Fiction is never very far from reality. A young man, of Portuguese heritage, decides to do a PhD based on the documentary The Good People of Portugal, a work from 1980, also directed by Rui Simões. This opens the door to a parallel between the reality of the film we see and that of PREC, the moment of the studied documentary and the contemporary world, with the young Michel in between.
From our window one can see a set of the film The Green Years, directed by Paulo Rocha in 1963. This was our starting point: guided by Rocha's gaze, we look back at the places of that film. The successive geological, urbanistic and social strata of Lisbon, besieged by the pandemic that interrupted the shooting, are drawn out in front of our camera, like a contemporary jazz impro from a score written in 1963.
Music
From our window one can see a set of the film The Green Years, directed by Paulo Rocha in 1963. This was our starting point: guided by Rocha's gaze, we look back at the places of that film. The successive geological, urbanistic and social strata of Lisbon, besieged by the pandemic that interrupted the shooting, are drawn out in front of our camera, like a contemporary jazz impro from a score written in 1963.
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.
Self
'A Távola de Rocha' enables us to enter Paulo Rocha’s universe, to gather memories and find, within his personal and professional relationships, a key to decipher some of the unknown symbols and allusions contained in his films.
Avó
Em 1918, Maria Adelaide Coelho da Cunha, herdeira e proprietária do Diário de Notícias, abandona uma vida de luxos —social, cultural e familiar— para fugir com um insignificante motorista, 26 anos mais novo. As consequências da decisão de Maria Adelaide serão obviamente dolorosas e moralmente devastadoras.
Old Woman
A História de um Milagre, em meio a Primeira Guerra Mundial, três crianças de Portugal Jacinta, Francisco Marto e Lucia de Jesus dos Santos testemunham seis visões da Virgem Maria entre os meses de maio e outubro de 1917. Após contar para adultos céticos, a igreja católica romana válida a visão das crianças, transformando a cidade de Fátima um dos principais lugares de peregrinação.
Lídia Dias
A família de Sebastião Dias, outrora endinheirada, vê-se a braços com uma questão muito delicada: está completamente falida. Quando vem a público a notícia de que Jéssica Fatinha, a primeira-ministra, anda em negociações com políticos de vários países para vender Portugal, Sebastião tem de fazer alguma coisa para o impedir.
Amanda Carrusca
Alentejo, Portugal, 1950. Em uma região desolada, onde o vento parece falar, onde reina a miséria e a fome sobre os mais pobres, um homem desesperado se vinga daqueles que causaram sua ruína durante a noite mais escura, incapaz de obter honestamente o pão necessário para alimentar sua família durante o dia.
Deolinda
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.
Laura
On a Sunday an older actress (Isabel Ruth) decides to use her mobile phone to take photos of a sleeping young actor (Joaozinho Costa)
Present, past and future merge in the wagons of a train that crosses Eastern Europe in the XXI century: Poland, Russia, Ukraine. The slogan of the post-war "Never Again" sounds now like a fairy tale. Everything is happening again. Everywhere.
Amélia
Dulce
Certainly an outstanding case of beauty and mystery, this short film by Mozos creates a strange alloy of literature and cinema, and not in the way one discipline is a vampire for the other, but rather as if they were the different faces of the same coin, drawn to coexist and repel each other. As if every film belonged to a lonely species, Ashes and Embers shows a unique arrogance as it trembles, somewhat defenseless, with no certainty that the folds of fiction constitute any kind of survival guarantee for such strange objects. Memory and ghosts are two words that are easily said, but in this singular and very refined film they seem destined to become the ultimate goal of cinema, and its most endurable desire.
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.
An elderly woman in a wheelchair and a hormone driven teenage boy arrive to a beach cabin where, through rare moments of lucidity, she will persuade him to kill her.
Woman
Esta versão da famosa história de “Les Diaboliques” de Barbey d’Aurevilly (1874) apresenta belas músicas clássicas, figurinos e convenções teatrais que resultam em puro cinema. Um rico e decadente homem do mundo conhece uma mulher das ruas excepcional.
Inspetora
Maria, uma médica ucraniana, vem a Portugal passar um ano com Greco, o seu marido, também ele médico. À chegada ao aeroporto de Faro é abordada por agentes do Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras que a levam para uma sala de interrogatórios, sem quaisquer explicações. Tudo isto ocorre pelo facto de as autoridades desconfiarem que algo de ilegal deve estar por detrás daquela viagem, uma vez que ela é da Europa de Leste e o seu marido é senegalês.
