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One of Truffaut’s cinema reflecting themes is the nature of education. One can see this in films like Les 400 Coups or Farenheit 451, or in this adaptation of the scientific memories of Jean Itard. He was a French doctor who found, in 1798, a 12-year-old boy – the “wild child” – who had been until then apart from civilization. Truffaut plays the doctor, the master, the father Itard in this long and difficult educational process.
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The work of De Bernardi (Elettra, IndieLisboa 2018) gets his influence from literature, music and experimental American cinema from the 70’s. In his new film, time passes since September 2012 in Naples to 2019. A group of actors read, over the years, the chapters of the last of Tolstoy’s novels Resurrection. It’s not only the spaces of Turin, Milan, Berlin that changed, but also cinema’s power to “resurrect” some of the artists that died in the meantime.
In the fifties, there were almost four hundred book shops in New York. Today there are less than a hundred. D.W. Young portraits the rare book business in the city in a changing moment. From the old shops and their clichés – men in tweed, avid readers guarded by book piles – and the more modern shops, with young booksellers, full of ideas that involve a more present interaction with the community.
The appearance of Bruno Aleixo, the grumpy little bear with a mean face (together with his friends Busto, Renatoa and Homem do Bussaco), in the Portuguese humor scene left no stone unturned. His first apparition was in this series of brief videos published on the internet in which Bruno, in an allusion to the book of the poet Aleixo, Este Livro Que Vos Deixo, gives advice on pee, drug addicts or sleeping clothes.
The appearance of Bruno Aleixo, the grumpy little bear with a mean face (together with his friends Busto, Renatoa and Homem do Bussaco), in the Portuguese humor scene left no stone unturned. His first apparition was in this series of brief videos published on the internet in which Bruno, in an allusion to the book of the poet António Aleixo, Este Livro Que Vos Deixo, gives advice on pee, drug addicts or sleeping clothes.
The appearance of Bruno Aleixo, the grumpy little bear with a mean face (together with his friends Busto, Renatoa and Homem do Bussaco), in the Portuguese humor scene left no stone unturned. His first apparition was in this series of brief videos published on the internet in which Bruno, in an allusion to the book of the poet António Aleixo, Este Livro Que Vos Deixo, gives advice on pee, drug addicts or sleeping clothes.
How long does it take to read a page of Ulysses, by James Joyce? And on a car trip, how many pages per kilometre? Buchert’s works combine humor, literature and critical reflection. This is just the case in 858 Pages Au Sud, in which the author evokes his father’s death, more than 20 years ago, and tries to beat his old record that involves reading the Irish writer’s classic, a caravan and a literary voyage-performance, heading to the south of Europe.
This film is not in English and does not have subtitles in English.
Bragança’s fifth feature film (Tragam-me a Cabeça de Carmen M., co-directed with Catarina Wallenstein, IndieLisboa 2019) tries to understand which art is possible under the contradictory ghosts that haunt Brazilian’s identity. Co produced by the Portuguese production house Som e a Fúria, and with the collaboration of João Nicolau in the screenplay, the film follows Fernando, a broke Brazilian director in his journey full of adventures and miracles in search of his memories.
In the cinematic universe of Carlos Conceição, the marvellous is not a world apart from reality. They complement, sacrifice one for another. A brother helps a sister die happy. The fairy tale is also a tale of fucking and oxygen masks.
It was during the shooting of António Campo’s Terra Fria (1992) in the region of Trás-os-Montes, that the producer, now director, João Mazeda heard this true story. A theft of water, a homicide, a question of honour, a tragedy in the village of Gralhas, Montalegre.
Inspired in the Canticle of the Sun or Canticle of the Creatures, that Saint Francis of Assisi wrote in 1224, Gomes’ short film reactivates its scope. In the city of Assis in 2005 and also in the remembrance of the small creatures’ praise towards a forgetful saint.)
After a long career as a cinema actress, Buisel started directing in 2017 with Quantas Vezes Tem Sonhado Comigo? (IndieLisboa 2018). Now she adapts once more Fernando Pessoa, a short story about a hunchback that writes a letter to her loved one.
The Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, author of unforgettable soundtracks such as those of Sicario (2015) or Arrival (2016), worked on his debut feature film, when we left us too soon in 2018. Filmed in 16 mm., black and white, Jóhannsson imagines a futuristic world, solitary and beautiful, in which the human race is making way to the monuments of its presence. Narrated by the actress Tilda Swinton, this is a singular and Kubrickesque visual and sonorous voyage.
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.
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.
The documentaries Herdeiros de Saramago, created by Carlos Vaz Marques, are dedicated to the writers that won the Saramago literary prize. In this session we will see four of these films, about the career and life of João Tordo, Adriana Lisboa, Paulo José Miranda and Ondjaki. The delicate and detailed attentive gaze of Graça Castanheira’s direction allows us to enter in the daily life of these artists, while travelling from the written words to the spoken ones.
This film is not in English and does not have subtitles in English.
The documentaries Herdeiros de Saramago, created by Carlos Vaz Marques, are dedicated to the writers that won the Saramago literary prize. In this session we will see four of these films, about the career and life of João Tordo, Adriana Lisboa, Paulo José Miranda and Ondjaki. The delicate and detailed attentive gaze of Graça Castanheira’s direction allows us to enter in the daily life of these artists, while travelling from the written words to the spoken ones.
This film is not in English and does not have subtitles in English.
