A hundred letters written by Portuguese women during the Salazar dictatorship were found by chance in a second-hand bookshop. By confronting today the women who wrote these letters with the ghosts of the past, and revealing important archive material, Letters to a Dictatorship takes us on an in-depth journey through the obscurantism that dominated Portugal for more than 50 years.
Resonating Surfaces (2006)
Resonating Surfaces is triple portrait, of a city, a woman and an attitude to life. For the personal story of Suely Rolnik, who is a Brazilian psychoanalyst currently living in São Paulo, involves the Brazilian dictatorship of the sixties as well as the Parisian intellectual climate surrounding Deleuze and Guattari in the seventies. The film is woven through by different themes: the other and the relation to otherness, the connection between body and power, the voice and, ultimately, the micropolitics of desire and of resistance.
Dual View (2023)
"Dual View" is a film that follows the lives of two young individuals, Tomás and Samot, with different routines and perspectives. Tomás is a worker in a bakery, finding motivation in his job and enjoying leisure moments like walking with his pig and helping a needy friend. Meanwhile, Samot is a constantly tardy university student, disheartened by his classes and feeling isolated in his academic environment. The film explores the duality of their lives, showcasing their ups and downs, social interactions, and reflections on the past and future. In the end, faced with the question of returning to high school or continuing on their current paths, both characters reflect on their choices and experiences, revealing their desires and perspectives for the future.
Born to Fight (1956)
A showcase of bullfighting in Portugal, explaining how the country's version of the sport differs from those in Spain and Latin America and helps define the national character. After showing the training techniques for the bulls and horses, a bullfight is presented.
The Skinny Alejandra (1994)
A conversation between the director of this film, Carmen Castillo and Marcia Merino, AKA La Flaca Alejandra who was one of the collaborators of Pinochet's secret police (the DINA) after being tortured by them. It was Merino who betrayed Castillo, who lost her new born child after being tortured. Almost twenty years later, Carmen Castillo returns to Chile after her exile to film this documentary, during a time in which Marcia Merino, on the court of justice, decided to give the names of her old bosses who worked with her on the DINA.
In the Interstices of Reality or The Cinema of António de Macedo (2016)
He was the most prolific within the New Portuguese Cinema generation. He would try western spaghetti, esoteric allegory, supernatural, and science-fiction. Without state subsidies, he would quit filmmaking in the 1990s. Who remembers António de Macedo?
The Blow: Chronicle of a Conspiracy (2006)
Argentina, 1973. The return of democracy marks the beginning of a new countdown to the next coup d'état: on March 24, 1976, the worst dictatorship in Argentine history is installed, the bitter fruit of a plot carefully hatched for months.
Inês (1974)
Inês Etienne Romeu was an opponent to the Brazilian's dictatorship. She was kidnapped, tortured and raped in jail, where she stayed for almost 100 days. She was later sentenced to life imprisonment. She stayed ten years in prison, from 1971 to 1979. Delphine Seyrig directed this film in 1974, when Inês was still in prison, protesting against this imprisonment and in support to Inês.
Fascism in Colour (2006)
After the World War I, Mussolini's perspective on life is severely altered; once a willful socialist reformer, now obsessed with the idea of power, he founds the National Fascist Party in 1921 and assumes political power in 1922, becoming the Duce, dictator of Italy. His success encourages Hitler to take power in Germany in 1933, opening the dark road to World War II. (Originally released as a two-part miniseries. Includes colorized archival footage.)
Conversations with Turiansky (2019)
Biographical portrait of the labor movement and left wing movement in Uruguay, "Conversations with Turiansky" combines two stories. The first portrays the son of immigrants, the engineer passionate about the mystery of electricity, the man in love, the movie buff. The other places the protagonist in his time: union struggles, the advance of authoritarianism, prison and the challenges of the present. In both are present the lucidity, commitment, discreet tenderness and humor of Wladimir Turiansky.
Belarus: An Ordinary Dictatorship (2018)
It’s the last dictatorship of Europe, caught in a Soviet time-warp, where the secret police is still called the KGB and the president rules by fear. Disappearances, political assassinations, waves of repression and mass arrests are all regular occurances. But while half of Belarus moves closer to Russia, the other half is trying to resist…
St. Joseph Fort: Principality of Pontinha (2014)
St. Joseph Fort: Principality of Pontinha, the diamond that illuminates the Atlantic Pearl.
Wild Portugal (2020)
Picture a land of boulder-strewn shorelines, isolated mountaintops, and golden prairies. Here, packs of wolves stalk herds of ancient mustangs and tree-climbing carnivores keep entire forests on edge. Meanwhile, high above the crashing surf, a pair of storks attempts to raise a family on a narrow ledge atop a towering cliff. EUROPE'S WILD WEST is a place where survival is reserved for those with the keenest senses... and the quickest draw.
25 Anos de Censurados (2015)
Documentary on the 25 years of the extinct Portuguese Punk Rock band Censurados.
Of Another Place (NaN)
On a Summer afternoon, Pedro packs the last few boxes before having to leave his apartment in New York. 12 years ago, Pedro and Ana had arrived in America from Portugal, in search of a dream. Now, Ana's voice describes, from the other side of the ocean, that same country to which they are returning. As the rooms are emptied, Pedro bids farewell to one life, welcoming another. But the dream that brought him will remain forever in the city that never sleeps, awaiting his return.
Paula Rego: Telling Tales (2009)
Born in Portugal, Paula Rego is one of Britain's leading artists. This intimate film follows the artist from her retrospective in Madrid to the privacy of her studio in London while she talks with humor and candor about her compulsion to produce works that, though accessible, deal with the most private themes.