UTOPIA - 10TH UK PORTUGUESE FILM FESTIVAL

OTHER VOICES - NEW PERSPECTIVES

9 - 10 MAY 2019 / 30 NOV - 9 DEC 2019

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Utopia Festival celebrates a decade as the showcase for Portuguese spoken film in the UK. This autumn, Julião Sarmento, Solveig Nordlund, Pedro Neves and Ricardo Vieira Lisboa will all be attending the festival to discuss their work. The tagline Other Voices - New Perspectives reflects an eclectic programme, wide-ranging in its selection of innovative Portuguese moving image. The season opens with João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora’s The Dead and the Others, which takes us on a journey through the Amazon rainforest and serves as the pretext for a debate with the authors of the recently launched book Spirit of the Amazon: The Indigenous Tribes of the Xingu, experts Sue and Patrick Cunningham. The Portuguese Audiovisual essay will be in the spotlight with two sessions, one on new talent and the other focused on the work of veteran experimentalist Ricardo Vieira Lisboa, with the presence of the director. The environment will again take centre stage with Pedro Neves’ tale of displacement and urban sustainability Tarrafal, followed by a Q&A with the director. After this, the festival will turn to two days on the topic of censorship in Portuguese contemporary image, with several presentations and debates with international specialists and the screening of José Filipe Costa’s Pleasure, Comrades!, a film which, forty five years since the Portuguese revolution, finally sheds light on the sexual politics around this major political event, together with a unique look on the censored memories of colonialism, in the shape of short film Granny (Muidumbe) by Raquel Schefer. Crowning this two-day bill is a screening of Julião Sarmento’s groundbreaking films, rounded off by a conversation with the artist. Solveig Nordlund’s sci-fi films Low-Flying Aircraft and Journey to Orion, both based on works by J.G Ballard, will be screened in Scotland, with the presence of the director. And previously, in the spring, the festival held an event on the relationship between film practice and theory, with a conference and the screening of three films: Apparition (with the presence of renowned film-maker and producer Fernando Vendrell); an insight into the Brazilian justice system, with the compelling The Case of J., by José Filipe Costa (also with the presence of the director); and an earlier focus on sustainability and the environment, with João Mário Grilo’s Your Land. The festival will also continue its work with schools, with one free short film session plus debate for teenage audiences. There’s little time to celebrate the milestone of reaching a decade, as we continue our journey trying to showcase the best and most compelling in Portuguese film and audiovisual production, and attempt to steer the debate around Portuguese-spoken cinema in the UK.

SAT 30 NOV 12h00 Room B15, Birkbeck, University of London. The Dead and the Others (12A*) + talk with Amazon indigenous groups specialist Sue Cunningham and author Patrick Cunningham. Free. Click here to reserve your seat. A Certain Regard Jury Prize winner at Cannes Film Festival. Special Jury Award at Mar Del Plata Film Festival. There are no spirits or snakes tonight and the forest around the village is quiet. Fifteen-year-old Ihjãc has been having nightmares since he lost his father. He is an indigenous Krahô from the north of Brazil. Ihjãc walks into darkness, his sweaty body moving with fright. A distant chant comes through the palm trees. His father’s voice calls him to the waterfall: it’s time to organise the funerary feast so that his spirit can depart to the village of the dead. The mourning must cease. To escape his duties, including the key ritual of becoming a shaman, Ihjãc runs away to the city. Far from his people and culture, he faces the hard reality of surviving as an indigenous young man in contemporary Brazil. Portugal/Brazil 2018 Dir João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora 114’.

SAT 30 NOV 15h00 Room B15, Birkbeck, University of London. New Portuguese Audiovisual Essays (12A*) presented by Catherine Grant. Free. Click here to reserve your seat. Exploring the possibilities of the audiovisual essay, this group of films expresses a string of very personal views on film history. Some of these survey, while others celebrate, the filmic roles of intimacy, work, politics, the female gaze, dance, comedy, fear and the death of cinema itself. They take risks while blending different materials or trying to say something very personal through film. An example of creative and engaged film writing, the product of the dynamic film lab at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. All works have been made under the tutorship of lecturer and film critic Luís Mendonça, at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.

Delphine Aprisionada Portugal 2017 Dir Ricardo Pinto de Magalhães 5'59''. Jacarépaguá Portugal 2017 Dir Maria Ganem 5'30''. We All Die as A Work in Progress Portugal 2017 Dir João Costa 11'19''. Young Mr. Lincoln por Eisenstein Portugal 2017 Dir Guilherme Rodriguez 6'05". O cinema que vê Portugal 2016 Dir Beatriz Saraiva 3'43". The (Im)perfect Human Portugal 2016 Dir Ana Margarida Gil 8'42''. Swans With Shoes Portugal 2016 Dir Magda Caetano de Melo 6'27''. Hong Sang-soo: Sorry for Smoking Portugal 2016 Dir Nuno Gonçalves 5'07''. O Pulo do Lobo Portugal 2016 Dir Tamara González 6'32''.

