Tarrafal

A recreation of an event to commemorate the presence of the dead and the decayed memories of the living, of filmmaking

A short contemporary story about the crew of a small Brazilian fishing boat. Part of the anthology The State of the World.

Contemporary economic conditions in Nepal are examined with documentary images, interviews, and narration. There has been, for many years, a labour migration from across Nepal to India ’s cities. This short film is set in the underground parking lot of an apartment building in Bangalore, in South India. One Way follows the livelihood of a security guard named Shyam Bahadur, who lives with the rest of his family in the electric switching room of an apartment block, to whom he provides service for the sake of survival. The narrative of the journey he made 35 years ago, from the mountains of Nepal to the southern plateau of Bangalore, punctuates his day-to-day life in and out of the basement. As his personal story unfolds, the hills of Nepal are being rocked by “the people’s war,” yet another historical disturbances that has forced Nepalis to emigrate for work.

Modern China. On a bright sunny day, in a building site, an industrial complex is being deconstructed. Night falls. The ruins of the factory are empty and silent. Phantoms appear, voices are heard, telling their stories....From the anthology The State of the World.

Tombée de nuit sur Shanghaï is Akerman’s contribution to the collective film L’état du monde (2007). Consists of little more than long-held vid shots of Shanghai skyscrapers and a floating boat, bearing giant video displays of consumer products and familiar images such as Da Vinci’s « La Giaconda.

With this movie, Aurélien Gerbault invites us to know the portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa and to witness the process of shooting of his movie Colossal Youth (2006). The nature of Costa's cinema is revealed to us: the criation of an intimate space in the hardness of reality.

Lisbon by night, through the eyes of a young woman who lives freely, and a neighbour who follows her everywhere, from a distance.

Laura Rossellini, a widow from Rome, vacations on the Algarve coast one hot summer. One day while sunbathing, she finds a wounded man named Robert drifting in the surf on a rubber raft. She takes him home, and, after he is revived, learns his story. As they talk, their mutual attraction grows, until a group of armed men suddenly arrive looking for Robert.

Undaunted by a commission to make a film about his mentors and aesthetic exemplars, the filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Costa records with great sensitivity and insight the exacting process by which the two re-edit their film Sicilia!, discussing and arguing over each cut and its effect. Incorporating comments about the influence of figures as diverse as Chaplin and Eisenstein, about the ethical and aesthetic implications of film technique and such matters as rhythm, sound mixing, and acting. The film becomes a tour de force, immersing us in the mysteries of cinema as practiced by some of its greatest creators. Costa calls the film both his first comedy and his first love story.

One of the most important figures in contemporary cinema, Pedro Costa's celebrated music documentary is a mesmerizing portrait of French actress-turned-singer Jeanne Balibar, a transfixing, cigarette-smoking chanteuse with an intense devotion to her craft. Photographed in shimmering black-and-white and featuring a soundtrack of jazz-inflected pop songs, the film is a luminous exploration of the creative process.

While the young captains lead the revolution in the streets, the people of Fontainhas search for Ventura, lost in the woods.

After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.

The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.

A participant in a coup d'état by young commissioned officers, Ventura loses his way within the woods. Eventually, Ventura is admitted into a mental hospital where he has conversations with "ghosts" of the past in the hospital's elevator.

Pedro Costa first foray into filmmaking was a short-film co-produced for RTP within a series named “Cartas a Júlia.”

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live.

An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.

True story of thirteen totally normal young women that suffered harsh questioning and were put in prison under made up charges of helping the rebellion against Franco back in the 1940s. Despite of their innocence, the thirteen were soon executed without even a trace of evidence of any wrong doing.

A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.

It is the end of summer and Isabel is a relationship with Diogo. She don't quite know what she wants from her life going forward as her father gets sick.

Four voices and their visions of Guimarães, cradle city of the Portuguese nation and European Capital of Culture in 2012.