Letter from a Filmmaker to His Daughter

Distance-Landscape: Football Field

2011

Study of the relationship between observer and landscape in the contemplative experience. The view building the landscape from the necessary distance. The delimitation of its borders against the total continuum of nature. The observer immersed in the path of his gaze across the landscape. Resting the gaze in the details that make the globallity. The view selecting the space included as a landscape.

Perfect Day

2008

A recollection of almost 40 years of career. A giant image-jukebox, from early 70s autoportrait to films for Alain Bashung / Elli Medeiros, private karaokes to “video sculptures” applied to John Travolta or Maria Callas, and much much more…

In the Interstices of Reality or The Cinema of António de Macedo

2016

He was the most prolific within the New Portuguese Cinema generation. He would try western spaghetti, esoteric allegory, supernatural, and science-fiction. Without state subsidies, he would quit filmmaking in the 1990s. Who remembers António de Macedo?

Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks

2019

The fantastic story of how an ancient martial art, Chinese kung fu, conquered the world through the hundreds of films that were produced in Hong Kong over the decades, transformed Western action cinema and inspired the birth of cultural movements such as blaxploitation, hip hop music, parkour and Wakaliwood cinema.

Overnight

2003

Alternately hilarious and horrifying, Overnight chronicles one man's misadventures of making a Hollywood movie. It starts out as a rags to riches story as Troy Duffy, a Boston-bred bartender, sells his first screenplay for The Boondock Saints.

Contágio

2021

Several Portuguese creators occupy the director's chair in this collective short film shot during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in an unfolding of personal perspectives.

Ich lebe in der Gegenwart - Versuch über Hans Richter

1973

Song 5

1964

SONG 5: A childbirth song (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

One Second in Montreal

1969

A silent succession of black-and-white photographs of the city of Montreal.

Nova the Film

2011

An inspiring 75min DIY documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. It was all filmed on the heat of live action of the first NOVA Contemporary Culture Festival, July and August 2010 in São Paulo, Brazil.

The Dinosaur and the Baby

1967

An hour-long discussion between Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard in which they discuss a variety of art forms, the role of the cinema, their collaboration together, and much more. (Filmed in 1964 but released for TV in 1967.)

Somniloquies

2017

Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.

Refrains Happen Like Revolutions in a Song

2010

Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”

The Five Obstructions

2003

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.

H*art On

2017

H*ART ON dives off the deep end of modern art. A film about the yearning to create, to mould everyday emotions into a meaningful life and, most of all, to live beyond one's death. A struggle that gets to the existential core of each of us. How do you find meaning in everyday fear, love, sex and loneliness?