September is a special month. In this month, the Wednesdays are about Films at the Table, with PORTO FEMME SYNCRHONIZATION.

This event intends to be a pre-festival, preparing the city for the 3rd edition of PORTO FEMME INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, which takes place from the 6th to the 10th of October.

In the four sessions, which will take place on the 2nd, 16th, 23rd and 30th of September at 9 pm, we present films that have been in competition since the first edition and that return for the first time since they were screened at the festival, at the Maus Hábitos cinema room.

In each session, a special guest will be present.

Stay tuned for the program that will be out soon.

We count on your presence to come and celebrate the cinema with us!

Program

LITORAL OESTE. 9

Portugal | 09:34 | 2020

Direction: Susana Ramalho Marques

Sinopsis 

Litoral Oeste, 9 is a house, ours. In one of the most bizarre beginnings of the year in memory, it was inhabited like never before for an entire spring. A portrait of a time of confinement, which ends up integrating the three characters who were part of it. In the foreground, the mother. The spaces, the Zorro. Litoral Oeste, 9 is a love letter, in the form of a subjective shot of the third character, the director.

FUTURE MEMORIES

Portugal | 06:52 | 2020

Direction: Ana Carvalho

Synopsis

"I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten." - Sans Soleil (1983), de Chris Marker

“Memórias do futuro” (2020) is a video art piece alluding to the pandemic times that are running. Using old stock-footage, a piece about current times is created with visual content that is not related to the present. The audience assimilates the old content, which was not filmed in pandemic times, with the present that we live in, as these same images allude to the current dystopian reality. The memories are from other times but for the audience they are the future memories that we will have from this tragic time. “Memorias do futuro” is an audiovisual exercise on creating a memory that does not yet exist.

NOTHING CAN STOP US FROM LOVING

France, Georgia, Russia, Germany | 01:00 | 2020

Direction: Yang ge

Synopsis

Nothing can stop us from loving.

OS ASQUEROSOS

Portugal | 8:40 | 2020

Direction: Teresa Santos

Synopsis

“Os Asquerosos” is a short non-verbal essay on loneliness. a short film inspired by the book “Los Asquerosos” by Santiago Lorenzo: “Por la noche, según me contó al día siguiente, clavó su destornillador en la tierra de la parra. Lo regó, no supo para qué. "Tanta gloria lleves como paz has traído", dijo al aire, y cenó dos peras en vez de una a modo de homenaje y despedida.”

ONE FOR THE SORROW

Germany | 00:41’ | 2020

Direction: Anna Benner

Synopsis

Watching the birds from my window as the world is on pause and a nursery rhyme that goes up and down like the mood swings that come with the world in crisis.

In the first couple of weeks (months? who knows? time is no longer a concept that we recognize) of the lockdown I had huge trouble concentrating on anything creative. The only thing that I could do was drawing these magpies in a temporary setup in my kitchen, which became a sort of meditation or ritual: If I draw enough frames today, maybe everything will be ok.

STOMACH FLIES

Brazil, Portugal | 01:00 | 2020

Direction: Cybelle Mendes

Synopsis

Experimental film that mixes rotoscoping techniques with digital animation.

The abstraction of movements of arms and hands in confinement - within the frame.

The artificial and the inaccuracy of human life in isolation. There is something in the darkness.

I'LL STAY IN THIS SQUARE

Portugal | 03:16 | 2020

Direction: Joana Caiano  

Synopsis

Due to the Quarantine period the two sisters, Ana Lua Caiano, singer and songwriter, and Joana Caiano, director and video editor, found themselves together in the same house and started producing the video “I'm going to stay in this square”.

PASSING WORDS BY WATER

Portugal | 02:43 | 2020

Direction: Teresa da silva

Synopsis

Silence spreads between thoughts and omissions. And omissions take over and they spread. The water that so often cleans and soothes, reflects, on the surface, the faces of those who approach. In this space of intimacy, where the lips touch the water, the words seedlings can now be pronounced with courage, in a kind of onomatopoeia, what distances and protects from the appreciation of others. In this place of metamorphosis the secrets can float freely because no one will know how to hear. 

