A casa do lado

Obsessed with questions about his past, a bankrupt, white Brazilian filmmaker undertakes an epic journey from Brazil to Mozambique and Portugal. This melancholic fable mixes animation, live-action, voice-overs, genres, and continents to explore Brazil's colonial past.

Between 1969 and 1974, Manuel Vicente designed and built a house in Cascais, for the Weinstein family. From the street, The Weinstein House is an almost blind façade, covered in stone, from which an abstract bow window protrudes. This window, along with the house’s deep-set entrance, adds a central touch of colour and mystery to the composition. Shaped as an “L”, the house opens to a small backyard, thus creating a more private dialogue with the garden. The formal, yet paradoxically unconventional, plan of the house keeps us almost exclusively in the upper level, an exquisitely lit mazelike space.

Set up a market in a 50x50-meter square. A square module measuring 1x1 meters commands the composition and introduces its geometry. Various structures, with a protective function, are distributed to form a courtyard. Not just a place for exchanging goods, but also for exchanging ideas, an invitation for people to gather. An austere language, under the protective wing of the Castle.

Filmed in 2012 at Piscina das Marés, a building designed by Álvaro Siza Vieira (renowned Portuguese architect) in the early 60's of the 20th century, “SIZIGIA” seeks to use moving images, not only as a method of representing architecture, but as a process of space investigation that explores its narrative qualities and the sense of place created by use, the materials, the light and the sound.