Since 2013, Portugal’s leading festival Doclisboa has been a member of the Doc Alliance platform, supplying viewers around the world with the best of local documentary production by means of the DAFilms.com portal. This year is not an exception. While the gates of the festival’s screening halls open for the 12th time from October 16 to 26, DAFilms.com invites you to a virtual cinema screening a selection from the festival’s Portuguese competition of 2013 from Monday, October 12 to Sunday, October 19 for free!
The launch of the Doclisboa festival traditionally opens the great Doc Alliance festival season, further introducing documentaries from the festival programmes of Jihlava IDFF, DOK Leipzig and CPH:DOX in rather short intervals. Among the above mentioned partners, the Portuguese festival can add one big victory to its score though. For two consecutive years, the international award of the Doc Alliance platform; the Doc Alliance Selection Award; went to a Portuguese film. That’s why even those who won’t make it to the Portuguese capital to watch the tribute to Dutch filmmaker Johan van der Keuken or the innovative curatorial programme Neorealism and New Realism among others have something to look forward to. The online film showcase of the Doclisboa festival is dedicated to the** best local films of the festival competition of 2013, introducing short, mid-length as well as feature-length films.**
Two diverse forms of short Portuguese documentary are represented by the films Tabatô and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Both of them rely on a metaphoric film language, however, while Tabatô sees the moment of peeking inside the mysterious content of personal space as an arch to set off a series of catastrophic life images, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum sticks to the abstract level, benefiting from the mutual symbolism and symbiosis of the motifs of the sea, time and light.
The mid-length films Ao Lugar de Herbais and Where to Sit at the Dinner Table? can mediate the wide range of forms and themes of local documentary to the viewers as well. Whereas the former turns back to the past to capture the creative and lonely life of writer Marie Gabriela Llansol with lyricism and nostalgia, the latter voices a strong criticism of the modern capitalist system, making a surprising connection with imaginary images of modern cannibalistic rituals.
Portugal’s feature-length documentaries, too, focus both on the past and the present. Cara a Cara tells the story of a specific group of the Portuguese society; the Forcados bullfighters whose history goes back to the early 19th century. Vida Activa, on the other hand, explores the pure present of the local social context, following the workings of a state programme focused on the education of the working class. What place does work take in the lives of these people? Can education really change their future?
Whether in Lisbon’s screening halls or in the comfort of your home online cinema, don’t forget to celebrate the start of the 12th Doclisboa festival with DAFilms.com!
DAFilms.com is powered by Doc Alliance, a creative partnership of 7 key European documentary film festivals. Our aim is to advance the documentary genre, support its diversity and promote quality creative documentary films.
