Paulo Rocha

Synopsis from Cinémathèque québécoise:
À Tokyo, Paulo Rocha rencontre Shohei Imamura qu’il considère comme ” la parfaite illustration de l’espoir et du désespoir des anarchistes “. Rocha observe et écoute attentivement Imamura, s’intéressant particulièrement au regard qu’il porte sur ses oeuvres de jeunesse. Que ce soit à travers une conversation avec l’acteur Kazuo Kitamura, ou une rencontre avec une coiffeuse, Imamura se révèle comme le véritable artisan de la contre-histoire du Japon.Read More »

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A Raiz do Coração (A Root of the Heart) is a Portuguese film set in the Lisbon during the festivities of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lovers and the old town. The story is about Cato, a nationalist politician who is charismatic and unscrupulous. He obsessively pursues Silvia, a mystical and mysterious young transvestite whom he meets at the festival. When Silvia runs into Vicente, a policeman who arrests transvestites and threatens them, Silvia must look towards blackmail to save herself. Compromising photos of Cato start to emerge among opposition parties and he must do all in his power to save his political career.Read More »

A documentary about Wenceslau de Morais, in Japan. A Portuguese writer from the beginning of the 20th century.Read More »

Vanitas is the new feature film by veteran Portuguese director Paulo Rocha. With a script by Regina Guimarães, the film brings together actresses Isabel Ruth and Joana Bárcia – no strangers to this director’s world – in a story about a depressed fashion designer who falls in love with the daughter of one her tailors.Read More »

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A film by Paulo Rocha about Amadeo de Souza Cardoso

“I tried to film that period of his paintings in a different style, as if the camera was a brush in Amadeo’s hand with his colors and shapes”, Paulo Rocha

In Máscara de Aço contra Abismo Azul (Mask of Steel Versus Blue Abyss), Paulo Rocha does a surprising “collage” about the Portuguese modernism, centered in Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. Between the reproduction of the Orpheu years and the Futuristic Manifest, the installation of a exhibition in Gulbenkian and a juggling onirism, Paulo Rocha offers one of the most singular and fascinating visions of that world of colors and metals, so longing as anarchist, so soaring as insecure.Read More »

Synopsis:
This film, made as a “twin” of “A Ilha dos Amores”, was planned as a poetic documentary on the enigmatic life of Wenceslau de Moraes (1855-1929), the great Portuguese writer who lived in the Far East. Verbal testimony, photographs, manuscripts, images of Lisbon, Macao, Kobe and Tokushima in Moraes’ time are set side by side with “A Ilha dos Amores” and with de Moraes’ writings. The director, Paulo Rocha, visited places where Moraes was still remembered, interviewed the writers descendants, consulted archives, rummaged through memories, appointment books, postcards, diaries and calendars from the private life of the 19th century. And above all he set out on a new journey, from Lisbon to Macao to Kobe until he reached Tokushima, where Moraes lived through the final ruin of his life and where Rocha tracks down, between the city and the cemetery, the living presence of places and the memories of individuals.Read More »

Synopsis:
Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio’s fondness for their winsome goddaughter, Joana, and insinuates herself into a relationship brewing between Joana and a mystical gypsy gold salesman. Soon, tempers are flaring, mystical secrets are being revealed and death is hovering over the central characters.Read More »

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This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de Freitas) both loves and hates him as Joao plays on her wavering emotional state. He is sent to Italy to retrieve wayward family member Antonia (Caroline Chaniolleau), the beautiful young woman with a terrorist boyfriend. Joao is forced to recognize his feelings as the political and amorous climate changes around him.Read More »

The film traces the life and times of Wenceslau de Moraes (b. Lisbon 1854, d. Tokushima 1929), the great Portuguese writer who lived in the Far East. 1891: Moraes breaks with his mistress and leaves Portugal for Macao, never to return. 1895: While in Macao, he becomes fascinated by Japan, leaving his Chinese wife and their two children. 1912: Moraes is living and writing in Robe, in the south of Japan, as Portuguese Consul, with his Japanese wife Oyone. 1913-16: Deeply affected by the death of Oyone, Moraes quits his post and goes to live in poverty, near the tomb of his wife. However, he soon becomes involved with a young niece of Oyone’s, Ko-Haru, who eventually dies of tuberculosis. 1916-29: Moraes is transformed into a ghostly figure, wandering at night around the graves of Oyone and Ko-Haru. He writes his most mature works at this time, while his literary fame continues to grow in Portugal. 1929: Moraes dies under obscure circumstances.Read More »