Joana Carvalho
The film is liberally inspired by the period when Eça de Queiroz was Portuguese Consul to Cuba, when still a Spanish colony. Eça de Queiroz struggles against local authorities in his defence of Chinese workers, brought to the sugar plantations by greedy middle-men and exploited as slaves. Two parallel stories unfold: that of a Chinese girl Eça de Queiroz saves from the clutches of one of the island’s most powerful slave owners, and that of a romance involving a young American woman on holiday in Havana.
A kino-investigation about spectatorship, a continuous conversation between different kinds of spectators: which one is more cinema: Citizen Kane on a mobile phone or a football game projected in a cinema theatre? What is the cinema of uncertainty? How many kinds of amazement exist? Does fear and belief precede amazement? What are the rights and duties of the spectator? Is the essay film a manifesto against voyeurism? Should spectators be paid? What amazes the spectator of this day and age?
