiologista durante o dia, no tempo que lhe sobra empenha-se na missão de evangelizar almas perdidas – um casal que vive em pecado, uma alcoólica e outros seres humanos sem rumo. Através da abnegação total dos prazeres carnais, da penitência diária, da tentativa de conversão dos hereges”
‚ÄòArt makes me nuts’ is the way that starts the insightful portrait of the contemporary artists and collector Chong Gon Byun. Marie Losier, with her 16mm camera and all the originality and instinctive style in filmmaking, she creates a brilliantly mature and at the same time naive stop motion on consumerism, where humans and objects co-exist in a dreamy world of dolls and fairies. (Nina Veligradi)
After Curling, screened at IndieLisboa 2011, Denis Côté surprises us again with yet another extraordinary film, proving that his filmography is that of an unavoidable filmmaker. Bestiare is a documentary that observes the animals at a Zoo and their relationship with the space where they are and the people visiting, as the seasons change. The images of an accurate contemporary aesthetics make this film a greater work, to which one wishes to return. Images that make us reflect about the act of observing and being observed. (Catarina Cabral)
Pablo Larrain recreates the historic campaign that said no” to Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite. A distant Larraín from Tony Manero or Post Mortem, then black and impenetrable, is here colorful with a contagious energy. Expert in the retro look, the film reaches its climax with the fabulous videoclip overflowing rainbow wrapped in lycra, where everyone sings democracy. No and Yes in fierce fighting in a campaign that, were it not linked to the history of a people sadly surrendered, would be hilarious. Rene Saavedra (Gael García Bernal) is the leader publicist of the operation that advertised democracy as synonymous of happiness. While fighting behind the desk, he also tries to regain the respect of his ex-wife. Larraín captured the spirit of the era perfectly, as Saavedra caught the attention of Chileans. (M. M.)
Johann is a guard at the Museum of Art History in Vienna. His working hours consist on the discreet and attentive observation of visitors passing through the halls of the museum and stoping in front of works of art on display. Johann is faced with the enigmatic presence of Anne, a foreign visitor who came to Vienna on an emergency visit to a friend hospitalized. Without knowing the city, she takes refuge in the museum. A sensitive and intelligent film about the somewhat mysterious crossing of life, spaces and works of art, open to as many interpretations as we want to. Director of known Benjamin Smoke (2000) and Chain (2004), Jem Cohen has a solid and versatile filmography of short and feature films. His experimental short Smells Like Teens Spirit screened at IndieLisboa in 2008. (C. C.)
The body is the subject of this film. The oversize that stands between what you feel and what you do. A giant attracted by a small woman does what he can to make this relationship work. But sometimes, too much strenght does not help. Only sometimes. (Possidónio Cachapa)