A point of view about the world is a point of view about cinema. If one expects any film to incorporate a point of view about the world, today one should also note the importance of stressing almost the inverse: in the midst of the present audiovisual saturation, the productive use of the means of the cinema claims for an even stronger engagement, exigency and clarity concerning the place of cinema in the modern world. As much as a point of view about the world, the production boom claims for a point of view about cinema as a consequent part of our vision of the world. The 2006 seminar includes some examples of this, films and film makers that define the landscape, and, consequently, may guide us along a journey through some key trends of contemporary cinema. Starting with films where each shot reveals a strong construction method, we will then rather concentrate on the recent methodologies of direct cinema. Regarding the latter, we will propose a confrontation between different filming strategies, including an analytic approach of various parameters: treatment of space, treatment of time, handling of the camera, sound, editing. The 2006 edition shall run according to a new structure of debates, in three distinct levels: dialogues on specific films; thematic presentation on formal strategies; collective debate.
Rencontres intends to circumscribe the presence of a sonic tribe, a musical, poetic, human tribe, an analog and surprising tribe whose territory does not correspond to any geographically known territory. The film intersects different encounters, present or past, between people and memories. And so, through these intersections between personalities, at times so different but who ‘recognize’ each other, a question mark is drawn over what constitutes us, and to what extent memory, the other’s gaze, and sharing enrich us.
“Fascinated by a neighbourhood in Lisbon known as Fontainhas, Pedro Costa goes there every day to film the inhabitants of this shantytown. Pedro believes that his work and his own life are inseparable, the portrait of the director and that of the man are thus one. This indefectible bond is the issue here. My idea is to follow the shooting of his forthcoming film. My work will take place on the edge of his or, more precisely, at the moment when his day of filming ends…” – Aurélien Gerbault
Ventura, a Cape Verdean imigrant living in the outskirts of Lisbon, is suddenly abandoned by his wife Clotilde. Ventura feels lost between the dilapidated old quarter where he spent the last thirty four years, and his new lodgings in a recently-built social housing complex. All the young poor souls he meets seem to become his own children.
This is the story of Rui’s summer. Rui is a 13-year-old boy who unlike all the other boys of his age doesn’t like football. He prefers to take refuge in a dream-like world surrounded by dinosaurs and other jungle animals. But this summer is a special one: people are expecting the European Football Cup and the possible victory of the Portuguese team to raise the morale of a country in full recession. TV’s are set outdoors and the matches are followed by children and adults as a religious ritual. The film focuses on the daily life in a poor housing estate in Oporto and, in particular, on a group of children between ages 8 and 14. It follows their life outdoors as they go about inventing new games. Sometimes things get tough, other times a feeling of harmony and melancholy overtakes the neighbourhood.
Anything can happen when you live in a quarter between the railway and the sea. This train journey comes to an end in the town of Lagos. Meia-Praia is the name given to the land of the ‘indians’, who came from Monte Gordo and spontaneously built their huts to survive the golden dream that Lagos was not able to fulfil. With the revolution of the 25th of April, in 1974, came the development of an architectural plan entitled SAAL (Portuguese acronym for the program of Ambulatory Support to Local Residents). This plan was established to re-qualify the urban arrangement of shackled huts, to transform them into houses built by their own dwellers under the direction of architects and specialized technicians. Many of the promises made by politicians thirty years ago are yet to be fulfilled. The present lies somewhere in between: pushed forward by the past and overwhelmed by the emptiness of the future.
Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) is a small working class colony on the margins of Delhi. Most families residing here come from a community of weavers. The last ten years have seen a gradual disintegration of the handloom tradition of this community, under the globalisation regime. The families have to cope with change as well as reinvent themselves to eke out a living. Sunder Nagri is the story of two families struggling to make sense of a world that keeps pushing them to the margins. Radha and Bal Krishan are at a critical point in their relationship. Bal Krishan is underemployed and constantly cheated. They are in disagreement about Radha going out to work. However, through all their ups and downs they retain the ability to laugh. Shakuntla and Hira Lal hardly communicate. They live under one roof with their children but are locked in their own sense of personal tragedies.
