Portuguese

  • José Álvaro Morais – O Bobo AKA The Jester (1987)

    1981-1990ArthouseCultJosé Álvaro MoraisPortugal

    Quote:
    The initial project for this film, an adaptation of Alexandre Herculano’s O Bobo, became, over time, a reflection on literary work and its contemporary representation. The film reflects, as it develops, the passage of time (hassled by endless production difficulties, the moviemaking process was extremely long) and the transformation in Portuguese society in the years following the April 25th Revolution, in 1974. A fundamental film in Portuguese cinema of the last 30 years.Read More »

  • Marcelo Gomes – Joaquim (2017)

    2011-2020AdventureBrazilDramaMarcelo Gomes

    A film that examines a key episode in the life of Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes, who led the first uprising against Portuguese rule in the late 18th century.Read More »

  • Joaquim Pinto – Uma Pedra no Bolso AKA Tall Stories (1988)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaJoaquim PintoPortugal

    Quote:
    Twelve-year-old Miguel (Bruno Leite) is sent to live with his aunt for the summer at a seaside resort, where he makes friends with Joao (Manuel Labao), an older boy who revels in stories of his sexual conquests of vacationing women. Miguel is also befriended by the maid Luisa (Ines Medeiros). Later, Miguel must defend Joao when he is accused of stealing from his aunt. This is the film debut for director Joaquim Pinto, who used 4 people and 2 1/2 weeks to produce the feature.Read More »

  • Paulo Abreu – O que não se vê (2020)

    2011-2020DocumentaryPaulo AbreuPortugalShort Film

    In “What Is Not Seen”, Paulo Abreu subtly repositions the most characteristic tropes of the travel narrative: in lieu of a dialectic of self-recognition mediated by the discovery of others, we find a game of interruptions, in which the constant theme of the mechanisms of vision – within a markedly essayistic device between landscapes, displacements, and voice over – seemingly replaces the utopia of a possible encounter.Read More »

  • Maxime Martinot – Olho animal (2022)

    France2021-2030ComedyExperimentalMaxime Martinot

    “This is the story of a dog who makes films. Or a filmmaker who is a dog. In a series of return trips between Brittany and Lisbon, the protagonist tries to create a filmed animal diary. On the road to Lisbon, he talks with a Portuguese producer, to attempt to show all the sincerity of the canine gaze in his film. An extensive consideration of the thousand-year-old interdependency between humans and dogs thus develops through the prism of ethology and film. In particular, he calls on the history of cinema, from which he unearths hundreds of film excerpts featuring dogs, who become perfect heroes and actors when they find themselves alone in a shot. In this second feature-length film, Maxime Martinot makes a resolutely film-and-dog-loving animal comedy, a profound and cheerful reflection at the heart of our images of the human and animal condition. And if there had to be a conclusion, perhaps it could be this: humans do not deserve dogs.”
    Aurélien Marsais, Visions du RéelRead More »

  • Andrea Tonacci – Bang Bang (1971)

    1971-1980Andrea TonacciArthouseBrazilComedy

    The actor of a film being made lives without distinction his own personal reality and his character’s fiction. As the involuntary object of chance and circumstance, he looks for a meaning and way out, while being pursued by outlaws, a magician, a romantic fantasy, a drunk and his own self-image. The humour, the reason of the persecution, situations, personages, set decoration, dialogs and soundtrack (which uses themes from other films) lead us to symbols, metaphors and the refusal of a possible logical narrative, in a way to allow the viewer to experiment a sensation analogous to the one of the main character, inducing in him the need of thinking a meaning while lost and led by the sustained expectation, and by the intentionally recurrent anti-climax.Read More »

  • Rogério Sganzerla – O Bandido da Luz Vermelha AKA The Red Light Bandit (1968)

    1961-1970BrazilCrimeRogério SganzerlaThriller

    The story a famous Brazilian criminal, called The Red Light Bandit because he always used a red flashlight to break in the houses during the night. Working alone, he also used to rape his female victims.Read More »

  • Louis Henderson & Filipa César – Sunstone (2017)

    2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalFilipa CésarLouis HendersonPortugal

    The film tracks Fresnel lenses from their site of production to their exhibition in a museum of lighthouses and navigational devices. It also examines the diverse social contexts in which optics are implicated, contrasting the system of triangular trade that followed the first European arrivals in the ‘New World’ with the political potential seen in Op art in post-revolutionary Cuba. Incorporating 16mm celluloid images, digital desktop captures and 3D CGI, the film also maps a technological trajectory: from historical methods of optical navigation to new algorithms of locating, from singular projection to multi-perspectival satellitic visions. Registering these technical advances progressively through the film’s materials and means of production, Sunstone creates “a cinema of affect, a cinema of experience – an Op- Film.”Read More »

  • Maureen Fazendeiro & Miguel Gomes – Diários de Otsoga AKA The Tsugua Diaries (2021) (HD)

    Arthouse2021-2030Maureen FazendeiroMiguel GomesPortugal

    In sun-soaked Portugal, Crista, Carloto, and João live in rural peace during the COVID lockdown. They pass their time in a spacious farmhouse where the dog days of summer are filled with dancing, chores, disturbed sleep patterns, flirtations, and building a backyard butterfly house.Read More »

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