Film Countries Archives: Portugal

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Experimental Shorts: The Act of Seeing

  Experimental Shorts: The Act of Seeing

  Canada, Chile, Cuba, France, Japan, Portugal, United States     89 minutes

Synopsis

The seven short films in this program radically push towards new and singular forms of expression. Through the use of archival footage, historical recreation, and dreamlike narratives, these films grapple with the past and the future of cinema — and the world. Featuring works by Marisa Hoicka, Isadora Neves Marques, María Salafranca, Valentin Noujaïm, Chi Jang Yin, Alison McAlpine, and Kevin Jerome Everson.

Teen Girl Fantasy (Canada) is a poetic archival excavation of the complex cultural signals surrounding teen girlhood. In My Senses Are All I Have to Offer (As minhas sensações são tudo o que tenho para oferecer) (Portugal), Lourdes and her girlfriend Lana can communicate telepathically using “sensory pills.” Black Shadow (Negra sombra) (Cuba) is a delicate and deeply moving portrait of Maria, a griveing woman. In To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion (France), a woman has fantasies of burning the skyscraper in which she works. Newly discovered archival images of postwar Hiroshima mix with contemporary footage of the city in I Was There, Part II (U.S., Japan). In Perfectly a Strangeness (Canada, Chile) three donkeys wander an abandoned landscape and come upon an observatory. And Hazel (dual) (United States) is a dual-screen recreation of Eddie Hazel’s famous 10-minute guitar solo on the song “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic.

 English, French, No Dialogue, Portuguese, Spanish 

Content Advisory

Screenings & Events

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With Support From

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A woman sits looking out of the window at night as it rains.

My Senses Are All I Have to Offer [short film] As minhas sensações são tudo o que tenho para oferecer

  Isadora Neves Marques

  Portugal     21 minutes

Synopsis

Lourdes and her girlfriend Lana can communicate telepathically using “sensory pills.” After dating for some time, Lourdes brings Lana to meet her parents at their country house, where they confront their relationship and the limits of their telepathy.

This film screens as part of the Experimental Shorts: The Act of Seeing program.

 Portuguese with subtitles

Film Credits

  •   Catarina de Sousa
  •   Isadora Neves Marques
  •   Isadora Neves Marques, Margarida Lucas
  •   Marta Simões
  •   Ágata de Pinho, Isadora Alves, Mário Afonso, Albano Jerónimo
  •   Fá Maria
  •   Catarina de Sousa, Isadora Neves Marques
  •   Foi Bonita a Festa

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A black and white image of a man sitting in the rain. He clutches a bouquet of flowers, two people stand in the background.

Grand Tour

  Miguel Gomes

  Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, China     128 minutes

Synopsis

1917. Edward, a skittish civil servant working for the British Empire, has been posted in Rangoon, Burma for years. When his fiancée Molly sends a letter announcing her imminent arrival, he experiences a sudden and debilitating case of cold feet, boards the first ship in sight, and flees the country. Learning of his escape, Molly is determined to track him down. So she embarks on an Asian grand tour, going from Bangkok to Shanghai in search of her reluctant lover. Equal parts 1930s Hollywood throwback and meditative travelog, director Miguel Gomes (The Tsugua Diaries, Chicago IFF 2020) imbues this globe-trotting love story with searching melancholy. The studio-set “colonial romance” is shot in black and white, and intercut with sumptuous color footage shot in the modern day. The result is an intoxicating mixture of fiction and documentary that ponders the past as it ruminates on our present.

 Portuguese with subtitles

Screenings & Events

Media

Film Credits

  •   Filipa Reis
  •   Gonçalo Waddington, Crista Alfaiate, Cláudio da Silva
  •   Uma Pedra no Sapato, Vivo Film, Shellac Films

Sponsors

International Competition Program Patron

Jacolyn and John Bucksbaum Family Foundation

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A woman stands with a shell to her ear.

Hanami

  Denise Fernandes

  Switzerland, Portugal, Cape Verde     96 minutes

Synopsis

Nana is a young girl living on a remote volcanic island that much of her family, including her mother, have long since fled. When Nana falls ill to a strange fever, she is sent to the foot of the island’s volcano for treatment by the local healer. There, she encounters a world steeped in magical realism, suspended between dream and reality.

Hanami is a stunning, surreal look at family and community in Cabo Verde, an island nation whose diaspora far outnumbers its residents. Exploring the necessity of migration and the void it leaves behind, filmmaker Denise Fernandes paints a sweeping portrait of the inherited echoes between daughters and mothers — all set against the otherworldly landscape of Ilha do Fogo, Cabo Verde and its volcano.

 Cape Verdean Creole, Japanese, French, English with subtitles

Screenings & Events

Film Credits

  •   Eugenia Mumenthaler, David Epiney, Luís Urbano, Sandro Aguilar
  •   Denise Fernandes, Telmo Churro
  •   Selin Dettwiler
  •   Alana Mejía González
  •   Sanaya Andrade, Daílma Mendes, Alice Da Luz, Nha Nha Rodrigues, Yuta Nakano
  •   Rahel Zimmermann
  •   Alina film, O Som e a Fúria
  •   https://www.alinafilm.com/hanami-eng

Sponsors

Black Perspectives Program Sponsor

Logo: AllState

New Directors Program Patron

Robert and Penelope Steiner Family Foundation

With Support From

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