Jorge de Sena went into exile to Brazil and later to the United States. Although he never returned to Portugal, he maintained an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. Given the political circumstances, the letters — and the film — offer their thoughts on the period of the Portuguese fascist regime, but above all, they are a testament to the affinity between two poets, what keeps them connected and their love for the written word.
A 1977 film by Chantal Akerman that is made up of a series of shots, long shots of New York — the places where Akerman used to walk by when she lived in the city, like the Times Square subway station, or the path between 10th Avenue and Hell’s Kitchen. As a narrator, we have the voice of the director reading the letters that her mother sent her during the years she spent there, from 1971 to 1973.
The first film directed by actress Kinuyo Tanaka, the second woman to make a career behind the camera in Japan. A post-war romantic film in which Reikichi Mayumi, a poet that experienced World War II, begins working as a writer of love letters for other people. Newly restored 4K copy screening for the first time.
A tender film in which Liliana and Giovanni are engaged and, at the moment when everything should fall into place, fate intervenes. He accepts a job far from Milan, in Sicily, to try to make a better life for the two of them. But separation erodes the relationship.
The colonial war separates António, a doctor integrated in the Portuguese army in eastern Angola, from his wife. The thread that unites them are the letters he writes to her, as he sees the horror of war and falls in love with the African continent.
(In partnership with Lisboa 5L Festival)
Truffaut’s first colour film combines the black humour of the French director and the morality of Ray Bradbury’s book, which has already been adapted to cinema several times, specifically because of the way in which the story’s dystopia is portrayed. It’s a world where literature is banned for being the spark that can light the flame of revolution, something that is literally extinguished by dedicated firefighters.
[Based on the romance by Ray Bradbury]
Presentation: Osvaldo Manuel Silvestre
(In partnership with Lisboa 5L Festival)
Visconti makes Thomas Mann’s protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, a composer rather than a writer, but the film is a fairly faithful adaptation of the German author’s novella. Aschenbach travels to Venice for health reasons and finds a city struggling with a cholera epidemic. There, he meets Tadzio, a Polish boy, and becomes dazzled by his beauty.
[Based on the novel by Thomas Mann]
Presentation: Claudia Fischer
(In partnership with Lisboa 5L Festival)
Talking about 2001: Space Odyssey is talking about a film that has become one of the most influential works in the history of cinema. Indelible in the collective consciousness are aspects such as the opening music (Thus Spake Zarathrusta), the monolith scene, as well as the A.I. character that is HAL and the Oscar-winning special effects. The film focuses on a trip to Jupiter and addresses themes such as existentialism or human evolution.
[Based on the short story The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke]
Presentation: Luís Nogueira
(In partnership with Lisboa 5L Festival)
Restored in 2014 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, in association with the National Cinema Centre of Armenia and Gosfilmofond of Russia. Restoration funding provided by the Material World Charitable Foundation and The Film Foundation.
A portrait of the Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat-Nova that is presented as a visual poem, composed of tableaux representing his life. An enigmatic meditation on art that was such a departure from the Soviet realism of its era that the authorities prevented its distribution outside Armenia.
[Based on Sayat Nova’s biography and poetry]
Presentation: Elisabete Marques
(In partnership with Lisboa 5L Festival)
An Italian drama based on the homonymous play by Luigi Pirandello. Marcello Mastroianni is the protagonist of the film, a character who is under the illusion, the result of trauma, that he is the Roman Emperor Henry IV. His psychiatrist tries to bring him to the present reality, where the woman who loves him (Claudia Cardinale) awaits. Music by Astor Piazzolla.
[Based on the play by Luigi Pirandello]
Presentation: to be announced