Portugal

A docu-drama that follows Manoel de Oliveira’s life during the times of dictatorship in Portugal.

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73-year-old De Oliveira decides to make a personal movie that his audience will only know once heis dead. In 1982, the director takes the decision to make a movie about (and in) his (ex) house, in which he lived for over 40 years. The initial still shot is held for a long while with the presence oftrees in the garden of his house in Oporto. De Oliveira himself introduces the film and speaks all the credits out. The voices of a man and a woman guide us for most of the first part, in a sort of preliminary and formal tour around the totality of the house. They remain out of frame and the camera perspective is not necessarily theirs.Read More »

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Released in 1964 and directed by Fernando Lopes, “Belarmino” charts the life and times of ex-boxer Belarmino Fragoso. It is considered one of the first films of the Novo Cinema Português, itself part of a wave of New Cinema movements sweeping the world in the 196os, and one of the key markers of a break from the previous traditions of Portuguese cinema.Read More »

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December 25th in the middle eighties. The family gets together in the grandparents’ house, through red curtains in the window that opens onto the sunroom, amid pendulum clocks, wicker-seat chairs and a huge Nativity Scene. There is not one particular highlight; our only interest is the portrait of the group consisting of four generations and two dogs.Read More »

In the end of the 19th century the peasants in Portugal started a courageous struggle for better work conditions. After generations of starving misery, the Carnation Revolution sowed the promise of an Agrarian Reform. Mostly in the Alentejo region, these rural workers occupied the huge properties where they were once submitted to the power of their Masters. Perhaps the lost seed of other fruits…
It is said in Alentejo, when something is lost, those who are looking should start to walk back to the beginning. We must pray and ask Saint Lucy to clear our vision, so we can see and look better.
The protagonists of this film, resistants of this struggle, many of them illiterate, working since childhood, tell their story to the youngsters of today, in their own words.Read More »

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On a day like many others, a woman leaves work. She’s late for a party, in the outskirts of Lisbon. As she drives on the highway she sees a man ready to jump off a bridge. She stops the car, gets off and approaches the man, trying to save him. Something unites the two. They kiss. But when she opens her eyes she no longer sees him. In a city full of mysteries, the woman tries to figure out who that man was, living an adventure beyond her imagination… This woman had it all: the perfect husband, perfect friends and a perfect house. But in a snapshot everything changes. Sometimes, having it all is not enough…Read More »

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In this artful film by 85-year old director Manoel de Oliveira, the heroine, instead of being powerless in the face of a world ruled by men, finds herself to be far too powerful. Beginning when she was a child, Ema (Leonor Silveira as an adult) had the kind of looks and manner that could stop cars when she came up to a street — or cause accidents. As time goes by, she explores her power over men and, as a mature woman, chooses to marry a man who has virtually no machismo so that she can continue having affairs and exploring this mysterious ability of hers. Eventually she seeks to transcend her unusual limitation and accomplishes her death with astonishing serenity. This haunting story is based on a novel by Agustina Bessa-Luis.Read More »

Super Natural is a film that talks and listens, that interferes and seeks out those who are beholding it. Its desire is to abandon the screen, to take a look at those who look at it, and listen to them, but also to be smelled and seen beyond what is being seen. Super Natural is a transcendent experience occurring outside of the body, of all bodies, but particularly of one’s own. It is like a super-power and, in this movement, it focuses on the image, a sensitive existence one intends to speak with.Read More »

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Follows Dan, a young Venezuelan man currently living in Lisbon, who collects magic mushrooms in the forest and distributes them in the city to those in need of help – like a New Age Robin Hood – using pigeons as carriers.Read More »

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Young and handsome Sergio works the night shift as a trash collector in Lisbon, Portugal. He can’t force himself to connect with his pretty female co-worker Fatima, who displays an avid interest in him, so instead Sergio roams the city with the trash company’s pet dog. Eventually Sergio becomes fascinated with a sleek motorcycle, and then also its owner, João – a young man totally indifferent to Sergio. The frustrated trash collector’s surfacing sexual desires unleash his darkest impulses, sending him down a dangerous path of violence, depravity and degradation.Read More »