The spotlight also goes to a very special double bill: Agnès de ci de là Varda, a film by Agnés Varda - one of five episodes, a world premiere - and Peter von Bagh's (President of the Jury) Sodankylä Forever: the Yearning for the First Cinema Experience.

There is also a place for family and chidren at the Docs 4 Kids Workshops for children and a special 3D screening of Cane Toads: the Conquest, by Mark Lewis (29th and 30th of October, 5.45pm at Cinema City Campo Pequeno).

The festival will have many other parallel activities: school groups screenings, daily debates with guest directors, Lisbon Docs - the international financing and co-production forum for documentary film (pitching sessions are free and in english), directing and production workshops, a show of documentaries from the Community of Portuguese Language Countries - DOCTV CPLP - and several parties.

The video library has around 1350 films (submitted to doclisboa) available and opens on October 21st.
From Monday to Friday, from 11 am to 9 pm
Saturdays and Sundays, from 2 pm to 9 pm

Harun Farocki (b. 1944) is a German filmmaker and visual artist, one of the most important today. His works on matters of critical theory and social and political analysis bring to mind "cinema-thought". Farocki uses archive material refering to the minute observation of the mechanisms of capitalism, reality and its representations. He questions the points of view and the transformations induced by media technology and the increasingly more indistinct perceptions between "realities" and "simulations" - and thus he is also a theoretician and media critic. Along with doclisboa's retrospective, this exhibition presents three of his installations, which have been shown, or even co-produced, by some of the most important institutions, such as the Kassel Documenta, the Galerie du Jeu de Paume in Paris or the Bienal de Arte de São Paulo. Schnittstelle/Interface is one of Farocki's best works, a commentary on some of his own films, analysing the question of what it means to work with pre-existing images on the editing table. Watson is Down and Immersion are part of the Serious Games series and come under a vector which Farocki has been working on for 20 years, since the Gulf War: the use of virtual technology for military purposes.

Augusto M. Seabra

Acknowledgements - Goethe-Institut, Culturgest, Jürgen Bock

7 OCT - 6 NOV Galeria Palácio Galveias
Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 7 pm
Saturday and Sunday from 2 pm until 7 pm
Closed on Monday

On the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the colonial war, doclisboa presents a retrospective dedicated to the independence wars of the Portuguese colonies in Africa. The festival also presents a Jean Rouch Retrospective, in collaboration with the Cinemateca Portuguesa. There is also a spotlight on the Arab springs and the situation in Iran.
This year's special screenings include Il Nous Faut du Bonheur, by Alexei Jankowski and Alexander Sokurov (awarded the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival with Faust), La Nuit Tombe sur la Ménagerie, by Nicolas Philibert, New York Memories, by Rosa von Praunheim and Agnès de ci de lá Varda (Episode 1/b) by Agnés Varda.
We are also proud to announce this year's president of the international jury: Peter von Bagh.

According to the production company, Jumpcut, the documentary that was already in theaters in Portugal, Spain and Brazil will also premiere in the USA.

This choice was made by a comission gathering representatives from different film associations, previously submitted to the approval of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

José & Pilar portraits the relationship between José Saramago and his wife, Pilar del Río, by recording his daily life and his work travels throughout the world. The film covers the creation, production and promotion of Saramago's latest novel: "The Elephant's Journey". The story within the book works as a metaphor, throughout the documentary, of Saramago himself.