The first part of the 11th Portuguese Film Week It had its last screenings a few days ago at the Leopoldo Lugones Room. There, a focus was developed called “Words in Motion: Lisbon, Cinema and Literature”, a program made up of fiction films, documentaries and audiovisual essays linked in different ways to great authors of Portuguese origin, all within the framework of the Book Fair, which this year has Lisbon as the guest city. Starting this Thursday, in the usual space of Malba Cinema, the second stage of this indispensable annual meeting will begin, with its traditional sections that intertwine the most recent of Portuguese film production with the always necessary look towards the past, the historical and the filmic. In the words of Maria João Machado, curator of the programming and founder of VAIVEM, the association that has carried out the Week for years, “in this event it is not only possible to find an x-ray of the present of Portuguese cinema and its different tendencies, but also with a look at its history, its possible genealogies, the films and the authors who helped build the idiosyncrasy of this cinematography, understanding that many times the key to understanding possible futures is also in the past.
The eleventh edition of the Week will have not one but two inaugural functions, both on Thursday the 9th and continuing: at 7 and 9 p.m. The reasons for the double are related to the presence of two Portuguese filmmakers (and a Brazilian director) specially invited for the occasion. In the afternoon performance, the director Manuel Mozos will be in charge of presenting to the Buenos Aires public a special program in tribute to the 50 years that have passed since April 25, 1974, the day on which the famous Carnation Revolutionwhich put an end to almost half a century of dictatorship in Portuguese lands.
The cinematographic celebration is made up of three short films made immediately after the Revolution: April Cravosby Ricardo Costa, Painted Walls of the Portuguese Revolutiondirected by António Campos, and A Luta do Povo – Literacy in Santa Catarina, from Group Zero. Urgent films, produced in the style of cinema vérité and restored in recent times by the Portuguese Cinematheque. Mozos, who in addition to being an accomplished filmmaker, works as one of those responsible for the preservation and restoration of copies at that institution, will also be presenting in a few days Lisboa no Cinema, Um Ponto de Vistahis own documentary essay about the city of Lisbon (and its representations on the big screen) originally released three decades ago.
The opening night performance will feature the presence of the Portuguese João Salaviza and the Brazilian Renée Nader Messora, directors of the feature film Crowrã – The flower of the buritia notable return to the same territory as his previous film, Chuva is Cantoria in Aldeia dos Mortos (2018). Filmed in the state of Tocatins, in central Brazil, within the native communities krahothe duo’s new film continues to bet on crossovers between fiction and documentary, adding to the mythological layers a strong component of political action in very turbulent recent times. Crowra It will have a simultaneous premiere at Malba Cine and Sala Lugones (see separate review). The “Panorama” focus, of which the film is a part, “always serves as a snapshot of the state of Portuguese cinema and its different expressions, and offers a selection of some of the most resonant titles of today, bringing together films by established authors , daring expressions of experimental cinema, films that narrate fine and sagacious layers of humanity and a promising and lucid debut feature,” Machado writes in the catalog introduction.
The debut in question bears the signature of the director Maria Mire and its title, Clandestine, clearly summarizes the activities of the protagonist: Margarida Tengarrinha, an artist, activist and member of the Portuguese Communist Party who, for almost a decade during the Salazar dictatorship, went underground to take charge of the falsification of passports and other legal documents. Despite being based on the autobiographical book Memoirs of a forger, which describes these dangerous activities between the mid-1950s and early 1960s, Mire’s film is not a documentary about his life. Or it is only tangentially: while a voice-over verbatim runs through parts of the book, the images record a couple of current young people (surrounded by current technology: cell phones, computers, high-definition television screens) “reconstructing” the events described in the original text literally, in certain cases, and much more poetically in others. Produced by the Terratreme collective, which continues to be one of the most stimulating creative powerhouses in Portuguese cinema, Clandestine It is one of those bets that fully demonstrate the sensitivity, intelligence and vitality of the country’s cinematography.
The one of Susana Nobre It is a consecrated name. In addition to already having five feature films and the same number of shorts in her filmography, the filmmaker is also part of Terratreme, serving as a producer on two dozen of the collective’s films, among others the unforgettable The factory of nothing (2017), by Pedro Pinho. In his new film, City Rabatthe director of Common Time and No Taxi do Jack describes the days and nights of a film producer who, after the unexpected death of her mother, enters a zone of silent mourning, in which pain is converted into mysterious attitudes for those around her: her teenage daughter, her ex. , the filming companions. It is impossible not to imagine that between the folds of City Rabat Quite a few autobiographical notes are hidden, at least as a starting point for the construction of the fiction that unfolds on the screen. Nobre’s cinema is like a fabric woven with delicate but resistant threads, a cinema of subtleties that patiently builds a universe that goes beyond the screen and touches the viewer in unexpected ways. Her latest film is no exception and, in the transition of Helena, the protagonist, towards a new stage of life, the director delivers a powerful story but far from the stridency of the common psychological drama.
The 11th Portuguese Film Week, which will continue to display its programming until May 19 inclusivealso presents this year a section called “Lisbon in Portuguese Cinema – Before and After” that includes a silent film session accompanied by live music, made up of three short films shot in Lisbon between 1910 and 1930. It will also be part of that selection the classic of classics of the New Portuguese Cinema of the 60s, The green yearsby Paulo Rocha, which will be shown in a double program with Where is this street? Ou Sem Before Nem Depoisanother cinematographic essay in which João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata tour and record the Portuguese capital, linking the present with the past (that of the city and that of cinema) based on Rocha’s masterpiece, with the presence on screen by Isabel Ruth, actress and muse of the great filmmaker who died twelve years ago.
By João Pedro Rodrigues can also be seen Fogo-Fátuo, a very particular musical starring a volunteer firefighter and a prince. This fantasy of the director of Or Ghost and die like a man, which participated in the Filmmakers’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, presents a king on his deathbed in a futuristic Portugal (the year is 2069). That is the starting point of an extensive flashback that occupies most of the 70 minutes of footage, in one of the freest and most playful films in the Week’s selection. Finally, the last focus of the program, which can now be defined as a classic of the meeting, is called, simply, “Postcolonialism.”
This year, according to the words that can be read in the catalogue, the feature films that comprise it “give an account, from different perspectives, of the relevance and impact that the colonial period and its consequences still have in the present.”. By the director Carlos Conceição will be exhibited Nação Valentea free and poetic review of the Congolese rebellions in the 1970swhile Rosinha e Others Bichos do Mato, by Marta Pessoa, recovers the memory of the Portuguese Colonial Exhibition, a propaganda event of the Salazar dictatorship held in 1934, to delve into the scars and traces of racism in present times. What has been said: thematic and stylistic diversity, artistic and production vitality, past, present and glimpses of the future. The unbeatable curatorial formula of the Portuguese Film Week.
11th Portuguese Film Week
From May 9 to 19 at Malba (Av. Pres. Figueroa Alcorta 3415).
Complete programming, days and times in
https://www.vaivem.com.ar
https://www.malba.org.ar/
