Discoveries from Portugal World Cinema

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Ethnographic film

Sprung from the artist’s own family history, "For a Life Long Disease of Copper" extrapolates the media of essay-film and sci-fi drama to both recount and fictionalize their grandmother’s life story as a worker at a pharmaceutical factory in Lisbon during the 1960s and 1970s where, among other pharmaceuticals, she fabricated the company’s first birth-control pill.

Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Syrian Golan has a military border running through it, which families “cross” by shouting to their loved ones. From his European exile, anxiety-ridden Alhasan Yousef attempts to break free from his inner isolation with this exploration of the power of sound, in an effort to reconnect with his lost country from afar.

In a remote beach house a boy needs to deal with hidden situations regarding a suicide attempt.

A lonely tailor despairs at the results of his terrible curse.

Through a stimulant intercross of techniques -which incorporates not only photography but also traditional animation and stop motion, among others- Isabel Aboim Ingles constructs a collage that is so playful as it is personal, in which she reflects on the pass of time, ages, aches and human nature.

In the "hostelised" Lisbon by the new tourism and hillbilly cosmopolitanism, society is called to the reception.

The worship to the Holy Ghost is an intrinsic part of the culture of the Azores. In Pilar da Bretanha, a small parish in São Miguel island, the festivities last for more than two weeks and each visitor is presented with an unique tradition of unclear roots.

During World War II the United States of America did everything to persuade Salazar to grant them facilities on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. After long and difficult negotiations an agreement between Portugal and the USA for the construction of an airport is celebrated.

A father finds refuge in memories created together with his daughter, who has been stricken with an illness. She has decided to keep her distance from him and they have not spoken for years. The film encourages her to reconsider her decision.

Azul no Azul is the result of the encounter between painter Nelson Ferreira and filmmaker Gianmarco Donaggio. Blue is the liminal space where the motion traverses the static, painting meets cinema, and dynamic tension liberates dreams. Blue, in the film, is not a statement nor a colour, but rather the emergence of a feeling. An empty canvas for the viewer to engage within the contraction and expansion of the light flux.

A young man wakes up in an old house and recalls a ghost from his childhood.

An elephant’s proboscis in action.

The eclipse of/on an eggshell.

In Senegal, Yene was traditionally a seaside town with many fishermen and farmers but has in recent years been troubled by coastal erosion and urbanisation. In conversation with the town’s community, Manthia Diawara explores how their lives contribute to the undermining of their shared environment.

An unknown guest crashes a party with a suspicious suitcase.

In a mysterious forest, a woman is slowly lured into a nostalgic daydream as she observes butterflies.

War, loneliness, nature, journeys, fallen dreams are some of the recurring aspects in this animated poem on paper.

Two girls, Cândida and Serena, with different expectations about their relationship. Serena, unable to deal with Cândida's lightness, decides to take a stand and face the ghost that haunts her. The ghost hides in the closet ....

Struggling to settle in her first apartment, Laura returns to the space where she has always been happy, the beach where she spent holidays with her parents. For the first time, she feels the urge to say goodbye to her childhood in order to create her own space.

Coalescence is the process of joining or merging elements to form one mass or whole. In this piece, both visual materials and music join and separate themselves in distinct units, forming shapes and sounds that are the combination of elements put together.

A black widow’s lover reflects on his final days.

A propaganda movie made about the seafarer town of Matosinhos.

Finding himself at the brink of society, Cecilio, a struggling drug addict, hurdles through an abandoned world while he attempts to reach his strained family who is his only hope for a way back to recovery.

Colonial films showing the work of Africans are rare. Here the exploitation system is precisely exposed. Deportees (from Angola) disembark from a boat. After the humiliating inspection of the bodies, it is the signature, on the finger, of the contract. Then are shown the works – cultivation, harvesting, bagging of cocoa -, as well as “education” and recreation. Contratados were forced into forced labour in violent and abusive conditions. This system, which replaced slavery, remained in force in the African colonies until 1961.

A good and hardworking man is married to a merciless woman who makes his life a living hell. Despite everything, a good presence is felt: Margarida, who works in the house and practically raised the couple's children, always cares for her employer’s well-being.

This is Lara. She measures 1,70m, her feet are too long for her body. That's why she's always stumbling. Lara lives in a strange world where everyone has a curvy, caricatured posture, except for her. No one communicates, people look but don't see each other. One day, Lara meets Hugo, the first person she identifies with. They get to know each other through a simple glance. To what extent does this contact between them change their beings?

Two people share a conversation in a park bench.

Part of a film anthology "The Trash". The exhausting and monotonous daily routine that millions of citizens of contemporary capitalist society live, in a disorderly, disorganized, disoriented and disheveled way.

An essay film that focuses on rebuilding the idea of the Paralympic athlete through a historical revisiting of the Paralympic games. The archival images are accompanied by two voices of contemporary Paralympians that reminisce on their work as athletes and the way they and other people have dealt with their disabilities.

From the speech that echoes through the film “Weren’t we the modern ones?”, Either through the evident melancholy or through the non-places present, the film revisits old personal conversations, assumptions and speculations in order to perceive the boundaries between past and present , or how modernity reverberates and affects today.

A gay couple meet through a dating app. One of them notices inconsistencies in the things his boyfriend says and begins to investigate his life.

The ancestors say that the skeleton doesn't keep the body upright, but the blood does. Break the bones of a living being and it will still be able to breathe. Take away its blood, and its soul will evaporate. Lakoélé Da Silveira is an artist whose life has been disrupted by repeated trances over the years. After returning to her village for consultations, she discovers the cause of the trances. Her journey reminds us that blood is alive and that transmission is fundamental.

“Wheels” is a film about relative motion as described by Descartes: if 2 objects are moving in the same direction and speed they seem to be still between each other. Inspired by Duchampian tradition, Pedro and João filmed a short chronicle of curved means of transportation in the tropics. Overlaying directly on the negative (camera editing) the feat of paradoxically freezing a moving bicycle wheel, a car wheel and anamorphic depiction of tire, João and Pedro constate that for that to happen everything else must be perceived as a gyroscope.

Marta is passionate about her new hobby: bird-watching. Before her big audition to become a professional dancer, she tries to gather courage to tell her mother that she doesn't want to dance anymore.

At night, a voice evokes a fleeting memory of a song.