SAT 30 NOV 16h15 Room B15, Birkbeck, University of London. Haptic Films: video essays (15*) UK Première + Q&A with director Ricardo Vieira Lisboa. Free. Click here to reserve your seat. In Ricardo Vieira Lisboa’s own words: ´In this short film programme there are eleven videos created over the last six years. They explore, among other issues, the viewer/critic's point of view, as well as the haptic quality of filmic materials (to what extent is film transformed, in the digital age, into the subject of an invasive touch that disturbs, re-configures and re-signifies cinema itself?). These are essay films that are mostly composed of pre-existing images and sounds that present brief analyses on the placement of these moving images within cinema history, within their filmmaker's history or simply within history. From Raoul Walsh to Terrence Davies, including the Portuguese silent director Reinaldo Ferreira and painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, there is still room for a small tribute to Stan Brakhage, some episodes from the series Quote-action, and an almost unbearable never-ending super-cut.`Blue Cigarette, 2017 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 2’. Le métro, Vieira da Silva, 2016 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 8’. Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration, 2016 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 9'. A pussy by the window - 2017-2019, 7' (video-essay). Cita-acção #3: Guided Tour, 2018 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 2’. Cita-acção #1: Back and Forth, 2018 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 3'. Cita-acção #6: fucking each other, 2018 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 2’. Cita-acção #13: The delicate movement of the derrière, 2019 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 2’. Reinaldo's Motifs, 2018 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 9’. Whiskey with Milk, 2013 Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 5’. Volleyball Holiday 2.0, 2017-2019, Dir Ricardo Vieira Lisboa 10’.

MON 02 DEC 18h30 Royal Academy of Arts, The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre. Tarrafal (12A*) UK Première + Q&A with Pedro Neves. Part of the Eco-Visionaries Events Programme. Tickets can be booked here (£15, £9). Tarrafal is a surprising journey into what was once one of Porto’s most problematic neighbourhoods, famous for its drug dealing and raft of social problems. Porto is the second largest city of Portugal and, in Tarrafal, Pedro Neves questions the adequacy of city planners in handling this and other deeply deprived communities. What was a typical low-cost dormitory has now been conquered by nature, with trees and shrubs growing everywhere, out of control. When Tarrafal’s community was transplanted to other parts of the city, nature started to take over, turning the place into a living museum of city development failures, full of the ghostly memories of those who had lived and, surprisingly, may have been happy there. While Tarrafal opens the door to questioning city planning, it also relays the stories of those few who have resisted and stayed behind. The image of life against the odds inside the ruins of a failed urban idea. Portugal 2016 Dir Pedro Neves 96’.

WED 04 DEC 18h00

Nash Lecture Theatre (K2.31), King’s College London. A Pleasure, Comrades! + Granny (Muidumbe) (12A*) + Introduction by Raquel Schefer. Free. Click here to reserve your seat. A Pleasure, Comrades! (12A*). In competition at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival and the Locarno Film Festival. 1975, rural Portugal. In the wake of the Carnation Revolution, the country and most of its people are in the process of re-organising themselves in a collective effort that sparks the interest of foreigners and expats who share the ideals of the revolution. Newcomers start to volunteer at the recently formed co-ops, offering literacy, health and sex education. Drawing from the testimonies of those who lived through this period, A Pleasure, Comrades! travels in time to give centre stage to an older generation bravely and joyfully re-enacting the social and sexual interactions of a time when most women were still embarrassed to stand naked in front of their husbands. Eight years after his previous feature, Red Line, José Filipe Costa surprises with a comical and charming docudrama of storytelling inventiveness. Long live the proletariat, long live the sexual revolution! ´The lingering illiteracy, patriarchal power relations and sexual taboos of post-dictatorship Portugal are laid bare in this humorous and sex-positive docudrama with a feminist soul´, BFI London Film Festival 2019. Portugal 2019 Dir José Filipe Costa 105’. Granny (Muidumbe) (12A*). Mozambique, the 1960s, just before the start of the war, the portrait of a colonial family. A sequence of archive clips recorded by Raquel Schefer’s grandfather, a former colonial administrator, is the starting point for an experimental documentary on the history of the Portuguese decolonisation and its memory. Double memory or memory split into two: the lived and descriptive memory of the colonisers (their texts and images) versus the fictive memory of their descendants. The film is Raquel Schefer’s attempt to represent her indirect memories of Mozambique. Portugal 2009 Dir Raquel Schefer 11’.

THU 05 DEC 19h00 Red Lecture Theatre, Summerhall, Edinburgh. Low Flying Aircraft + Journey to Orion (12A*) + Q&A with director Solveig Nordlund. Two film adaptations of stories by major writer J. G. Ballard. Free. Click here to reserve your seat. Low Flying Aircraft (12A*). In the near future, the human race is facing extinction. For some reason, women can no longer get pregnant. The few who achieve it only generate mutants that are immediately eliminated by the authorities. Judite Foster is fertile: she has been pregnant six times. But each time, the mandatory pregnancy tests showed that Judite was carrying a mutant and she was forced to abort. Now that she is pregnant again, she decides to run away to an abandoned hotel with her husband André, where an enigmatic and unpredictable Dr. Gould will look after her. This film was shot in a famous Portuguese tourist resort, Torralta, in Tróia which soon after was demolished, a ghostly memory preserved. Portugal 2002 Dir Solveig Nordlund 80’. In partnership with Edinburgh University and MotelX. Journey to Orion (12A*). Solveig Nordlund’s take on JG Ballard's Thirteen to Centaurus, which won a prize at the Bilbao Festival and was entirely shot aboard a ferry travelling between Stockholm and Helsinki. Sweden 1986 Dir Solveig Nordlund 17’.

