Writing

Regina Guimarães

Born

1957-09-04 (69)

Place of birth

Porto, Portugal

Known for

Writing

Credits

50 titles

Regina Guimarães was born in Porto and is a poet, filmmaker, playwright and lyricist. Together with her partner Serge Abramovici (Saguenail), with whom she has lived since 1975, she founded the publishing house Hélastre. She was a university lecturer at FLUP, ESMAE and ESAD. Her work is developed simultaneously or alternately in various artistic areas that often dialog with each other. She is the author of plays and children's songs, a writer of scripts for films, a lyricist and a video director.

Known for

Massa Mãe poster
NR

Maria and Matías feel life is slipping through their fingers, and turn to birds, real and imagined, in a search for meaning and connection.

Massa Mãe

2026

No artwork available
NR

Discussing cinema during a pandemic – a revisit to an online film club, after thirty post-viewing discussion sessions that took place during the first lockdown.

Cineclube

2021

Dom Fradique poster
NR

C and B are twin cats who live in a rundown harbour town, inhabited by downtrodden birds who, under the yoke of an oppressive and silencing power, have lost the ability to sing or fly. C is a restless dreamer and B is a pragmatic thinker, but both are determined to change their destiny and save the town. Dom Fradique unravels the adventures of these twin cats who, although choosing distinct paths, embody the transformation of both the place they inhabit as well as their own selves, echoing present day themes that unsettle younger generations and the challenges they face, on a social, ecological and political level. What they discover will change them, their lives, and their town forever.

Dom Fradique

—

Percebes poster
6.6

With the sea and urban Algarve as the backdrop, we follow a complete life cycle of a special shellfish called percebes, the goose barnacle.

Percebes

2024

River of Gold poster
7.1

Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio's fondness for their winsome goddaughter, Joana, and insinuates herself into a relationship brewing between Joana and a mystical gypsy gold salesman. Soon, tempers are flaring, mystical secrets are being revealed and death is hovering over the central characters.

River of Gold

1999

Má Sina poster
NR

In an empty theatre, a woman is watching an American film - "Ma's Sin" - which tells the weird revenge story of a middle-aged wife, driven mad by jealousy and a deep feer of dying. During the screening, the viewer's fantasies embodied in male characters harass her. Thus she will live the double adventure of the projected motion picture and of her own mental film. But as the lights turn on, she leaves the theatre, apparently unaffected.

Má Sina

1996

Film credits

2020s · 3 titles

1990s · 1 titles

Behind the camera

No artwork available
NR

Discussing cinema during a pandemic – a revisit to an online film club, after thirty post-viewing discussion sessions that took place during the first lockdown.

Cineclube

2021

Dom Fradique poster
NR

C and B are twin cats who live in a rundown harbour town, inhabited by downtrodden birds who, under the yoke of an oppressive and silencing power, have lost the ability to sing or fly. C is a restless dreamer and B is a pragmatic thinker, but both are determined to change their destiny and save the town. Dom Fradique unravels the adventures of these twin cats who, although choosing distinct paths, embody the transformation of both the place they inhabit as well as their own selves, echoing present day themes that unsettle younger generations and the challenges they face, on a social, ecological and political level. What they discover will change them, their lives, and their town forever.

Dom Fradique

—

Percebes poster
6.6

With the sea and urban Algarve as the backdrop, we follow a complete life cycle of a special shellfish called percebes, the goose barnacle.

Percebes

2024

River of Gold poster
7.1

Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio's fondness for their winsome goddaughter, Joana, and insinuates herself into a relationship brewing between Joana and a mystical gypsy gold salesman. Soon, tempers are flaring, mystical secrets are being revealed and death is hovering over the central characters.

River of Gold

1999

Má Sina poster
NR

In an empty theatre, a woman is watching an American film - "Ma's Sin" - which tells the weird revenge story of a middle-aged wife, driven mad by jealousy and a deep feer of dying. During the screening, the viewer's fantasies embodied in male characters harass her. Thus she will live the double adventure of the projected motion picture and of her own mental film. But as the lights turn on, she leaves the theatre, apparently unaffected.

