Guinea-Bissau, 1969. A violent war between the Portuguese colonial army and the guerrillas of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea. Nome leaves his village and joins the maquis. After years, he will return as a hero, but joy will soon give way to bitterness and cynicism.
A group of people is in a boat traveling along Mekong River that stretches along the Thai-Laos border. They are running against the wind, anticipating a farewell. In the middle of the river, the lady head of the family casts the ashes off into the stream. The white dust merges with the muddy water. The boat makes a u-turn at the bridge that links two countries. The passengers are tired and start to drift off into their own world. The film disintegrates. The crew and the cast wander off in the river of simulation. The border links the worlds of the dead and of the living. The memory of an anonymous dead father lingers. The boat still moves on as the dusk arrives. Apichatpong and his crew traveled to Nong Khai, a small town near Mekong River, and recruited local villagers to participate in the project. For two days, the crew and cast reconstructed a fake ceremony and find a narrative.
As the summer of 1980 ends, 16 and 17 year old sisters Maria and Alda flee to Lisbon from Angola?s civil war. In the hands of fate, they must learn to live without money in a foreign city. On the edge of the law, the two have to grow up and become women. When the problems are already overwhelming, news comes that makes them unbearable. This blow, however, will give them the push to decide their futures: Alda is going to France and Maria back to Angola in search of her roots.
Angolares are the oldest inhabitants of the island of São Tomé. Control of the island was wrested from them in the late 19th century, and their descendents have been reduced to a small fishing community. This fascinating film explores the tangled history of the Angolares and their beautiful island.
A short-film in 35 mm, black > white stages a day in which the main character discovers that she stopped seeing in color. Written as photographer’s film, it was shot on several locations in Lisbon. It is the only purely fiction work by the author.
A documentary shot in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Portugal that includes a series of interviews and testimonies of people who lived through the period of the anti-colonial war and liberation in Guinea-Bissau. This documentary, directed by Diana Andringa and Flora Gomes, sets the tone for a debate around the themes of reconciliation and historical memory in the post-conflict period of the Portuguese colonial war.
Rede de Dormir starring Gilda Nomacce, Vitor Dutra, and Cida Augusto. A tale about the hammock and its forgotten use as a shroud.
As in the original paradise, the inhabitants of the Bissagos archipelago, located in the west coast of Africa, live according to ancient traditions and in absolute respect for nature, until a gang of drug dealers occupies their sacred islands. The medicine man dies and everything seems lost, until his young successor decides to fight the invaders to save the village.
In 1462, the first African slaves were settled on the island of Cape Verde brought by the Portuguese colons. It is supposed that they were the first inhabitants of the archipelagos. They carried with them the rhythms and the seeds of what became the BATUQUE: a music form, performed mostly by women, both singers and dancers. The singers, repeat very strong lyrics, sitting in a circle and beating the rhythms with their hands on a piece of cloth between their legs. While one woman performs a very sensual dance with her hips in the middle of the circle. During the colonial era, it has been strongly forbidden but it remained alive in clandestinity. The group Raiz de Tambarina, one of the oldest groups of Batuque on Santiago island, is composed of ordinary people, saleswomen, fish merchants, drivers... Through their every day life and performances we discover Cape Verde today and their passion for the Batuque.
Akerman, Monteiro, Oliveira, Ruiz, Schroeter and Wenders are among the directors he produced: Deux, trois fois Branco is a portrait of Portuguese producer Paulo Branco, between life and legend.
A plan to avoid job losses at a factory in 1976 becomes the starting point for an incisive account of our current and future economic situation.
Colonia del Sacramento is a city in Uruguay founded by the Portuguese in the 19th century. It was said that there still lived a man who would be descended from the founders. Going in search of this man, the film follows its trail to the great metropolis of Buenos Aires that reveals its scars, memories and characters.
Margarida Senhorinha, aged 69, is illiterate but records poems, songs and memories of her birthdays on a tape recorder. She’s spent forty years in her house with its garden amidst the blocks of flats of an ever expanding Cacém. Now, her entire life depends on her landlord. She’s at risk of lose her house, perhaps to make way for yet another tower block. A living memory of rural Portugal that has come face to face with urban Cacém, Margarida Senhorinha asks simply: “and now where do I go?”
On the night of April 26, 1974, the prison doors of Caxias opened and the political prisoners were released. Two women: Diana Andringa and Maria José Campos relive their detention in Caxias in this film. Even though they did not suffer the torture and other forms of violence that most of their companions were subjected to, both speak with great emotion of isolation and the so-called “normal regime” period in which they shared the space of a cell with other prisoners and learned to live in prison.
During the Second World War, Lisbon was a corridor for refugees going from Hitler's occupied territories to America. This film tells two parallel stories about exile and accommodation. Through a narrated memoir and photographs, the tale of a German Jewish family that decided to stay in Portugal is recounted. The larger, more sociological account of the others who used Lisbon's escape route is skillfully told as well, using beautifully shot historic footage and written memoirs by some of the era's leading intellectuals, including Heinrich Mann and Alfred Döblin. This film evokes a desperate, intensely romantic period of exile, despair, and, ultimately, freedom.