Renata
Teresa é uma actriz de telenovela. O reencontro de uma velha paixão traz-lhe memórias que ela própria julgava perdidas, levando-a a questionar não apenas a sua vida afectiva, mas também as suas opções profissionais. No estúdio onde decorrem as gravações, o labor quotidiano é pontuado pela agitação de um grupo de jovens actores. Afinal, todos perguntam: onde está a felicidade?
Criada
A photographer, Isaac is asked by hotel owners to take portraits of their recently deceased daughter Angélica. When he looks at her through the lens of his camera, she appears to come back to life just for him. He instantly falls in love with her. From that moment, he will be haunted by Angélica day and night.
A portrait of a first relationship, previous to the external world, the one of the family. In a winter in Lisbon, father, mother, son and daughter trace the path of a day by themselves. A film that develops through characters who have for their antagonist life itself, with nothing (and everything) heroic about it.
Dora divides her time between her work as a beautician, her policeman husband António, and her involvement in left-wing politics. A tale of love and how we must learn to cherish it against all odds in the pursuit of happiness.
Dona Inez
La femme sans abri
Irene moves to Paris to begin a new life with her husband Jason and their two daughters, but an act of betrayal and her desire for revenge soon sends her to the brink of madness.
Celsa Andrade
Luciano, fresh out of jail, was taken by his brother, Flórido, to serve in the home of wealthy Alfreda. He was surprised when she told him that her greatest desire was to see the Virgin Mary. Now comes this rich land owner with her sublime pretensions. Isn't it enough for her to have an Aston Martin and a Jaguar in the garage and ten different dresses per season? It was all professor Heschel's fault. Or someone else's. Anyway, to go beyond the promise is heresy. Alfreda said that she wouldn't rest until she saw the Virgin and made her some questions. Filipe Quinta, the Forger, says he has a solution. Meanwhile, Bahia, her husband, listens do music.
Estela
In a remote island where mourning was settled, a man decreed that there will never be sex or children anymore... The island gets desolate and he decided to send his daughter, Adriana, to the mainland to form a family by natural methods.
Abuela
During Holy Week of 59 in the tragicomic social landscape of Franco's Spain, takes place the sentimental chronicle of a nine years old boy: Pablito. Pablito wants the pedal car he sees in a shop near his home. His family -middle class with bad luck - silently suffers the pressure of the other part of the family- middle class with good luck and best influences. The desire of the car and the hope to get it encourage his parents to take the child, piggy bank in hand, through a strange journey to the colorful and surprisingly familiar world full of lies and blackmail. Pablito emotionally survives in that environment thanks to his ability to get from his imagination the answers that parents and teachers do not give him. And that way, Pablito will create his own happy ending.
Nela Calheiros
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.
Celsa
Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.
Aninhas
Portugal, finais dos anos 60. Tomás Palma Bravo (Rogério Samora), o Delfim, o Infante, é o herdeiro de um mundo em decomposição. É ele o dono da Lagoa, da Gafeira, de Maria das Mercês (Alexandra Lencastre), sua mulher infecunda, de Domingos, seu criado preto e maneta, de um mastim e de um “Jaguar E”, que o leva da Gafeira a Lisboa e às putas. Um caçador, detective e narrador, que todos os anos volta à Lagoa para caçar patos-reais, descobre, um ano depois, que Domingos apareceu morto na cama do casal Palma Bravo e que Maria das Mercês apareceu a boiar na Lagoa. Quanto a Tomás Palma Bravo e ao mastim, dizem-lhe que desapareceram sem deixar rasto.
Dr. Zita Portugal
A cidade de Coimbra, a mais complexa das personagens, conta a história. Eu não sou só uma cidade. Eu sou uma estufa, uma reserva natural para estudantes onde eles vivem em plena liberdade. Uma certa manhã de Janeiro chegou um homem. Apaixonou-se por mim e pelas minhas mulheres. Tolo, não percebeu que EU não sou para quem quer, mas para quem pode. E que o amor não abre as minhas velhas portas.
Milkmaid
The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.
Dr. Figueira
Pawel Markowicz suffers from Stendhal syndrome and it is to Dr.Giordano that he tells his secret.
Tia Judite
The anniversary, celebrating the thirty years of the marriage of Francisco and Leonor Teixeira, celebrated on their family farm. It is time to party and everyone party with the Teixeira's. Well, almost everyone. Ricardo, the youngest son, does not speak with his father for five years.
Ju
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.
Conceição
Numa madrugada do Verão de 1999, a quinze dias da data do casamento, João descobre que, afinal, já não quer casar. Os preparativos da festa estão em curso, os convites foram mandados e, ainda por cima, João desconfia que está grávida. Perante o inesperado desta situação, João faz o que costuma fazer quando precisa de pensar: bebe...