Má Sina

1996

Vanitas poster
4.5

Vanitas is the new feature film by veteran Portuguese director Paulo Rocha. With a script by Regina Guimarães, the film brings together actresses Isabel Ruth and Joana Bárcia – no strangers to this director's world – in a story about a depressed fashion designer who falls in love with the daughter of one her tailors.

Vanitas

2004

Fuck the Polis poster
NR

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.

Fuck the Polis

2026

If I Were a Thief... I'd Steal poster
5.5

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.

If I Were a Thief... I'd Steal

2013

Geni poster
NR

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.

Geni

2018

The Life of Mirrors poster
NR

The Life of Mirrors is one of the sections of the exhibition Luis Miguel Cintra - Small Theatre of the World. A commission by Serralves Foundation to Regina Guimarães and Saguenail, and constructed after an unpublished interview with Luis Miguel Cintra, this film is the result of a long and painstaking exercise of selecting and editing excerpts from films by Manoel de Oliveira in which Cintra participates as an actor. In this way, The Life of Mirrors is a reflective, retrospective essay film, which opens the Carte Blanche, thus establishing a gateway to Luis Miguel Cintra's cinematographic and cinephile career.

The Life of Mirrors

2025

The Heart's Root poster
6.0

Set in the Lisbon during the festivities of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lovers and the old town. The story is about Cato, a nationalist politician who is charismatic and unscrupulous. He obsessively pursues Silvia, a mystical and mysterious young transvestite whom he meets at the festival. When Silvia runs into Vicente, a policeman who arrests transvestites and threatens them, Silvia must look towards blackmail to save herself. Compromising photos of Cato start to emerge among opposition parties and he must do all in his power to save his political career.

The Heart's Root

2000

Dentro poster
NR

Porto 2001 project, made in the prison of Paços de Ferreira. Nuno Cardoso, the play director, develops this work with the prisoners during the time period of one year. Documentation of the process: conversations with the prisoners in the context of the process of artistic creation and the theater project. Interviews and testimonials with various people who cross their experiences, their view of life and their life behind bars, with the development of the play.

Dentro

2001

Mau Dia poster
NR

From Jacques Prévert's poem “Petit déjeuner du matin”, Mau Dia experiences a dilation of the time in which the banality hides the lived drama. All elements are decomposed and then rebuilt - painted walls, orchestrated rain, spoiled actions, depicted or sung…

Mau Dia

2006

No artwork available
8.5

Ivo and Tomás, two volunteered vagabonds who feed their souls of ways and great winds. From time to time they make a stop, renting their arms, the necessary time to be able to, provisions made, get on the road again. Once, with the sun at its peak and a burning heat, the desert that they are crossing seems to be endless. They run out of water… in the end of the day, without any strength left, they let themselves fall near to a dried bush. Ivo stares at the moon rising, as is saying farewell and whispering verses of a poem of a lawyer they’ve met before. It is then that he sees a far light. They set their way to that house…

A Casa Esquecida

2004

A Imitação poster
NR

An act of passion, filmed in a church turned into a bar, on Easter 2003, and starring as many actors as the days of the year… Taking the sacred painting as a reference, the film questions the human condition: letting oneself die like Christ or betray scientifically like Peter?

A Imitação

2003

A Imitação poster
NR

An act of passion, filmed in a church turned into a bar, on Easter 2003, and starring as many actors as the days of the year… Taking the sacred painting as a reference, the film questions the human condition: letting oneself die like Christ or betray scientifically like Peter?

A Imitação

2003

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Sem Cura - à saúde de Manoel de Oliveira

2011

Non Scriptus Manet poster
NR

From Manet's painting – Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe – two women and two men slip from the timelessness of the museum into our present day. They have come to picnic and enjoy a pleasant swim in the river. The men approach them and, with little attempt to conceal their aggressive libidinous intentions, threaten the happiness of the moment, the serenity of the place, and the integrity of the bathers. This fragment of Eden and everything around it is inhabited by a naturalized social violence...

