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| OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST by Miguel Gomes Opens sucessfully in Brazil. |
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After having been released in France last June, OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST, has one more international release, this time in Brazil.
Miguel Gomes` second feature film continues to reveal its great impact in audiences and the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, refers to OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST as “Portuguese Nashville: Not to be missed” and “Great” adding that the film “isn´t similar to anything the spectator could have ever seen before”.
Other releases already confirmed in Argentina, Paraguay and Chile.
| OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST by Miguel Gomes Released in France with great acclaim. |
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"A light, magical, euphoric work that joyfully mixes truth and fiction. Attention, "A dive into the dancing evenings of deepest Portugal, with an authentically half-way between documentary and fiction film." "Essentially, it's a principle of pleasure but most of all it's the affirmation of an aesthetic and ethic of play and joy, of an art of living and of making films, life and cinema together without confusing themselves!" "A perfume of sweet euphoria floats in this summer escapade, a breeze of freedom which reminds the original cinema of Jacques Rozier. Like an irresistible call for holidays." "For each scene, the director finds inexpected tones and angles." It`s magnificent There are films like this, unique, improbable, miraculous, with a woven time, which would not have to be born, but arrived at existence nevertheless, in a different form. We bow beholding a true masters achievement.
After opening last year`s Director’s Fortnight in Cannes International Film Festival, the film was presented in over 30 film festivals all over the world and won more than ten awards, namely Best Film Award in Valdívia, São Paulo and Buenos Aires, FIPRESCI Award in Vienna, and Silver Lady Harimaguada and José Rivero Award for Best Young Director in Las Palmas Film Festival.
Meanwhile, this opening in France sets the beginning of several others in Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile.
Portuguese pop music invades you, rural rituals and colorful anecdotes unfold while we meet vivacious characters and find a narrative slowly and sneakily emerging, about the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band. Our Beloved Month of August can now be seen in Paris (MK2 Beaubourg, St. André des Arts, 7 Parnassiens, Cinéma des cinéastes), and in Caen, Grenoble, Lyon, Tour, Nantes, Angoulême, Bordeaux, Marseille, Nancy and St. Ouen l’Aumône.
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NE CHANGE RIEN «not like any musical you’ve ever seen before» LA WEEKLY |
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NE CHANGE RIEN, the latest feature film by acclaimed Portuguese director Pedro Costa, is screening at Los Angeles AFI FEST’s final week (October 30th – November 7th) this coming Thursday, November 5th – 10 p.m. at the Mann Chinese Theater 1.
«Only this much is certain: It is an experience.» announces Scott Foundas film editor at LA Weekly, «The result is an acutely perceptive film about the process of artistic creation, composed almost entirely of those moments that other films about performers omit or reduce to crassly compressed montages.»
Read full article here.
The film is headed next to Italy for the Torino Film Festival (13th - 21st of November).
| TEMPS D`IMAGES Festival - FILMS ON ART - Two documentaries in competition: BARTOLOMEU CID DOS SANTOS – THROUGH DEVASTATED LANDS by Jorge Silva Melo MY FRIEND MIKE AT WORK by Fernando Lopes |
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TEMPS D`IMAGES - FILMS ON ART - Two documentaries in competition:
BARTOLOMEU CID DOS SANTOS – THROUGH DEVASTATED LANDS, by Jorge Silva Melo and MY FRIEND MIKE AT WORK, by Fernando Lopes were selected for competition among over 200 films from all around the world.
TEMPS D`IMAGES festival is a multi-disciplinary event, created by channel ARTE France, La Ferme du Buisson and Scène Nationale de Marne-la-vallée, and placed at the forefront of the international artistic scene promoting unique dialogues between cinema and the performing arts.
«(…) I was witness of the secret and risky act when Michael Biberstein made a painting in the so beautiful film O MEU AMIGO MIKE AO TRABALHO of the Portuguese director FERNANDO LOPES (…) it is possible to have inspiring, non-didactic films who either don`t talk to us or already died as it happens in JORGE SILVA MELO film BARTOLOMEU CID DOS SANTOS – THROUGH DEVASTATED LANDS who told me that “there were no artists of the Colonial War, it wasn`t appropriate, evidently” – an idea I did not have before (…)»
Rajele Jain (TEMPS D`IMAGES - FILM AWARDS for FILMS ON ARTprogramming director)
BARTOLOMEU CID DOS SANTOS – THROUGH DEVASTATED LANDS
MY FRIEND MIKE AT WORK
PEDRO COSTA's |
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TATE MODERN, the most prestigious British modern art gallery, is honouring Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa with a complete retrospective of his “risk-taking, beautiful work”, opening today, 25th of September, until the 4th of October 2009.