Cliente Mulher
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.
The young, sickly girl Bernadette comes from a poverty-stricken family. When the Virgin Mary appears to her in a cavern near Lourdes, no one takes the girl seriously, even when she digs up a wellspring at the Virgin's instructions The local authorities even try to hush up the entire incident. In vain, however, because when Empress Eugénie requests water from the spring for her sickly son, they are forced to acquiesce. And even the local priest is finally convinced. While taking his tuberculosis-stricken fiancé Claire to a sanatorium, the young doctor Henri Guillaumet meets Bernadette. The water from Lourdes' spring heals Claire's disease overnight, but the scientist in Henri doubts the miracle and wants to expose Bernadette as a liar. It is not until Henri again meets Bernadette, who has in the meantime become a nun and works as a nurse, that he finds a way to balance belief and modern science. And his love for Claire is strengthened as well.
Camões, na velhice, é um homem doente, sifilítico, incapaz de se movimentar e de suportar as dores e tormentas que o mortificam. Mas, dentro dele, há uma voz que fala no silêncio da noite.
The professor's assistant
Arthur is a history teacher who lives alone in Paris after having broken up with Claire. He is a sensitive man, full of existential doubts and questions. He has to go to Lisbon to meet an eminent historian whose work is the subject of his thesis. Having just made up with Claire, he decides to take her along. She's an ideal travel companion and it seems their relationship has not yet exhausted its potential. But moving from Lisbon to Oporto, their fantasy of a second honeymoon clashes with the reality of a world on the verge of a nightmare.
Isabel
Andreia, Pedro e Ricardo não aceitam as coisas como elas são, não se encaixam em lado nenhum. Têm dentro deles uma força invisível que se espalha por todo o lado. É como uma energia selvagem, um desejo de mudar as coisas, de viver de uma forma diferente. Não sabem muito bem o que querem, mas há sempre alguma coisa que os incomoda. São sobreviventes. São os mutantes portugueses, mas também existem mutantes em todos os lugares. Talvez o mundo preferisse que eles não existissem, mas eles existem. Ao longo de todo o filme, eles sonham, choram, riem, têm filhos, morrem, fogem.
Marta
An anthology film drama featuring a poetic mirror structure based on existential identity. In "The Immortals," adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. "Suzy," from an Antonio Patricio story, is set in the '30s when a young courtesan dies on the operating table. "Mother of the River" is from an Agustina Bessa-Luis fable about eternal life.
Carolina
Anos 50. Aldeia de Barquinha, margens do Rio Douro. Casada já madura com António, mestre de uma draga regressado de muitos anos no Brasil, Carolina é guarda da passagem-de-nível. Ciumenta, agressiva, tem uma afilhada, Melita, que enfraquece a cabeça dos homens - sobretudo, aqueles que Carolina tem ou traz debaixo de olho. Em especial Zé dos Ouros, um cigano que vende ouro. Até que Carolina comete um crime sanguinário - mata António, uma grande e horrível tragédia, pois ele estava inocente das suas suspeitas.
Lúcia is an independent woman who lives alone in Lisbon. Her father commits suicide leaving her a message on phone recorder, revealing a letter he wrote. However Lúcia can't find it in her father's house. On that visit she ends up meeting with her mother, a known political activist with whom she has a distant and tense relationship. In hope of finding the letter, Lúcia leaves to the farm where she grew up, on an isolated location. There she reencounters Álvaro, an old childhood companion, who shares a little life time he has left between roses and the piano, and the guardian angel that follows and protects her through nocturnal wanderings.
Eduarda
No Estrela de África, um bairro crioulo dos arredores de Lisboa, um bebé de poucos dias irá sobreviver a várias mortes. Tina, a sua jovem mãe, pega-lhe ao colo e abre o gás. Resgatado pelo pai, ele dormirá nas ruas da cidade alimentado pelo leite da caridade alheia. Por duas vezes, quase será vendido, por desespero, por amor, por quase nada. Mas Tina não se esquece: com a ajuda das suas vizinhas do bairro a vingança aproxima-se...
Olga
Manoel is an aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.
Short film.
Saleswoman
Adaptação da peça homónima de Prista Monteiro. A ação concentra-se nas escadinhas de um bairro pobre e conta a derradeira desventura de um velho cego a quem já roubaram a caixa de esmolas, o seu ganha-pão oficializado. A filha, para além dos trabalhos de casa, afadiga-se com roupas que passa a ferro para fora. O homem dela, um marginal desempregado, vive às custas da caixa do cego, que agora é roubada pela segunda vez.
