Paulo Trancoso

A retrospective on the life and work of Portuguese director António-Pedro Vasconcelos.

A journey through 40 years of life of the most important Film Festival in Portugal, through the voice of its President and Director, Mário Dorminsky and Beatriz Pacheco Pereira. Born at a coffee shop table in the "Invicta" - Porto City, with a subsidy of 15 "contos" (75EUR), since 1981 it hasn't stopped bringing us cinema, and given its weight and peculiarity, The project developed and soon became a reality, with the screening of several sessions a day, the realization of retrospectives and, also, in parallel, the promotion of concerts and art exhibitions. It is considered the biggest film festival in Portugal, and internationally recognized as one of the most important worldwide, and is now entering its 40th edition.

Manô, an obscure and anonymous character from popular comedies of the 1920s, escapes the destruction of an old movie studio, materializing into the real world from a celluloid film. Manô tries to adapt and survive in present-day Lisbon, for which he is unprepared. Mariana, an unemployed photographer, meets Manô and tries to help him discover the reason for his return, despite Marco, a psychologist with little sense of humor, disliking this clumsy black-and-white character.

Mesmerized by the songs of Peroguarda villagers in southern Portugal’s Alentejo region, young Portuguese modern poet Antonio Reis, Corsican researcher of Portuguese folk music Michel Giacometti, and film director Paulo Rocha visited the village one after another in the late 1950s. This work refreshes the soul and flows with songs and poetry seeped in sadness, as well as the atmosphere of the quiet sea and village, fields adorned with vibrant red flowers, and roads traveled by Reis and the others, while interspersing images from Paulo Rocha’s films.

Indefatigable worker and in multiple artistic fronts, the architect Raul Lino (1879-1974) left us a fundamental work for the understanding of the Portuguese ways of being and inhabiting. The film approaches that legacy starting from texts published by the architect, which place the problematic of the House in a much wider context than that placed by the problems of construction itself. Imagined and drawn for people, being so mirrors of their personalities, tastes and memoires, Houses are the meeting-point between Man, Art and Nature. Therefore, the tremendous responsibility of Architecture: of those who make it and those who uses it.

Joana, 40 years old medical phychiatric, is married to Paul, an executive of a large financial company. Paul hopes that Joana fulfils her role and follows his constant social influences demonstrations. But the marriage is profoundly altered when Mónica, a young model, enters Joana´s life. Irresistibly attracted, they involved romantically, in a world of liberating experiences and feelings. But this will be a short trip, since the revelation of this affair forces Paulo to take drastic measures... ~ FICA

Traveling by the experience and by the roots of one of the strongest manifestations of Portuguese popular culture – singing polyphonic Alentejo. Evoking Michel Giacometti, the film questions the origins of the “sing” in the context of Mediterranean culture.

A man died under mysterious circumstances. An insurance company expert has to visit the four women in his life - his mother, his widow, his daughter and his mistress - to find out the causes of death. With each account, the deceased will appear in a new light, to the point where it is doubtful that it is the same man.

Using texts and landscapes belonging to Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles and to a life of work dedicated to landscape architecture, João Mário Grilo composes this poetic documentary about the evocative power of nature and man.

Lina and Mariana run from an orphanage in Porto towards the south, in search of Lina's father. It is in a difficult and chauvinistic world that they end up finding Alberto who lives with Júlia on a hill somewhere in the Alentejo. Without informing that Maria is their daughter, they try little by little to know why she abandoned her. When they know the reasons, they both plan revenge ... and execute it.