The magazine SIGHT & SOUND explores through a six-page focus the work of Pedro Costa, proclaiming: “The films of Pedro Costa have reinvented the relationship between film-maker and subject”. Kieron Corless interviews the director while Argentinean critic Quintín charts the development of his unique filming style.
THE GUARDIAN newspaper describes Pedro Costa as the Samuel Beckett of cinema, professing “his career arc is one of the most fascinating in modern cinema” and, as way of conclusion, incites “Go and see Bones – one of the most enigmatic and haunting films of modern European cinema”.
The line-up includes the UK premiere of his highly praised latest film NE CHANGE RIEN, premiered in Cannes ’09, as well as a thorough programme of films that have inspired him, from directors such as Jean Eustache, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Hulliet, and Andy Warhol.
This same week, Costa's auspicious debut, BLOOD (SANGUE), is released on dvd in the UK (by Second Run), soon followed by the publishing of other works next year (by the same Second Run but also by Eureka-Masters of Cinema).
2010 will also mark the release of his entire filmography in North America by the highly reputed CRITERION COLLECTION, veneered by cinephiles everywhere for its outstanding commitment to the art of cinema, a unequivocal celebration of the greatest classic and contemporary films from around the world, made available in the highest standards of technical quality, with in-depth original supplements and lushly stylised art direction.
Besides the British and North American territories, other releases will also follow in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, to name a few…
| LISSABON/WUPPERTAL/LISBOA Unique documentary about groundbreaking German choreographer Pina Bausch |
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Pina Bausch was one of the most brilliant creators in contemporary dance and watching any of her creations on stage was a breathtaking experience.
Only once did Pina Bausch allow someone to get close to her creation process and register it with a camera. The honour was handed to renowned Portuguese filmmaker Fernando Lopes that filmed the developing of “Masurca Fogo”, a play requested by Portuguese Expo 98, accompanying her work between Lisbon and Wuppertal hence giving birth to a documentary entitled Lissabon/Wuppertal/Lisboa.
An exclusive opportunity to witness up close the process of one of modern dance's greatest innovators.
The documentary was broadcast yesterday by RTP2 in Portuguese television and reached an audience of over 107 000 viewers.
"Lisbon, open city, bright and warm, receives Pina Bausch and her Company, Tanztheater Wuppertal. They arrive for a three week residence, accepting the invitation of Festival dos 100 Dias: the creation of Ein Neues Stϋck von Pina Bausch. They arrive with their eyes and ears wide open, their veins well tempered, very attentive to the signs, the glitters, the sounds, the scents
and the emotions that the city suggests to them along the way. Afterwards, with the special
evocations of their own lives, now mingled with the air of Lisbon, it will come that very rare hour
in which all of this and all of the rest, conducted by the geniality of Pina Bausch, will assume a
body of it own, a new soul. That will have the name: “a new play by Pina Bausch”. Or something
else. And that one will be beautiful: MASURCA FOGO." Fernando Lopes
A unique work and one of the grandest films by Fernando Lopes.
A great homage to an even greater artist.
The film is available for the rest of the world. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions!
Portugal, 1998, Color & P&B, Documentary, 35’
UPRISE |
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After premiering at the renowned Locarno Film Festival last year and touring through several film festivals since (from London to Istanbul), the film has just been released in national territory with great acclaim by the press.
Director's Bio-filmography
Born in 1974 in Portugal, Sandro Aguilar studied film at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. In 1998 he founded the production company O Som e a Fúria. His short films have won awards at festivals, such as La Biennale di Venezia, Locarno, Vila do Conde, and have been shown in Rotterdam, Belfort, Montreal, Clermont-Ferrand among others. A ZONA is Sandro Aguilar’s first fiction feature film.
UPRISE [2008] • ARCHIVE [2007] • THE SERPENT [2005] • REMAINS [2002] • IN BETWEEN [2001] •
MOTIONLESS [2000] • CLOSE [1998]
PEDRO COSTA's |
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Acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa will be honoured with a complete retrospective of his “risk-taking, beautiful work” at Tate Modern, London, from the 25th of September until the 4th of October 2009.
The line-up includes the UK premiere of his highly praised new film Ne Change Rien, premiered in Cannes ’09, as well as two programmes of films that have inspired him, from Jean Eustache, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Hulliet, and Andy Warhol.
Just before the opening at Tate Modern, on September 21st, a special screening of his first feature BLOOD (SANGUE), a lushly stylised romantic fable marked with echoes of Nicholas Ray,Robert Bresson and FW Murnau, will take place at the Curzon Soho Cinema,
followed
by a Q&A
between the director and critic Jonathan Romney.