Voice of Mother (voice)
This dark and intense drama follows the slow and painful destruction of a young, passive woman as she watches her family fall apart. Maria is the shy and dutiful daughter upon whose shoulders the family traumas have fallen. In addition to a regular job she cooks, cleans, and studies. Her parents offer no assistance as her father is blind, with a tendency towards violence when drinking. His wife, the focus of his violence is terribly unhappy. After a particularly brutal beating, Maria's brothers rise up against the father and end up leaving the home. It is up to Maria to try to bring the factions together. Maria's pressures increase after she calmly stabs her boss during an attempted rape, and then copes with her mother's suicide.
Ritinha
Ema é uma jovem extraordinariamente bonita que se vê casada com Carlos de Paiva, um homem bom, senhor da Quinta de Vale Abraão, mas a quem ela não ama. À medida que o tempo passa, a monotonia toma conta dos seus dias e torna o casamento num hábito, levando Ema a procurar consolo nos braços de um amante.
Victim of a train accident, a man regains consciousness in the house of the woman who shared his compartment.
Rita
In the forties, in a little settlement lost amidst the mountains of Trás-os-Montes, Leonardo tries to survive by buying and selling marten and fox furs, dreaming of the day he’ll close a big deal.
Teacher
The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.
Laura
Xavier returns to Lisbon after a military stint, determined to lead a meaningful life, only to find his world closing in on him.
Woman
Coming from Fundão to Lisboa where he did conscription service, Matias found that the reality of the big city is not exactly how he remembers
Mrs J
Johnny Fortune (Damon Lowry) is no good to anyone, not mean, but just no good. Surrounded by violence and dishonesty, Johnny lives with Kate. Johnny messes up, he loses a lot of money, his girlfriend Kate's money. Alone, desperate and on the run from a couple of hit-men, he applies for a job as an entertainer's assistant becoming a dancing bear. Unwittingly learning of secrets around him, his past catches up with him.
Sebastião's Wife
A film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel "Hard Times" set in a Portuguese industrial town of the 1980s.
Carlos' neighbor
AGOSTO é o oposto das chamadas fitas de Verão, como as paixões que lá se contam estão nos antípodas dos amores de praia.
Ilda / Dona Teresa
Numa noite de insônia de 1978, Francisco e Rita se encontram para relembrar João, um amigo de infância assassinado recentemente. João pertencera a um grupo subversivo de esquerda durante a ditadura e era produtor de cinema, que estava filmando uma adaptação do drama de Alexandre Herculano, O Bobo.
This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de Freitas) both loves and hates him as Joao plays on her wavering emotional state. He is sent to Italy to retrieve wayward family member Antonia (Caroline Chaniolleau), the beautiful young woman with a terrorist boyfriend. Joao is forced to recognize his feelings as the political and amorous climate changes around him.
No início do século XX a sociedade portuguesa está em profunda crise política e moral, uma República confusa e com restos de uma monarquia podre. Fernando Pessoa e Mário de Sá-Carneiro reinventam a língua, o modo de dizer, pagando os riscos da sua aventura. Um rebenta a solidão no fogo dos heterónimos que lhe permitem prolongar a existência; o outro despedaça o corpo e a própria vida na vertigem dispersa de poemas e novelas. A história desse encontro, os textos, a amizade e a morte.
Young student runs away from a 1984-esque dictatorship, lives for a while with a crazy girl in a surrealistic “igloo” in snowy wilderness and then returns to lead a revolution against the oppressive system. Sci-fi tale consistent with the political climate of May 68.
Jocasta's Maid with a Lamb (uncredited)
Édipo Rei começa em 1920 na Itália, relatando um nascimento, fruto de um caso entre uma burguesa e um oficial militar. O filme se desenvolve retratando o mito de Édipo sobre parricídio e incesto. O epílogo mostra Édipo tocando sua flauta na agitação urbana da Bolonha dos anos 60.
Albertina
After a stint in the army fighting in Angola, a soldier comes home to find his sweetheart has married his brother. He makes advances towards his sister-in-law, but she turns him down. Discouraged, the man meets a new girlfriend who vows to escape the town's crushing poverty even if she has to steal.
Herself
Lúcia
Jorge, médico sério e solitário, dirige um departamento no hospital. Um dia chega Lúcia já gravemente doente de leucemia. Apaixonaram-se. Será uma corrida contra o desespera e a reafirmação da vontade de amar, mesmo face à iminência da morte.
Ilda
Portuguese film from 1963.
