Alexandre Oliveira

The young film student Maria do Mar is working on a documentary about the old manor houses along the Douro River. It is the final project in her thesis on “Reality in Cinema”. Maria has an unlimited confidence in what is visible. Her candour and her naivety allow her to see the bright side of life – such as the beauty of the landscape and the authenticity of the place, or what’s left of it. But when Maria enters the final manor house on her list, she soon realises that something is going on in this house that is not as innocent as it first seemed. The manor is truly a house of horrors.

The revolutionary Álvaro Cunhal, symbol of Portuguese communism and political giant of the 20th century. He is nothing less than a larger-than-life figure, now examined by João Botelho’s camera, in a detective-minded film, in which the early years of the life of the historic leader of the Portuguese Communist Party are explored. In between, excerpts from his own books are staged for the spectator.

Organized like a dream, structured like a musical and with texts, both spoken and sung, that lead us to unexpected, chaotic and exciting situations, which try to grasp part of what the unattainable Alexandre O'Neill left us.

Fernando Pessoa, one of the greatest writers in Portuguese, created an immense parallel world and several heteronyms so as to endure the loneliness of genius. José Saramago, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Literature, has a heteronym, Ricardo Reis, return to Portugal after a 16-year exile in Brazil. 1936 is a perilous year with Mussolini’s fascism, Hitler’s Nazism, Spain’s Civil War and Salazar’s New State in Portugal. And Fernando Pessoa meets his creation, Reis. Two women, Lídia and Marcenda, are Reis’ carnal and impossible passions. “Life and Death as one” allows for literature and cinema.

Ariel de Bigault's work has been connected to the routes of the Lusophone World. In Fantasmas do Império we are guided by the saotomean actor Angelo Torres through some works of the Portuguese cinema that explored its colonial past. Some directors as Fernando Matos Silva, João Botelho or Margarida Cardoso help to understand imperialism, colonialism, and propaganda seen through the "family album" which is the Portuguese cinematic collective imaginary.

Francisca, a beautiful 50-year-old widow (played by Maria de Medeiros), prepared a peaceful future for herself. In an unexpected outburst, she grabs an opportunity for change and embarks on a sailboat called ‘Hovering Over the Water’.

Adventurer, pilgrim, penitent but above all outstanding writer, Fernão Mendes Pinto left us an unparalleled romance, the living and human palpitation of one of the greatest historical adventures of man.

“An old photograph taken 36 years ago. His hand rests on my shoulder. A blessing, a gift. Then a history of over four decades of friendship, admiration and apprenticeship. A journey into Oliveira’s cinema, his method, his way of filming and his extraordinary cinematic inventions. He lived for over a century, over a century of cinema, cinema in its entirety. For him, and for me too now, documentary and fiction films go hand in hand; it is all about cinema. So I had the audacity to film a magnificent story that Manoel loved but never filmed, one that he left behind as if his hand and eyes were close to God, or among the gods, and he was steering me.” - João Botelho

Documentary about Vale do Côa.

The tragedy and comedy in Carlos' life begins, grows and ends like the tragedy and comedy of Portugal. In the company of his close friend, João da Ega, allegedly a brilliant writer, Carlos, with his idle existence as an aristocratic doctor, spends his time to enjoying friends and lovers. Until he falls in love. She is a new character in this revolutionary novel. It's a vertiginous passion that goes beyond that past gloominess to reach a new and darker abyss, incest.

A choreographic poem by Maurice Ravel.

A documentary about the singings of a Portuguese Village that has their own dialect

Lisbon, today. In a room of a house at Douradores Street, a man invents dreams and theorizes about them. The essence of the dreams itself becomes physical, palpable, visible. The text itself materializes in its musicality. And, in front of our eyes, this music can be felt with the ears, brain and heart. It spreads itself in the street where the man lives, in the city that he loves above all and over the entire world.

A journey inside the tram crossing the city of Lisbon while listening to fragments of Fernando Pessoa's poetry.

"Come and see this world end!" - wrote the the priest António Fontes, father of folk medicine and "burning witches" in Vilar de Perdizes, a desperate plea in his precious monograph of the Barroso region. And I (João Botelho) went. Then I saw the people and the land. Haunting on discovery. Heart sank. "God is good but the devil is not so bad!" - We learned from this Community habits and that is great, tough and generous. And I also learned that no fairer place for a demand of life and even the elusive happiness there, I assure you, it is always possible.

Follows the creation of a stage play adaptation of "Moby Dick".

Christmas Night. A man, a serial killer gets out in order to search another victim. The thoughts could be our own but the end is unpredictable.

When almost everyone in their senses (or in their powers to do so so) has left a Western European Capital of millions of people under the threat of a colliding commet, a bar stays open in defyance. Two lovers are too self absorbed but not so much so that between drinks they cannot realise the barmen's infatuation with the lost girl who thinks she's just his last plaything and keeps playing jukebox songs (American/French-Italian/American) to that effect.

A largely plotless, fado-scored journey through the gloomy cobblestone streets, zombie bars, and fetid basements of a sordid harbor town populated by German-speaking sots and Portuguese guest workers. An unhappy young couple, Leni and Anton, quarrel and split separately into the rat’s ass of the evening. Everyone is looking for love, but no one finds any—although Leni does pick up a trick.