Virados do Avesso

During a night of humiliation, Raymond lives an inner revolt and a kaleidoscopic journey in a country that is about to collapse.

“Manual of Evasion LX94” is a thought-provoking Dadaist film about time by the Portuguese director Edgar Pêra. It was shot in Lisbon in 1994 and stars Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Rudy Rucker. Time is explored from many unusual angles, while Pêra fills the screen with a wide variety of bizarre and mind-warping imagery.

In 1988, Lisbon’s Chiado was ravaged by a fire; now, some of the highest real estate property prices in Portugal are paid for a piece of this Álvaro Siza Vieira-renovated area. Reproduta interdita was one of Pêra’s first (and certainly weirdest) works to deal with the aftermath of this disaster.

A 14-year-old kid, addicted to videogames, goes with his parents to a shopping mall and separates from them to go to a game store called UTOPYA. He doesn't come back. His parents get in despair, and his father tries everything he can to bring him back.

Seven competing reporters are assigned to cover the Carnavael de Torres Vedras in Lisbon. Each of the seven tries to attract as much audience as possible to their broadcast. The situation escalates at a masked ball.

A school inspector travels to the baron’s fiefdom to write a report on a heathen teacher. Having arrived, he is invited to stay with the baron, who makes predictions about women, horses and politics while the mysterious Idalina serves food and drink. The inspector becomes inextricably entangled in the baron’s world.

The city during the beginning of cinema. The typical city at the time of the dictatorship. The New Lisbon of the New Cinema. Lisbon after the Revolution. The white city of foreigners. A geographical and moviegoer screenplay of Lisbon through the images of films and testimonies of several filmmakers who filmed in Lisbon.

An experimental and surreal film, a mix of weird and unusual "avant-gard" cinematography with some traditional icons of the Portuguese culture, like Fado or the typical neighbourhoods of Lisbon, in this case the "Bica" is a typical neighbourhood which is used as setting to the plot.

I am the double of the shadow of my own image. An allegory that occupies my place. This is my act of contrition. Beyond good and evil, I stand as an equation: Its result cannot be manipulated By morals or ethics. In mathematics there is no place for beliefs Just as life and death Are a certain fate.

On All Saint’s Day 1755, around 09:40 hours, Lisbon was hit by an earthquake which eradicated almost the entire city. 345 years later (D.T. = depois de terramoto) means 2100 AD. Will Portugal’s capital be a Garden of Earthly Delights when we reach the year 2100? Pêra’s animation classic provides unexpected (in)sights about it.

A poetic film that celebrates the work of Alberto Pimenta, fruit of a friendship and complicity maintained during the last 24 years.

João is a writer who one day wakes up suffering from a bout of selective amnesia: he can't remember that he's gay. So he decides to reject his partner of five years and he plunges into a new, unexpectedly hetero life. But, as the saying goes, it never rains but it pours: João also has a creative block, and is incapable of finishing his latest novel. Isabel, his rival in the literary world, is suffering from a similar case of writer's block. After a night spent together, Isabel steals João's novel and tries to publish it as her own.

A triptych of short stereoscopic films by Peter Greenaway, Jean-Luc Godard and Edgar Pêra. Includes "The Three Disasters" by Godard, "Cinesapiens" by Pêra and "Just in Time" by Greenaway.

Short documentary about football (soccer) supporters in Portugal

Crime Blue Abyss Physical Remorse is inspired by the life and works of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. This controversial 20th century painter defied the world avant-garde of his time: “I don’t follow schools. I am an impressionist, cubist, futurist, abstractionist. A melting pot. The real tradition is not to try and relive the past – which is impossible to achieve – but rather something that sets up a follow-through, as happens with parents and children. A child and his father are never alike.” The film follows Amadeo’s motto. It crosses pictorial fiction – suggested by the emblematic picture “The Procession”, painted in Paris in 1913 – with Portuguese contemporary reality.

It is with images of Domingos de Oliveira Santos, a surgeon turned filmmaker, that Edgar Pêra composes a mosaic that goes beyond home videos, rushing beyond them.