FRI 06 DEC 18h00 Bush House Lecture Theatre One, King’s College London. Revolution and Subversion in Portuguese Video-Art. Early works by Julião Sarmento (15*). Free. Click here to reserve your seat. We must consider the revolutionary character of the explicitly erotic images produced by a young Julião Sarmento against the context of Portuguese Salazarism, which lasted 48 years and only ended with the carnation revolution of 1974. The political repression enacted by the regime had inflicted a suffocating morality at the service of the most conservative poles of Portuguese society. Sarmento's experimental films openly oppose state repression and profound cultural conservatism against everything that is explicitly erotic. For this reason, as it was being produced, much of Sarmento's work could be conceived of as dissident, since it articulated sexual pleasure with a desire for knowledge. Among the peculiarities of an artistic research placing him in the avant-garde tendency of cinema-art, are the questions raised around counterculture and libertarianism. In this regard, it is significant Sarmento's Super 8, anti-diegetic and dilatational series of film works, directly subsidiary to the anti-cinema of an Andy Warhol. What Sarmento seems to have retained from his dissident appraisals of Sade, Bataille, etc, and the underground cinematic vagabondages of Warhol, Brakhage, Snow, Mekas and Smith, is a real fascination with the subversive. Legs (15*). Fixed frame take centered on the bare pubis of a female body. A slow and sensual alternation of forward and backward leg movement repeats indefinitely. Portugal 1975 Dir Julião Sarmento 3´45´´. Copies (15*). Two naked women face each other while replicating self-directed gestures and caresses. At the end, the director steps out of his voyeuristic shadow to turn his hand to playing the exhibitionist. Portugal 1976 Dir Julião Sarmento 14´23´´. Faces (15*). Close-up of a continuous kiss between two women, centered on their mouths and the movement of their tongues. Portugal 1976 Dir Julião Sarmento 44´22´´. Films from the collection Van Abbermuseum with special thanks to the artist.

FRI 06 DEC 19h15 Bush House Lecture Theatre One, King’s College London. Julião Sarmento in conversation. Free. Click here to reserve your seat. Conversation, chaired by Bruno Marques and Érica Faleiro Rodrigues, with major Portuguese artist Julião Sarmento. This talk will address the early work on show as a way to understanding Sarmento’s decades-long oeuvre.

MON 09 DEC14h00 St. John Bosco, Parkham St, Battersea. Insanium (12A*) + Q&A with director Rui Pedro Sousa. Winner of short film of the year at CinEuphoria. Two young brothers find a dead body while walking through the forest. This discovery will trigger a chain of events that will change their lives forever. For a generation captivated by series such as Stranger Things, this screening, and the ensuing conversation with the director, will offer a younger audience a glimpse of how professionals working in the genre made a start in the industry as well as an opportunity to ask questions and gain an insight into the filmmaking process. Portugal/UK 2018 Dir Rui Pedro Sousa 18’. In partnership with MotelX. Entry by invitation only. * Locally Classified. Films are in Portuguese with English subtitles.

VENUES

Birkbeck, University of London 43 Gordon Square WC1H OP +44 (0) 20 7631 6000

Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House, Piccadilly W1J 0BD +44 (0) 207 300 5841

Nash Lecture Theatre, (K 2.31) King’s College London Strand campus WC2R 2LS +44 (0) 207 836 5454

Bush House Lecture Theatre One, King’s College London 30, Aldwych WC2R 1ES +44 (0)20 7848 1700

Red Lecture Theatre, Summerhall 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh EH9 1PL +44 (0) 131 226 0002

St. John Bosco Parkham St, Battersea SW11 3DQ +44 (0) 207 924 8310

For press enquiries, please contact:

Fernanda Franco M: +44 (0) 7939 941 831 E: press@filmville.org

For more information about the films, tickets and festival guests, visit:

http://www.utopiafestival.org.uk/

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FACEBOOK FilmvilleUKPortugueseFilmFestival

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NOTES TO EDITOR:

Filmville was founded in 2007 with the aim of curating and promoting cinema and moving image works from Portuguese speaking countries and cultures in the UK. Since 2010, Filmville has programmed the annual UK Portuguese Film Festival, working with institutions such as the Barbican Arts Centre, the ICA, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Institut français, the Tricycle Theatre, The Picture House and the Royal Academy of Arts. Filmville is run by Érica Faleiro Rodrigues, with external help from freelancers and key institutions.

With special thanks to Julião Sarmento