Armanda Carvalho

“The whistle man” was a typical character of the portuguese sea-side during the Fascist Portugal. His story has so many versions that he has become a myth: A poor crazy man who lost his baby girl, a professional homeless who lived from the charity of rich families, a pedofile or a summer father Christmas. His whistle announced his arrival and attracted boys and girls or made them run away. Last year I found 30 seconds of footage of this man which until then was just a memory. Is he more real now?

Misturando fotos de identificação tiradas pela polícia portuguesa durante a ditadura de Salazar e depoimentos dos filhos de um líder comunista assassinado, Luz Obscura inventa uma forma de recriar com a maior fidelidade possível o sentimento de perda de identidade de uma família.

O que pode uma fotografia de um rosto revelar sobre um sistema político? O que pode uma imagem tirada há mais de 35 anos dizer sobre a nossa actualidade? Partindo de um núcleo de fotografias de cadastro de prisioneiros políticos da ditadura portuguesa (1926-1974), 48 procura mostrar os mecanismos através dos quais um sistema autoritário se tentou auto-perpetuar.

'One day I realized it no longer made sense to make things to hang on walls'... Lourdes Castro became known as the artist 'who took care of shadows'. Throughout her international career as an artist, Lourdes developed the concept of shadow, giving it different forms and finally reducing it to the minimum and dematerializing it. She has lived in Munich, Berlin and Paris, but 40 years ago she decided to return to Madeira, her birth place, where she has lived ever since 'in the shadows'. 'What is Lourdes 'taking care of' nowadays?

Documentary about the work of the painter António Sena and a way to see the transformation of forms over time

A father and a son. The father will be seventy years old, the son is in his twenties. The son drives the father to the hospital. Classical music in the radio. The father did not know that the son liked classical music, and the son did not know that that would be the last time he would speak to his father. But Mozart asks that souls rejoice, that men rejoice.

Fragmentos de espaços e tempos, restos de épocas e locais onde apenas habitam memórias e fantasmas. Vestígios de coisas sobre as quais o tempo, os elementos, a natureza, e a própria acção humana modificaram e modificam. Com o tempo tudo deixa de ser, transformando-se eventualmente numa outra coisa. Lugares que deixaram de fazer sentido, de serem necessários, de estar na moda. Lugares esquecidos, obsoletos, inóspitos, vazios. Não interessa aqui explicar porque foram criados e existiram, nem as razões porque se abandonaram ou foram transformados. Apenas se promove uma ideia, talvez poética, sobre algo que foi e é parte da(s) história(s) deste País.

A 2008 short made in accompaniment with Our Beloved Month of August, documenting Gomes's and his crew's hapless search, during 2007's carnival, for one of Arganil's most storied and elusive characters (who does, in fact, ultimately appear as an interviewee/player in the finished film). Paulo "Miller" is known for taking a dangerous jump into the Alva from a bridge each year during carnival, but what this film is about is, in keeping with the free-roving feature, much less the subject himself than Gomes and co.'s inability to pin him down; not only does he not do his famous jump during this year's carnival, but an ostensible technical/audio failure (as with the feature, it's very difficult to say how much of this film is "fact," how much invented) during Gomes's initial on-camera meeting with Paulo "Miller" leads to five minutes of lip-readers attempting to decipher their conversation.

Documentary about the work of the painter Nikias Skapinakis from the exhibition “Imaginary Bedrooms” which in June 2006 opened at the Museum Arpad Scenes-Vieira da Silva. Film by Jorge Silva Melo that closely follows the work of one of the most important painters of the second half of the 20th century, specifically in the area of portrait.

A young woman and her son runaway from their hometown to escape civil war. Nothing is left from the world they knew and the only thing they have is each other.

The pain, the weakness, the silence, the despair. These are some of the feelings faced by a couple lost in drugs. Nights can be seen as the story of people who made mistakes in life, but who still continue to seek happiness. It is about the despair of hopeless lives. The characters are, from the beginning, thrown into an empty and sterile world of indifference. In this true no-man's-land, João and Teresa are confronted with their precarious existence. They are broken pillars of a love that has become silent and painful, they share everything: the house, the drugs, the emptiness and the deprivations of their lives. To make the situation even more dramatic, Teresa falls ill. João does everything to help her, betting on his love for her. He, too, an addict, knows how to ease the pain of his beloved. But unfortunately this help also requires extra money, which forces João to prostitute himself, accelerating his process of destruction and his path to a tragic end.

Pela casa de Aida em Chandor, um retrato do confronto da cultura portuguesa com a indiana.

Lisboa acolhia nos anos 90 a segunda maior comunidade de hindus da Europa. A família Carsane, originária de Diu, com passagem por Moçambique, vive desde há alguns anos em Lisboa. O filme acompanha o seu quotidiano mostrando contrastes e diferenças dentro de uma comunidade aparentemente coesa.

A documentary about the life and work of José Cardoso Pires. The information was gathered through a series of interviews made by the journalist Clara Ferreira Alves during autumn and winter of 1997 and also by people who were close to him.

João Pedro Rodrigues' gradutation short film.