Non Scriptus Manet

2026

Resonance Spiral poster
NR

The Mediateca Onshore in Malafo, a village in Guinea-Bissau, is an archive and a club for agropoetic practices. As Amílcar Cabral talks feminism on tape, the directors speak in the mangroves about the contradictions of depicting the community.

Resonance Spiral

2024

No artwork available
NR

A film motivated by anger at the frivolity with which sex is treated in cinema. On the aquarium screen, an attempt is made to materialize thought.

Antes de amanhã

2001

Love Lights poster
NR

The evocation of light in the cinema leads the Character of the Man of Light to ponder over it, over its essence and its multiple manifestations in a revisitation of geographical places and memories.

Love Lights

2022

Old Wives’ Tales poster
NR

"Wood was uninterruptedly burning in the home, of that centrifugal place whose actors still offered new worlds to the world born from the sweat of their brows and the clandestine sap of their dreams." Regina Guimarães

Old Wives’ Tales

2015

No artwork available
NR

The original family is expelled from Eden and forced to face the hardships of existence. However, each of its members sees the world differently. Tensions, jealousy, and feelings of guilt lead Adam, Eve, and Cain to gang up against Abel, forcing him to make the first sacrifice.

Acentuado Arrefecimento Nocturno

2013

No artwork available
NR

Shot in Martinique, with the evocation of several texts, namely by Aimé Césaire.

La Panne des Sens - Cahier d'un retour à la Martinique

2014

No artwork available
NR

Shot in Martinique, with the evocation of several texts, namely by Aimé Césaire.

La Panne des Sens - Cahier d'un retour à la Martinique

2014

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Frente e traseiras

2002

O sono da Europa poster
NR

Was Europe asleep? Has it woken up since it decided to adhere to a sleepwalking idea?

O sono da Europa

1995

Caderno da Casa Mundo poster
NR

Notebooks filled with words and outbursts remind us of a series of works by Regina Guimarães—her notebooks; works that take the form of a kind of visual diary, revealing (...) not only her inner universe, but also her relationship with the world and its images...

Caderno da Casa Mundo

2022

A Menina de seu Pai poster
NR

A film by Regina Guimarães

A Menina de seu Pai

2020

No artwork available
NR

Pequenos Teatros de Rua a short film directed by Regina Guimarães

Pequenos Teatros de Rua

2013

O Çul Verão poster
NR

A journey through the Portuguese Ongoing Revolutionary Process

O Çul Verão

2005

A Menina Dos Olhos poster
NR

A documentary view of the practices of popular culture in the most jubilant of the local pagan festivities.

A Menina Dos Olhos

2012

A Menina Dos Olhos poster
NR

A documentary view of the practices of popular culture in the most jubilant of the local pagan festivities.

A Menina Dos Olhos

2012

Antónia poster
NR

Antónia didn't play with dolls, nor did she learn to read and write at the age when children go to school and don't usually sell their labor power. She experienced the harsh social inequalities of Salazarism. Used to toiling from sun up to sun down, work is still her "sport" today. She regrets that those who miss the dictatorship are not forced to experience in the flesh what fascism was like... She tells us all this while her hands prepare the dough for the Easter cakes, scented with aniseed, with the zeal of a master.

Antónia

2007

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Nus Dans La Cage D`Escalier

—

A Escura Prata da Casa poster
NR

A film by Regina Guimarães

A Escura Prata da Casa

2021

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Caderno do Passeio de Cimento

—

Caderno de ver até haver Verão poster
NR

A film by Regina Guimarães

Caderno de ver até haver Verão

2019

No artwork available
NR

An altarpiece and a portrait, whose composition obeys the digressions and ramblings of a handful of people, around their intimate relationship with God.

Meu Deus

2005

No artwork available
8.0

A paralyzed man travels across the city of Porto, finding characters and scenes from popular tales along the way.

Mudas Mudanças

1980