Above our Means

One day almost everything turned into a pile of rubble and bush. There remained ghosts wandering through the fields, the ruins and the fog. Some of these ghosts are alive. They are those who stayed, those who came back, those who roam the difficult memories of the most cursed neighborhood of the city. Only that this Tarrafal, the name of the field of slow death of Salazar's dictatorship, is not in Cape Verde but in Portugal.

Filmed over six years in four countries: Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and United States, this romantic drama tells the story of Luzia, a Brazilian screenwriter, and Adrian, a Colombian actor, that fall in love during a film festival in 2009 and will live a fragmented love story while competing in different film festivals around the world.

Shot in film and hand processed by the director for over 20 years, Lucefece mixes personal, political and mythical views on reality exorcizing old ghosts. Stories from the director's childhood, together with conversations with his father, that fought in the colonial war in Africa and later was arrested, prepare the scenario for a profound reflexion on today's world. The film spirals like a snake travelling through time, an eternal recurrence, mixing documentary with film essay and autobiographical tones.

An old hostel, located in the center of Porto, served for many years as a hostel for people with few possessions, prostitutes and people passing through who made that place a more or less prolonged residence.

The road to Inhaminga, in Mozambique, is populated by ghosts that wander in the dark. The bullets fell silent almost half a century ago, but I can still hear their echo. I search for revolutions whose end I don’t know. All I find along the way are words that stand the test of time.

In a remote village called Bostofrio, a young filmmaker breaks the law of silence in order to unearth the story of his grandfather. A series of awkward and funny interviews that reveal the secrets and half truths that are the fabric of rural Portugal.

The sound was deafening. The noise of the machines, the steps, the daily hustle of the more than a thousand workers, entering and leaving the shifts. There were 12-hour days, people without holidays, a stolen youth so that the cloth would continue to leave the factory. The revolution came and everything changed. Strikes, picket strikes, worker’s rights. Then the globalisation came. The factory went down to close. We went back to it, with the former workers, the old and the young. The machines continue to work in the empty spaces, the ghosts wander illuminated by traces of light until the walls begin to fall.

Everything came up with this defiant idea: what if a director followed the first person to come through the door of his house? Luís Vieira Campos did this and found Geni, a strong woman who dreamt of opening her own store at Centro Comercial de Cedofeita, a mythical place of Porto. Between advances and retreats, between the increasing opening of the director and his character, the film reveals the unique portrait of a woman, a neighbourhood - Cedofeita - and the improbable relationships we establish when we least expect it. Luís Vieira Campos proves, with Geni, that cinema is also the "neighbourhood" and its people.

A double portrait of the General Strike on November 24th, 2010, at the Allies Avenue in Porto, Portugal. Two different representations and narratives that present the events that took place during the General Strike in Porto. The first version provides content and information that were omitted in the second version, and vice versa. A reflection about the process of omitting, selecting and organizing information at the time of constructing a narrative and representing reality.

The past is difficult. The are people who live in the present with the difficulties of day-to-day and do not know what to expect from a future, more and more dark, for those who already have difficulties. There is a house, food, work. Now the future is very uncertain. Because of the crisis, they say. And tell this to who lives in crisis since it he recalls.

In the late 70s and early 80s in the city of Porto, concerts by Rock and Punk bands began to appear. April 25, 1974, which put an end to the longest dictatorship in Europe, brought political and creative freedom. Through a series of tableaux vivants based on photos from an era covered with a nostalgic aura, but employing contemporary mannequins, the film revives some loud narrations of those crazy times, which failed to reach our ears.

Disillusionment helps the feet enter the cold water. It is like a whisper indifferent to the distorted music that echoes round the beach.

They are hidden cases behind barriers, windows and closed doors, rusted gates, walls that fall apart and ceilings that don´t exist. They are people that stumbled in the waste and the disillusionment, the deprivation, lost and aguish. They are people that were pushed from dreams to the ground. They are people who could be us.

Almost 30% of the population of Porto lives in council districts. It is a special experience when districts become small towns with their own customs and traditions. However, they are also victims of stigmatization and bias. "Neighbourhoods" is a look at the reality of five council districts of Porto. From the eastern to the western parts of the city, we watch and listen to the inhabitants of those neighborhoods: Rainha D. Leonor, Cerco, Duque de Saldanha, S. João de Deus, Santa Luzia and Maceda.

In The Beach, the elderly return to active life, leave the spaces of suffering and loneliness to which they have sadly been inhabiting in contemporary societies. They have fun, play, swim, run. They go back to being people like everyone else.

This is the incredible story of the only inhabitant of the Desert Island, in the Algarve. Fernando Alves, 66, the Hemingway mustache, is a fisherman, a cook, a communicator and an inventor. He has lived alone on the island since 1981. This is a documentary about life, loneliness and friendship, about an alternative way of living outside major urban centers, in harmony with nature and with oneself. It is a film about a lonely man, generous and full of sense of humour that makes us question our own lives and routines. They call him "The Fox of the Desert".