Belfast, Maine is a film about ordinary experience in a beautiful old New England port city. It is a portrait of daily life with particular emphasis on the work and the cultural life of the community. Among the activities shown in the film are the work of lobstermen, tug-boat operators, factory workers, shop owners, city counselors, doctors, judges, policemen, teachers, social workers, nurses and ministers. Cultural activities include choir rehearsal, dance class, music lessons and theatre production.
Presenting session of the films from the project ‘O Primeiro Olhar’, with Pierre-Marie Goulet, Teresa Garcia and Kees Baker
Anna Semionovna is a Russian Jewish doctor living in a small Ukrainian town which hast just been invaded by the Germans. She writes a last letter to her son, who is safely behind the front lines. Anna Semionovna knows that in a few days, together with the other Jews, she will be ‘eliminated’ by the Germans. The letter recounts some of the major events in her life: her relationship with her son, her love for him, her student life in Paris, her failed marriage. She describes the cruelty and horror of the Occupation, the reluctance to admit what is happening, the collaboration, indifference and greed of some of her Ukrainian and Russian neighbours, the help and concern of others, and the gradual realization that her Jewish heritage is more important to her than her Russian nationality and communist beliefs.
Through the archives of Robert Kramer, Keja Ho, as a detective, is searching for her deceased father. His ghostly presence haunts her as she searches and moves between a personal dialogue between family memories, the reminiscence of friends and the elusive image of her father. The collaboration with Stephen Dwoskin is in the making of images and putting them together in a way that speaks about feeling. I’ll Be Your Eyes, You’ll Be Mine is in a form that is neither a documentary nor a chronology. It’s a very personal form, born out of the incredible absence we feel in death.
Aurélien Gerbault was born in 1975. After studying History of Art and Cinema, he ran introductory cinema courses for a non-profit organisation. He became interested in writing and directing documentaries and underwent professional training in 16mm. His encounter with Pedro Costa and the originality of his cinematographic approach inspired him to write Tout refleurit, which he has been working on since 2003.
Portuguese director and anthropologist. Born in Porto, she studied Social Anthropology, did her Masters in Visual Anthropology at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester and her PhD at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa with the thesis Camponeses do Cinema. Between 1994 and 2000 she worked at the National Museum of Ethnology. She is an Assistant Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Anthropology – Visual Cultures. She also teaches on the Masters and PhD programs at the University of São Paulo and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Barcelona. In 2000 she founded the film production company Laranja Azul with Catarina Mourão. Her work and publications in documentary and ethnography stand out.
Catarina Mourão was born in Lisbon in 1969. She studied Music, Law and Film (MA at the University of Bristol and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, with an FCT scholarship for both). Founder of AporDoc (Portuguese Documentary Association). She has been teaching Film and Documentary since 1998 in different Graduate and Masters programs. She is currently teaching on the MA in Arts and Multimedia at FBAUL. In 2000 she founded Laranja Azul, an independent film production company, with Catarina Alves Costa. She has directed several award-winning films. Her main areas of research are documentary, memory, dreams, archives and autobiography.
He was born in Boston in 1930. He made his first film, Titicut Follies, about a psychiatric institution for inmates, in 1967, at the height of direct cinema. In his 30-year film career, he made about one film a year, exploring American institution.
Keja Ho Kramer (1974, San Francisco) studied fine arts and is the author of several video works and exhibitions.
Born in Lisbon (1961). Studied cinema in New York Film Academy and directed various documentaries since 1991.
In what could be considered his first foray into documentary, Pedro Costa dismantles any possibility of categorisation. After three feature films made between 1989 and 1997, No Quarto da Vanda definitively interrupts the systematisation of the production process and calls into question all the notions that this system informs about the relationship between film and reality.
Born in Lisbon in 1974. In 1998 she finished her degree in Communication Sciences at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Since then she has made films that have been shown at festivals such as Cannes, Berlinale, Rotterdam, BFI London Film Festival, Festival d’Angers, Viennale, Vila do Conde, Rio de Janeiro, Zinebi, among others. In 2006 she founded the production company Terratreme (formerly Raiva), where she has been executive producer on various projects.