Competition

Walking down the different paths that lead from fact to fiction, the six films that make up this programme have a factor in common: the construction of memory. Memory – whether personal or collective memory, whether family or historical memory – that is made from multiple fragments: photographs, sound recordings, written words or moving images. A multiplicity of parts of different nature and a variety of media and formats that fluctuate between the past and the present, presence and absence, the real and the imaginary. Each one in its own way, these films are all a tribute, an offering and a sincere declaration of love.

A STORY FROM AFRICA

Billy Woodberry, 32'', 2019, Portugal-USA
Director: Billy Woodberry
Producer: Billy Woodberry , Rui Alexandre Santos, Divina Comédia
Research: Teresa Andrade
Editing: Luís Nunes
Music and Sound Design: António de Sousa Dias
Text Editing: George Hodak

Following the 1885 Berlin Conference resolution on the partition of Africa, the Portuguese army uses a talented ensign to register the effective occupation of the territory conquered in 1907 to the Cuamato people, in the south of Angola. A Story from Africa enlivens this rarely seen photographic archive through the tragic tale of Calipalula, the Cuamato nobleman essential to the unfolding of events in this Portuguese pacification campaign. In this experimental film Woodberry seeks to unleash the violent movements for conquer captured in these photographs, also to subvert what at first glance would obviously be understood as the “colonial gaze”.

A VOLTA AO MUNDO QUANDO TINHAS 30 ANOS

Aya Koretzky, 111'', 2019, Portugal
Director and Cinematographer: Aya Koretzky
Sound and Script Consultant: Miguel Clara Vasconcelos
Produced by: Joana Ferreira, Isabel Machado
Production Company: C.R.I.M.
Editing: Tomás Baltazar
With: Jiro Koretzky, Anna Koretzky, Ary Koretzky de Vasconcelos, Kate Saragaço-Gomes

The portrait of a father as seen through the eyes of his daughter by means of a photo album. A travel diary from the 1970s, starting in Japan and around the world. Father and daughter cross views on the memories of the old images and words, sharing the will to bring them to the present day.

HUMBERTO MAURO

André Di Mauro, 90'', 2018, Brazil
Director: André di Mauro
Produced by: André di Mauro
Production Comany: DiMauroFilms, Canal Brasil
Editing and Sound: André di Mauro, Renato Valone

Humberto Mauro is a tribute to the filmmaker Humberto Mauro considered the pioneer of Brazilian and Latin American cinema, directed by his grandnephew, André Di Mauro. The film shows the life of Humberto Mauro through his films in a narrative composed of audio interviews of him in the 1960’s. Humberto Mauro is a broad dynamic and human panel on Mauro’s creativity and cinema, exposing the unusual technical solutions to making his films and the adversities inherent in pioneering such a task at the beginning of the twentieth century in a small Latin American city. Mauro’s voice permeates the film, telling us stories and talking about life, his cinematic style and discoveries. With every breathtaking frame the film takes us back in time, into the history of cinema, not letting us forget that “cinema is a waterfall”.

INTRODUZIONE ALL’OSCURO

Gastón Solnicki, 72'', 2018, Argentina-Austria
Director: Gastón Solnicki
Produced by: Filmy Wiktora, Rei Cine, Little Magnet Films, KGP
Producers: Benjamín Domenech, Santiago Gallelli, Matías Roveda, Paolo Calamita, Gastón Solnicki, Gabriele Kranzelbinder
Cinematography: Rui Poças
Editing and Sound: Alan Segal
Cast: Linda Manz, Dennis Hopper, Sharon Farrell, Don Gordon, Raymond Burr

A man wanders the streets of Vienna, guided by the memory of a friend who has recently passed away. The vestiges of a once sumptuous empire become the setting for a cinematic elegy and a dark celebration of life. A homage. A film inspired by the tenderness and the humour. A very spontaneous fiction, conceived as a cinematic postcard made from small pieces and personal archives. An uncanny union of opposing elements, and the idea of the “spectral” in a film that aims to find a universal resonance in such a private subject.

KARELIA: INTERNATIONAL WITH MONUMENT

Andrés Duque, 90'', 2019, Spain
Director and Producer: Andrés Duque
Cinematography, Editing and Sound: Andrés Duque

Trees are everything. In a settlement near the Russian-Finnish border, a traditional family keeps shamanistic rituals alive. The children play in the same forest where photos nailed to trees remind us of Stalin’s bloody repression. Spirituality and politics meet in this intuitive montage of poetic impressions, historical material, nature shots, family scenes and probing testimony, creating a memory of historical events by dint of imagination.

NONA. SI ME MOJAN, YO LOS QUEMO

Camila José Donoso, 86'', 2018, Chile
Director: Camila José Donoso
Producer: Rocío Romero
Production Company: Mimbre Producciones, Transparaíso Films, Bubbles Project. Al-tamar Films, TVZero
Cinematography: Matías Illanes
Art director: Nicolás Oyarce
Editing: Karen Akerman, Camila José Donoso
Sound: Sebastián Arjona, Emilio Torres
Cast: Josefina Ramírez, Eduardo Moscovis, Gigi Reyes. Paula Dinamarca

Nona (66), an atypical homemaker, lives in self-exile in a coastal town, in a mysterious forest where strange fires attributed to the Devil take place. When the wind and The Pacific seem possessed, her neighbors and she witness a large forest fire that starts to destroy millions of hectares of woods in southern Chile. The sky fills with smoke, the town gets frightened with every fire alarm and chaos seems to run riot.