Vera is a singer in her thirties; she is back in Lisbon for the final performance of her concert tour. The heat and beauty of Lisbon makes one want to be happy. Pablo, the companion she selected from among the many who answered her questionnaire, helps her through the sleepless nights. He has no...
The film relates the painful ending of a love story binding an over-30-year-old woman and a North African, and the beginning and end of a relationship she also has with an “established” journalist. The stories illustrate the absolute claim of a woman who can understand love only in terms of...
An aristocratic Sicilian family living in the 1950s. Count Villafratti has sex one night with his nymphomaniac daughter because he thinks she is his wife.
Maria works in a German umbrella factory as the foreman of the production sector. João Lucas has given up on living a normal life and practically lives in bed, in the midst of green plants. His father expressly desired that his son film this eccentric daily life in 8 mm format. Maria’s wages are...
Gothic film in a monastery, where sensual monks murder the children they receive, with images of fantastic, painted from the author own painting and also from the Hammer films and the Saxon plastic tradition of romanticism.
A look at the urban society of the seventies. The story of Marta a young and pretty girl, who leaves her husband to search for her true identity. She doesn't quite know what she wants, but at least she knows what she's escaping from. Soon she encounters financial difficulties and finds herself...
The film of a performance of a selection of cabaret comedy sketches by Karl Valentin, with Jorge Silva Melo as stage director. The show was a complete success and has become almost legendary. Solveig Nordlund shot it, adding some more sketches that weren’t included on the show.
Ana is a young Portuguese girl who lives with her grandmother. Through their relationship, we are witness to the Cycle of Life: Grandmother takes care of granddaughter until granddaughter is obliged to do same for grandmother. The scenes between the two protagonists are counterpointed with...
Alex is a famous singer who lives in a big mansion. One quiet night, a hooded stranger comes into his home, shoots the butler and then takes the mask out. Surprisingly, it's a woman. At the beginning she just want to have dinner with him.
Three homeless teenage rejects struggle to survive together. Of them, Andreia is pregnant, while Pedro and Ricardo hustle, steal and are exploited by a pornographer.
A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.
Based on a the short story "Low Flying Aircraft" by J.G. Ballard and set in a near future where humans are dying breed. Judite and André flee to a semi-abandoned apartment complex to protect their mutant child from certain death.
“The artist, in his movement towards the ideal, upsets the stability of any one society. Society aspires to achieve stability; the artist aims for infinity. That is the artist’s responsibility and the spiritual sacrifice demanded of him.” Rui Chafes, O Perfume das Buganvílias, 2012 (19).
Ambulatory history, freely inspired by Georg Büchner's biography (1813-37) and the reasons that led him first to political intervention and then to strict isolation. With students of unidentified present time (1968? 1970?), the themes developed, in Büchner, are triggered by the publication of...
Madeleine is with her lover, Jean-Paul, when her husband arrives home and catches the two together. Madeleine kills her husband and tells Jean-Paul to flee before the police arrive. After Jean-Paul drives away, he picks up a hitchhiker. When the car, stolen by the hitchhiker, explodes, police...
Two film directors and a writer are in Portugal for an expedition through various images, moments from the history of Western allegorical representation. The writer is Jean-Louis Schefer, and this tale encapsulates his life’s mission.
Director Jorge Silva Melo has developed a viable, though highly intellectual mystery story about the world of art and culture and murder in this somewhat theatrical presentation. When German artist Bernd Hoffmann (Michael König) arrives in Lisbon to oversee the installation of his paintings in a...
"Essay on the Military and the Power", a phrase that also belongs to the title of "Gestures & Fragments", sums up the spirit of the film, based on three points of view on the same theme: Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho and Eduardo Lourenço, in their own roles, and the one played by Robert Kramer, as an...
