Based on the dialogue between works and filmmakers who imagine the place of the community, in the fragility of the encounter and in the sensitivity of contact, finding there their singular strength and form, Doc’s Kingdom 2021 brings together gestures that summon us to a tactile experience of cinema, including an unprecedented programme of special 16mm screenings. The Movement of Things celebrates the reunion in cinema with the presence of Manuela Serra, Adriana Vila Guevara, Elena Duque, Helena Estrela, Jeannette Muñoz, Jessica Sarah Rinland, Maria Rojas Arias, Naomi Uman and Sílvia das Fadas. The programme for the seminar, named after a film by Robert Kramer (“Doc’s Kingdom”, Portugal, 1988), is inspired this year by another film, the only one directed by Manuela Serra (“O Movimento das Coisas”, Portugal, 1986/2021), released commercially 40 years after it was filmed in Lanheses, in Alto Minho, near Arcos de Valdevez.
Films from the 16mm immersive lab presented by Catarina de Sousa and Ricardo Leite
Hand-processed in buckets to dry on the clothesline, the film examines details
of the lives of a rural Mexican family.
I have told them I would pick oranges in California after having seen The
Grapes of Wrath at the Cinematheque.
“The people are what is not there yet, never in the right place, never ascribable to the place and time where anxieties and dreams await.” (Jacques Rancière)
One day while carrying Russell Lee’s photographs (from the Farm Security Administration Series) under my arm, someone asked me about the film, the film he assumed the images belonged to. I had to reply that there was no film,the images weren’t mine. But this question became an obsession, a ritornello. What film could be enclosed in those photographs? What was the context, the portion of the real there? Who were these people? Who was hosting the party? To what music were they dancing? Romantic songs, political songs? What were the relationships between the couples? How did the young man tear his shirt? What provoked the tension? And the expectation in their expressions? And why did they arouse in me such an emotional response, such a strong wish for a narrative, even a fragmentary one?
A travelogue to places which defy the surface of the world. In order of appearance: an ideal palace built by a postman after each of his daily rounds; a red house designed by a socialist agitator; a pacifist tower erected against the movements of History; an exuberant garden engendered in the feminine; and a merry cemetery, which conjures a community of equals in the outskirts of Europe. To ensure we risk our joy for those who act in their own time.