Fragile as the World

Gothic film in a monastery, where sensual monks murder the children they receive, with images of fantastic, painted from the author own painting and also from the Hammer films and the Saxon plastic tradition of romanticism.

Paul and Adèle were once lovers and separated but are still good friends, one year after everything seems to take them away from each other. The key of E-flat may be the key of true friendship, but it is Mozart that pushes them apart...

A widowed theater actor relives his memory of a young love.

The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.

This is one of Noronha da Costa's films in which the "fictional" component is most visible. D. Jaime or the Portuguese Night, like the rest of Noronha da Costa's films, is part of the gothic films (Terence Fisher's work was one of his great influences), and in it he shows the different variations around the "specular bodies", which evolve into luminous magic and into sensual and sensory incandescence. At the same time, we witness a series of ironic and erotic, or historical, views of wicked virgins and laughable sadists, all resurrected from German and British romanticism, while the scenery is no longer Portuguese.

Arriving in a hotel in the city of Faro, a couple learns there are no available tables left. When another couple agrees to share a table, they spark a conversation on the city’s history, unfolding the tales of King Afonso III, who betrays his wife, and of a Moorish woman, who betrays her father.

Freely based on Gide ('Paludes') and Hawthorne ('Wakefield'), this is a film about a writer who never wrote anything and who blows at nightfall the breath of frost. The poem by Carlos Queiroz to which the above sentences belong is not cited in 'O som da Terra a Tremer', but the atmosphere is that, between written letters never received. Fiction within fiction, stories within stories, like those Chinese boxes in which there is always one inside another. Or the two margins of the same river, always being lateral.

Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.

North of Italy, the von Kettens dispute the forces of the Episcopate of Trent. Herr Ketten seeks marriage in a distant country, Portugal. After their honeymoon journey back home, Ketten leaves again for the war. Eleven years elapsed… Rumours are running about the presence of that 'foreigner' in the castle. Some say she's a heretic. Until one day, the Bishop of Trento ends up dying and, with the signature of peace, falls the background of von Ketten's life. Will the Portuguese win, where death seems to be moving in?

A mentally unstable woman and her son move to a sprawling mansion in Portugal to grow roses.

Joáo Bénard da Costa, director of the Portuguese National Film Archives [deceased in 2009], interviews the dean of contemporaneous film directors [96-years-old then]. Two humanists of different philosophical backgrounds, both with their long, entire lives dedicated to culture in general (music, painting, literature) and to film in particular, discuss freely, sometimes haltingly, the director's power as a creator or a magician, the philosophy beyond particular scenes in classic movies, film technique, the importance of color, sound and music to films, art versus entertainment, and much more. Their talk takes place in a museum room, seating in front of "The Annunciation" (a 1510 oil painting by João Vaz, a Portuguese artist), which eventually leads to a discussion of 'Leonardo da Vinci', and the relationship between a trend-setter master and his disciples.

Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.

A story about art and educated men, and how their art and culture reveal themselves useless in the face of the harsh realities of the 20th century life.

Two film directors and a writer are in Portugal for an expedition through various images, moments from the history of Western allegorical representation. The writer is Jean-Louis Schefer, and this tale encapsulates his life’s mission.

Twenty years ago, believing she was doomed, Irma took a trip to Greece. Today, she retraces that journey, accompanied by three young men. From island to island, between sky and sea, the travelers read, listen and live, carried by a longing for beauty and clarity.

Mirages have been reported along the Spanish coast. A young French woman travels to San Sebastián to observe these visual aberrations. There, she meets a mysterious Portuguese woman who tells her a story from her youth: of obsession, and a gaze that can turn the world inside out.