THURSDAY 16 DECEMBER 19h00 (GMT)
Free entrance (no need to register in advance). | Exclusive online access in the UK. Please register here.
The film will be introduced byPossidónio Cachapa.
AMOR FATI
Portugal, 2020, 102’
Director: Cláudia Varejão
Amor Fati seeks out parts that complete each other. These are portraits of couples, friends, families, and pets and their owners. They share the intimacy of daily life, habits, beliefs, tastes and even some physical traits. From their faces, from the choreography of their gestures, we unveil the story that binds them. Drawn from everyday life, right before our eyes, the film portrays a chorus of affection and the collective memory of a country, evoking Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium: Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one another’s company? For if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one?
Possidónio Cachapa was born in Évora, where he spent his childhood and youth. He then left for the Azores, a place that cemented his attachment to the sea and land. Cachapa graduated in Portuguese Studies from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 1990.
Following a few projects in journalism and writing for television, he left for Switzerland, where he stayed for six years. There, he started to write his first literary works, O Nylon da Minha Aldeia and Voz Terrível.
Cachapa then returned to Portugal with the goal of dedicating himself to scriptwriting and directing. He won a Literary Creation Bursary from the Ministry of Culture in 1996, which led to the work A Materna Doçura. The work tells the story of Sacha and the consequences of his extreme love for his late mother. It is the portrait of a son’s love for his mother taken to the extreme of how it can be expressed in fully artistic form. Divided into three parts that correspond to three moments in the protagonist’s life, A Materna Doçura crosses several generations in a structure of variation around a single theme.
Possidónio Cachapa’s originality stems from his exploration of new languages - with an emphasis on filmic narrative - without losing touch with the complex and profound architecture of the novel. This convergence gives rise to new ways of approaching the textual fabric.
Cláudia Varejão was born in Porto. She studied directing in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Creativity and Artistic Creation Programme, in partnership with the German Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin and the São Paulo International Film Academy. She also studied photography at AR:CO Art and Communication Centre in Lisbon. She is the author of the short film trilogy Fim-de-semana, Um Dia Frio, and Luz da Manhã. She debuted as a feature director with Ama-San, a portrait of Japanese divers, a film which has collected dozens of prizes internationally. Following this, she directed No Escuro Do Cinema Descalço Os Sapatos, a film intimately following a group of dancers from a dance company. Amor Fati is her latest film, and Lobo e Cão will signal her return to fiction. Her films have been selected and awarded at the most prestigious film festivals, Locarno, Rotterdam, Visions du Reel, Karlovy Vary, Art of the real - Lincoln Center, amongst others. In addition to her work as a director, Varejão also pursues a career as a photographer, and she is also a guest lecturer at AR.CO and Universidade Católica do Porto. Her work in film and photography, documentary or fiction, is always developed in close intimacy with the people she portrays.