Costa's auspicious debut will be released on dvd in the UK that same day.
Already scheduled for next year is the complete retrospective at the Cineteca de Bologna, Italy.
In the meantime, his latest film Ne Change Rien is to be shown in the New York Film Festival (25th September – 11th October), Viennale (22nd October – 4th November), Los Angeles AFI (30th October – 7th November) and Torino Film Festival (13th – 21st November), to name a few...
NE CHANGE RIEN |
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The unique portrayal of actress Jeanne Balibar as a singer in NE CHANGE RIEN, by Pedro Costa, was considered one of the greatest moments of Cannes Film Festival, with echoes from all over the world, saluting the film for its absolute originality and singularity. A film like no other...
www.pedro-costa.net
Costa’s very beautiful film is a rare chronicle of work and the creative process.
LA Weekly (USA), Scott Foundas
The film I liked the most at the festival.
Fotogramas (Spain), Manu Yáñez
His film doesn’t resemble anything else from this festival.
Libération (France), Philippe Azoury
To film music is a magnificent challenge for a filmmaker, it’s like filming life.
The film documents a battle and the search for freedom.
Il Manifesto (Italy), Cristina Piccino
Cannes has been pretty great so far. Costa has elevated to the sublime, his, is a fantastic and beautiful film.
Light Sensitive (UK), Patrick Z. McGavin
In this film Costa plays with the idea of cinema as music, or the other way around.
We are transfigured, hypnotized, and finally get out of the screening feeling our feet slide a little above the ground.
Bangkok Post (Thailand)
One of the most essential filmmakers of contemporary cinema.
Página 12 (Argentina), Luciano Monteagudo
A subduing and hypnotic approximation to the multiple musical sides of actress Jeanne Balibar.
A film against all conventions and common places of the sub-genre of artists portrait’s.
Otros Cines (Argentina), Diego Batlle
Costa ends up directing that which is, undoubtedly and in all meanings of the world, one of the most beautiful films ever made about music.
And that is no small feat.
Cinética (Brazil), Eduardo Valente
A sublime documentary.
Artforum (UK), Melissa Anderson
Immediately, one of the most beautiful moments of this festival.
Diário de Notícas (Portugal), João Lopes
Filmmaker Pedro Costa has been considered one of the most relevant filmmakers of our times by many:
"I think that Costa is genuinely great.” – Jacques Rivette
"Pedro Costa is one of the world’s greatest filmmakers… Watching Costa’s work gives me the chills; it’s a most mysterious, unusual, and unclassifiable oeuvre, one littered with ghosts of the past and the present.” – Mark Peranson, Cinemascope
and will continue this year to see his work exhibited in the most prestigious institutions and events.
Next month in Madrid - Spain, his oeuvre will be shown at the Filmoteca Española, together with video installations included in the official program of Photo España and a master class at La Casa Encendida. Later this year, November, a complete retrospective will also take place at Tate Modern, London - England, and next year, at the Cineteca de Bologna, Italy.
Furthermore, a book about his work, Cem mil cigarros (One thousand cigarettes) is soon to be published with major contributors such as:
Thom Andersen, Philippe Azoury, Johannes Beringer, Nicole Brenez, Rui Chafes, João Bénard da Costa, Bernard Eisenschitz, Chris Fujiwara, Tag Gallagher, John Gianvito, Jean-Pierre Gorin, António Guerreiro, Shiguéhiko Hasumi, João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, Philippe Lafosse, Jacques Lemière, Dominique Marchais, Adrian Martin, José Neves, João Nisa, Mark Peranson, James Quandt, Jacques Rancière, Andy Rector, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Paolo Spaziani, Luce Vigo, Jeff Wall.
Director`s Filmography (LONG-FEATURES)
OSSOS [1997] • CASA DE LAVA [1994] • O SANGUE [1989]
| BLOOD OF MY BLOOD (Sangue do Meu Sangue) by João Canijo |
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Director João Canijo, a regular presence in Cannes and Venice film festivals, has started pre-production of his latest feature film - BLOOD OF MY BLOOD - set in the suburbs of Lisbon, a suburban family’s apparent peace is disrupted by an unexpected love affair that resonates episodes from the past…
“The brave talent of the director resides in the wisdom
in which he directs the actors towards a performance in extremis.”
CINEMATOGRAFO
Director's Bio-filmography
Born in 1957 in Portugal, João Canijo worked as Assistant Director to Manoel de Oliveira, Wim Wenders, Alain Tanner and Werner Schroeter.
