Isabel Machado

Birth : , Lisbon, Portugal

History

Isabel Machado was born in Lisbon in 1974 and is one of C.R.I.M.'s directing managers and producer. She has a degree in Communication Design from the Lisbon University. She studied Visual Arts at Maumaus School of Photography. Since 2002 she is a full time producer of films and artistic projects. Finalist of the workshops in development and production of films EAVE 2005 and documentaries EURODOC 2008, she is now doing her PhD on Performing Arts and Moving Images at the University of Lisbon. She is responsible for the development, production and distribution of institutional videos, documentary and fiction films and visual art projects in C.R.I.M.

Movies

The Fortunate Ones
Producer
Raised without parents in an isolated mansion on Portugal’s southernmost coast, Milene turned out a sort of adult wild child — impulsive, often withdrawn, prone to hysterical outbursts. When her grandmother-minder dies, the stuffy relatives who ignored Milene until now must decide what to “do with” her. Institutionalization? Some menial job? They don’t reckon she might have her own firm ideas on the matter, especially after she meets construction worker Antonino, who’s part of a much warmer clan living on the grounds of the shuttered factory that once enriched her own family. The heart wants what it wants…but will anyone respect Milene’s desires?
Outlier
Producer
After a public scene was caused by her abusive boyfriend, James, Olivia Davis flees the relationship with the help of a kind stranger, Thomas. Fearing for her safety from James, Olivia stays with Thomas for a while. Meanwhile, Thomas is working on a mystery project that Olivia only gets glimpses of. Not trusting herself and being eaten up by past trauma, she decides it's time to leave. Fearing for her safety out there on her own, Thomas is forced to confront and take action to keep Olivia safe. She is now forced to take action, find out what is going on, and escape her trauma.
Contágio
Producer
Several Portuguese creators occupy the director's chair in this collective short film shot during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in an unfolding of personal perspectives.
The Last Bath
Producer
A nun is called upon to adopt her 15-year-old nephew, and as a consequence religious, familial and sensual love become entangled.
Sonho de um Verão
Producer
Certain moments seem to stretch time differently, lingering in our minds longer than others do. They can be a positive memory, of a peaceful afternoon on the beach, or a negative one, like the helplessness that comes with a moment of uncertainty. In a house with vestiges of someone moving (leaving or arriving?), two women attempt a dialog filled with absences, trying to decipher the past and the future. Enigmatic, somewhere between an illusion and a daydream, time here seems suspended, lulled by silences and shadows.
The Secret of the Closed House
Producer
On the riverside quay of the enormous container port of Lisbon two old decaying sky-blue painted buildings are located directly opposite to each other. One is closed and abandoned, the other inhabited by the two bright and inquisitive girls Ana and Matilde. Watching the closed building every single day and night the sisters get more and more suspicious. Strange phenomenons and movements behind the thick blue walls increase their curiosity. How is possible what their children`s eyes are witnessing? Who are those mysterious neighbours? How to discover old house`s secret?
Around the World When You Were My Age
Producer
At 30, Jiro embarked on a year-long trip taking in the Soviet Union, North Africa, Europe, and the United States. Nearly half a century later, his daughter makes use of various memorabilia to take a step back in time and explore how such adventures have shaped the man’s take on the modern world.
Acts of Cinema
Producer
Cinema and affections from life in images and what goes on outside the frame. 'Snapshots' of shootings and the present-day memory of directors, actors and technicians.
The Tree
Producer
A man, a child, two wars, a river, a tree. A man and a child meet under a tree on a river bank, sharing the same memory and a secret. They find in each other the serenity, the silence and the time they lost in the flowing water of the river.
The Frog and the Girl
Producer
Adaptation by the director Inês Oliveira from the traditional Portuguese tale «O Sapo e a Rapariga». The laundry room is closed and a young woman (Rita Cabaço) has to learn how to wash clothes by hand with the wise Deolinda (Isabel Ruth), who tells her a strange story of enchantment.
Dom Fradique
Producer
A path for tourists on their way to the Castle of São Jorge, the Pátio Dom Fradique was once a popular courtyard where around sixty families used to live.Today, ruins of their houses are the unique remains.There, the erased memories of the old city history and the frenzy of the new Lisbon give way to a contemporary urban tale.
Barbs, Wastelands
Producer
After the Carnation Revolution the peasants in the Alentejo region occupied the huge proprieties where they were once submitted to the power of their masters. The protagonists of this film, resistants of this struggle, tell their story to the youngsters of today, in their own words.
Love Love
Producer
Marta and Jorge have been a couple for seven years. All their friends think they are living a perfect romance. Too perfect, perhaps, for the despair of all: Bruno, who is much younger than Marta but madly in love with her; Lígia, who is Bruno's sister and Marta's best friend and would love to see her brother happy; Carlos, Jorge's friend, who maintains a superficial romance with Lígia while secretly in love with Marta; and for Jorge himself, who is afraid this idyllic romance will imprison him and, convinced that his love and his lover's desire to marry will take away his freedom, decides to show her the way into Carlos arms.
Encontro Silencioso
Producer
Bound by a silent pact, five students make a secret trip to the country for what seems to be an initiation ceremony. In threatening landscapes and abandoned ruins, they submit to the strange rituals of their leader, the Dux.
Correspondences
Producer
Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.
Lura
Producer
This film dives into a new world of possibilities, from the diversity of emotions tcreated by this one man alone in this house to his behavior and transformation on the world that he is creating.
Outras Cartas ou o Amor Inventado
Producer
Other Letters or The Invented Love deals with the passionate book New Portuguese Letters, a collective work written by the authors known as the Three Marias in the 70s, as a pretext for a short cinematographic inventory about relationships and affection between people today and always.
A Woman's Revenge
Producer
Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.
Eden's Ark
Producer
Eden's Ark is a journey through the dramatic, chaotic, precarious world of botany and film preservation. A journey in danger and poetry, across the ice and the tropics, following adventurers and preservers, and confronting what we lose and save.
Wakasa
Producer
We went on discovering the story of princess Wakasa who fall in love with Fernão Mendes Pinto and was exchanged for a gun's secret.
Kinotel
Producer
We don`t know much about the future world where people need to visit 'Kinotels'. But we know that going to the cinema has radically changed. It has become a computer directed kind of intimate ritual during which people enter another reality and switch personality. This is the short story of aman and a woman who visit a Kinotel.
Waiting for Europe
Producer
This inward portrait of young Vania follows her from Bulgaria to Portugal and Spain and back home. Vania wishes a better life searching her personal independence and identity. She experiences illegality, isolation and exploitation while she tries to find answers for life's major decisions. This is a film about emigration from a feminine point of view. It tells us the hopes and fears of a common person and consists in reflection about everyday life's reality. It's about growing up and putting off life ... while hopping that, one day, the utopia of Europe will actually happen.
Postais para o futuro
Director
A reflective film essay, a machine of though, presented in tableau-form, composed by digital postcards on video format. Inspired by Donna Haraway the film is about a future of response-ability to inhabit the n-dimensional niche space called Earth or Terrapolis. We look for “real stories that are also speculative fabulations and speculative realisms. (…) stories in which multispecies players, who are enmeshed in partial and flawed translations across difference, redo ways of living and dying attuned to still possible finite flourishing, still possible recuperation.”