Are these onomatopoeic dialogues stupid? Could this metamorphosis of words give a new language to the gesture, so loaded with the semantics of the oral speech? Could orality become more agile and fluid if it was punctuated, here and there, by articulations of unknown words, or by known words that generate meaningless phrases? If we could pass the words through water, they could come back more lucid and clear? They could be articulated with others equally resurgent from water and together to narrow the space that so often separates them from the individual? In this metaphorical action, could emotions experience other possibilities of expression?

THERE’S NO PLACE BESIDE HOME

Brazil, Portugal | 04:15 | 2020

Direction: Inês Oliveira

Synopsis

In 2020, Dorothy is on quarantine. 

Isolation becomes obsessive, forcing it to repeat constant movements and tics, which due to their cyclical nature, turn into an attempt to return to the City of Oz - like a call.

CONTAGION CONTACT

Brazil | 01:02 | 2020 

Direction: Mariana Martins

Synopsis

Contact without tact because with tact it can be contagious.

PONTAS DE VERONIKA

Brazil | 06:15 | 2020

Direction: Karen Furbino

Synopsis

Quantum mechanics explains that the macrocosm would have arisen from nothing, at the same time that it was thought to have presented a conception for the existence of the Universe, it revealed an infinite number of loose ends. In a crack in this theory, the manifested spheres correlate and share social and political effects. In which of the universes are you in?

FINE LINE

Portugal | 04:11 | 2020

Direction: Izabelle Monteiro

Synopsis

The journey of life takes us to so many places, nonexistent and invisible, tasty and bitter, monotonous and strange. The "fine line" in the simple act of coming and going allows for a physical and emotional exchange with the border. The climb becomes the object of overcoming, because it is necessary to reach the obstacles to see it differently and have a new point of view. After all, whenever we walk, we encounter obstacles along that path. I believe that life has this, a courage that emanates in each cell, as well as the wind, the sky, the earth, the stone and the sea. In the rise and fall of life we inhabit the fine line. I ask that you also make the challenge a lover of the border, as I would like to invite you to come with me.

LOOKING FOR PEACOCKS

Portugal |03:45 | 

Direction: Joanna Correia

Synopsis

During the period of confinement, with the need to leave the 49m2 of my apartment in Lisbon, I went out for the first time to walk and came up with a calm that I had never known before. The streets were deserted, I heard only a peculiar and constant noise - peacocks.

This film portrays the search for the source of this sound. In contrast, the images of this trip are accompanied by the noise that comes from our head.

The result of this film can cross several stories, thoughts and concerns, just as it was done.

C O R R E D O R

Portugal | 06:52 | 2020

Direction: Dally Schwart

Synopsis

A landscape corridor, a place to be or to come and go.

5 FILMES DE CRISTINA NADAL - AGAIN - EXPONENTIAL CHAOS - GLITTER GUTTER - HOME CONFINEMENT - THE FLUCTUATING NATURE OF CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES. 

Spain | 3’40’’ | 2020

Direction: Cristina Nadal

Synopsis

'The Fluctuating Nature of the Current Circumstances'

A visual metaphor of the lockdown shot during my confinement in Spain.

'Glitter Gutter'

A quarantine cross-nation creation I made with the poet Fausta Joly. A film that gets into the beat of a Glitter Gutter bar - one filmmaker, one poet, one lens, one screen - can you see them shimmer? 

'Exponential Chaos'

A subjective commentary on the exponential chaos of a global pandemic. The overall aim was to condense lockdown emotions and actions into single-focused frames, to once again echoing the narrative of a world and body in crisis.

'Home Confinement'

A self-portrait I put together in solidarity with those forced to self-isolate when the lockdown started in Italy and Spain. A study in boredom and restlessness in times of lockdown. 

'Again'

A film inspired by my last relationship. Two troubled years of breaking and making ups. Song and words by Tenesha The Wordsmith