MAL NASCIDA [2007] • NOITE ESCURA [2003] • GANHAR A VIDA [2000] • SAPATOS PRETOS [1997] •
FILHA DA MÃE [1989] • TRÊS MENOS EU [1985]
A film about unconditional love
Director’s statement
«We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.»
William Shakespeare
The Tempest, Act IV, Sc. 1
«The only thing that one and each of us want is being loved without explanations.
We want unconditional love, without giving or receiving explanations.
The deepest of love is the one which needs no reason to be. »
António Lobo Antunes
The above quotation from the writer Lobo Antunes is pertinent for the central drama in the movie: the tragedy of life collides with the unconditional love between mother and daughter, a love without explanations, which needs no reason to exist.
That unconditional love is being tested, but it is never going to be questioned because, as defined by Aristotle, happiness is absolutely final, as it is always chosen for itself and never as mean to some other thing. And, in the context of this movie, all of the mother’s actions have a good purpose: the daughter’s happiness. The daughter’s happiness is the target of all things, is the reason of all the other actions. The daughter’s happiness is always chosen as an end and never as a mean.
Although the movie’s action is on a suburban environment, it’s interest is not in portraying the sordid and stupid violence, but rather tries to understand how the affections and love resist and survive when submerged in that sterile universe. We observe love being threatened by an irremediable circumstance, so we can better understand its essence. In that sense, it is on an ignorant, violent, lacking civilization environment that we can best approach the matter of love. The bigger the emotional aridity of the environment is, the more unquestionable becomes any gesture of love and more unconditional is that love.
This way, the only reason why this is a movie that talks about the barbarism of a society is because, above all, it is a movie about the unconditional love between mother and daughter. It’s in barbarism that this love becomes body, because that relationship of blood could be questioned only in a context of violence. The circumstances allow that gestures that are generally perceived as brutal or treason are considered «normal»: due to the brutal environment and also because there is that unquestioned love, which justifies and redeems any offense. Mother and daughter make the biggest sacrifices, on behalf of that filial liaison, like if the blood that unites them was the only visible facet of hope.
It’s about that hope that we want to talk about.
This movie also intends to be a portrait of suburban life, the life of the majority of the world population on the so called developed countries. The suburban neighbourhoods and their life conditions don’t differ a lot from each other amongst big cities, countries and even continents. Excluding its folkloric facet, life on the suburbs of London or Buenos Aires is not profoundly distinct from life on Amadora. It is on these hopeless places that we best find hope; it is on loveless places that we best find love.
View more about the film
| OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST (Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto) by Miguel Gomes |
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OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST, by Miguel Gomes, one of the most buzzed about films from the Director's Fortnight, in Cannes ‘08, has secured several distribution deals and will soon be released in France, Spain, Brazil and Argentina.
The film has been selected to many festivals since Cannes (from Viennale to Rotterdam, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Munich...) coming out of quite a few with best feature, best young director, jury, audience, Fipresci and critic awards.
The press praises it as “a breath of fresh air” (Le Monde) and “A tantalizing mix of documentary, fiction and everything in between (including musicvideo), Miguel Gomes love song to rural Portugal scores viscerally as well as intellectually.” (Variety) while audiences are swept by its graceful and insightful mixture of fiction and documentary.
The film is shaped by the determination of young director Miguel Gomes that despite a lack of financing and cast dives headlong anyway, into a remote Portuguese mountainside, where August music festivals are under way, and begins filming the townsfolk. The provincial Portuguese pop music invades you, rural rituals and colorful anecdotes unfold while we met vivacious characters and find a narrative slowly and sneakily emerging, about the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band.
Our Beloved Month of August is a travelogue to get lost in, an indigenous film created by tourists. It’s also a window into a fascinating filmmaking process that continues to unravel long after the credits roll. Not to be missed!
Director's Bio-filmography
Miguel Gomes was born in Lisbon in 1972. He studied at the Lisbon Film and Theatre School and between 1996 and 2000 worked as film critic for the Portuguese press. He directed several short films awarded in festivals such as Oberhausen, Belfort and Vila do Conde, and screened at Locarno, Rotterdam, Buenos Aires and Vienna. “The Face You Deserve” (2004) was his first feature film. In 2008, he presented his latest film, “Our Beloved Month of August” in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Festival, which was subsequently selected in more than forty international festivals where he won over a dozen prizes.The Viennale (2008), and Bafici (2009) included retrospectives of his films. He is currently preparing a new feature film, “Aurora”.
PRE-EVOLUTION SOCCER’S ONE MINUTE AFTER A GOLDEN GOAL IN THE MASTER LEAGUE [2003] • KALKITOS [2002] •
THIRTY-ONE MEANS TROUBLE [2001] • A CHRISTMAS INVENTORY [2000] • MEANWHILE [1999]