Historic Centre
Four voices and their visions of Guimarães, cradle city of the Portuguese nation and European Capital of Culture in 2012.
Casts & Crew
Ilkka Koivula
Ventura
Valdemar Santos
Henriqueta Oliveira
Ricardo Trêpa
Manuel Silva
Amandio Martins
Pedro Santos
Filomena Gigante
Also Directed by Aki Kaurismäki
Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.
Koistinen is a sad sack, a man without affect or friends. He's a night-watchman in Helsinki with ideas of starting his own business, but nothing to go with those intentions. He sometimes talks a bit with a woman who runs a snack trailer near his work. Out of the blue, a young sophisticated blonde woman attaches herself to Koistinen. He thinks of her as his girlfriend, he takes her on her rounds.
Marcel Marx, a former bohemian and struggling author, has given up his literary ambitions and relocated to the port city Le Havre. He leads a simple life based around his wife Arletty, his favourite bar and his not too profitable profession as a shoeshiner. As Arletty suddenly becomes seriously ill, Marcel's path crosses with an underage illegal immigrant from Africa, who needs Marcel's help to hide from the police.
Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.
Taisto Kasurinen is a Finnish coal miner whose father has just committed suicide and who is framed for a crime he did not commit. In jail, he starts to dream about leaving the country and starting a new life. He escapes from prison but things don't go as planned...
A documentary film about a tour of three Finnish rock bands around Saimaa lake system in a steam boat in 1981. The bands (Juice Leskinen Slam, Eppu Normaali and Hassisen Kone) are shown playing songs in their gigs and, in between, the members give intimate interviews or just act plain silly and have a good time.
A collection of short films and music videos by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, featuring the Leningrad Cowboys
Life of a member of the rock band Leningrad Cowboys from birth to moving away from home.
Workers of a foundry eat their lunch and watch Lumiére brothers film Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895).
Part of the collective film Visions of Europe that celebrates the creation of European Union.
Also Directed by Víctor Erice
Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.
Los desafíos presents three separate stories that are linked by an American presence in Spain in the 1960s, with Dean Selmier playing the role of the American male in all three.
Relationships and multiple influences between two great directors of modern cinema.
This film project was made in 1996 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the cinema.
A new feature film by Victor Erice.
In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day.
Also Directed by Manoel de Oliveira
Don Quixote, Luís de Camões, Camilo Castelo Branco and Teixeira de Pascoaes meet in an eternal garden in the middle of a modern city and talk about life.
An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.
Manoel de Oliveira's final work revisits one of his earliest films and celebrates a century of industrialization in Portugal.
Macário spends an entire train journey to the Algarve talking to a woman he does not know about the trials and tribulations of his love life: straight after starting his first job as a book keeper at his Uncle Francisco's shop in Lisbon he falls madly in love with a young blonde, who lives across the road. No sooner does he meet her than he straightaway wants to marry her. His uncle, totally opposed to the match, fires him and kicks him out of the house. Macário departs for Cape Verde where he makes his fortune. When he finally wins his uncle’s approval to marry his beloved, he discovers the “singularity” of his fiancée’s character.
A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.
Thirteen filmmakers talk about Henri Langlois and their relationship with him.
Luciano, fresh out of jail, was taken by his brother, Flórido, to serve in the home of wealthy Alfreda. He was surprised when she told him that her greatest desire was to see the Virgin Mary. Now comes this rich land owner with her sublime pretensions. Isn't it enough for her to have an Aston Martin and a Jaguar in the garage and ten different dresses per season? It was all professor Heschel's fault. Or someone else's. Anyway, to go beyond the promise is heresy. Alfreda said that she wouldn't rest until she saw the Virgin and made her some questions. Filipe Quinta, the Forger, says he has a solution. Meanwhile, Bahia, her husband, listens do music.
In a mental institution the patients see themselves as people like Jesus, Lázaro, Marta, Maria, Adão, Eve, Sonia, Raskolnikov, Aliosha e Ivan Karamasov, a Philosopher, a Profet, Santa Teresa d'Avila, reciting the Divine Comedy.
The painter António Cruz wanders around the city of Porto painting what he sees: old and modern buildings, people arriving and leaving work in the factories, children playing. The impressionist realism of Cruz’s drawings dissolves into Oliveira’s vision of Porto, which at the same time portrays the painter and his work.
The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.
Also Directed by Pedro Costa
A participant in a coup d'état by young commissioned officers, Ventura loses his way within the woods. Eventually, Ventura is admitted into a mental hospital where he has conversations with "ghosts" of the past in the hospital's elevator.
Pedro Costa's segment from the Jeonju film "Memories".
Previously focused on Asian directors, “Jeonju Digital Project 2007” takes a look at Europe. The Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, the German filmmaker Harun Farocki, and the French filmmaker Eugène Green participated in this project.
Undaunted by a commission to make a film about his mentors and aesthetic exemplars, the filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Costa records with great sensitivity and insight the exacting process by which the two re-edit their film Sicilia!, discussing and arguing over each cut and its effect. Incorporating comments about the influence of figures as diverse as Chaplin and Eisenstein, about the ethical and aesthetic implications of film technique and such matters as rhythm, sound mixing, and acting. The film becomes a tour de force, immersing us in the mysteries of cinema as practiced by some of its greatest creators. Costa calls the film both his first comedy and his first love story.
Pedro Costa's segment from "O Estado do Mundo".
An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.
Pedro Costa's first short film.
A short film showing a rehearsal and live performance by Jeanne Balibar. Costa would go on to make a feature-length documentary with the same title and subject matter in 2009.
Pedro Costa's 2006 installation Little Boy Male, Little Girl Female is made up of additional footage from In Vanda's Room and Colossal Youth. Interior and exterior spaces in Fountainhas are set side by side. Editing the images is left up to the viewer.