Festival sections

Selection of some of the top international documentaries produced in 2011/2012 – some are multi-awarded films and others are non-released films.

// Feature Films, running time over 41 min

Selection of some of the top international documentaries produced in 2011/2012 – some are multi-awarded films and others are non-released films.

// Short Films, running time under 40 min

Selection of the top documentaries produced and/or directed in Portugal in 2012. Most part of these films will have their international premiere at the Festival.

// Feature Films, running time over 41 min

Selection of the top documentaries produced and/or directed in Portugal in 2012. Most part of these films will have their international premiere at the Festival.

// Short Films, running time under 40 min

Films that deal with contemporary issues, proposing cinema as a way to investigate a given reality. Visions that allow us to profoundly and singularly access the issues they tackle, thus confirming the art of cinema as a place that encompasses the different records of present days.

Section directed by Augusto M. Seabra

Created in 2007, the goal of this section is to broaden the scope of doclisboa – into different approaches of reality and its representations, into frontiers between fiction and documentarism, and different trends as filmed diaries and autobiographies, or works on archive footage – questioning various perceptions and visions, critical reviews of cinema, and generally the attention given to innovation propositions, defying the usual categories, formats, and length.

A parallel section featuring documentaries about music and performing arts.

Featuring films that record and depict issues and events that imply the urgent creation of a community for debate and reflexion in order to allow us to decide where to stand before those subjects.

These films are made from an absolute implication into reality itself. They may not yet have found the necessary distance to create a cinematographic work, but they have however found an immediate link to that same reality that challenges filmmakers into a growing daily practice of citizenship.

These are films that fill the gaps that exist in media, and that exist through the social networks and others means that try to open some cracks in information control. These films should precisely occupy their own place in a festival that wants to think of cinema in the multiple layers of its implication into reality.

© Image: 'Ja arriba el temps de remenar les cireres' by Jorge Tur Moltó

The Green Years section presents films produced in the scope of video, film, audiovisual and communication schools, and in film and documentary film PhD courses as well.

The main goal of The Green Years is to create a platform for dialogue and reflexion upon produced films and the type of existing teaching in this field. Additionally our aim is also to give young directors – who are still studying – the opportunity to show their work to a broader audience, thus fostering their future entrance into the professional world, and their growth as directors.

In 2012 Doclisboa and Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema will present an integral retrospective of films by the director Chantal Akerman.

To carry out a Chantal Akerman’s retrospective in doclisboa is to bring to this festival the question of how documentary relates to other types of cinema and arts.

With an utmost complexity and awareness of her own times, Chantal Akerman’s films have always questioned and analysed a whole range of issues, from film production, creative process, and the historical problematic to the dual relationship between authorship and personal identity.

Her work arises from the uniqueness of an experience prior to genre definition. Within the combination and assimilation of different space/time and affection layers, her films convey an unbalancing gift that derives from her profound intuition of history as an eminently problematic subject.

Derives from the convergence of two recent movements: the film passage to museums and the inclusion of documentary in contemporary art.

On the one hand Doclisboa'12 organises an exhibition - October 20th - November 30th - featuring major works, with several installations by Chantal Akerman, linked with the integral film retrospective this festival dedicates to this Belgium filmmaker, in a dialogue with installations by Pedro Costa. On the other hand, an international conference organised by Doclisboa, Universidade de Lisboa and Université Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne to promote the debate between critics and artists will be held in Lisbon on October 25th, 26th, and 27th.

A brief history of the radical collectives from the 60's to the 80's

Comissioned by Federico Rossin - curator, independent film critic and artistic co-director of Trieste NodoDoc Fest - United We Stand, Divided We Fall presents  radical collectives' films from the 60's, 70's and 80's. Behind the collectives' names  we find well known film directors that for political and artistic purposes decided to undercover themselves in the name of collective work.

We may now confirm two of the films of this retrospective: “Territories”, by Sankofa Film and Video Collective, and “Handsworth Songs” by Black Audio Film Collective.

Non-competitive section where some films will be shown and where will be lauched the DVDs edited by Alambique É na Terra não é na Lua by Gonçalo Tocha, Blokada by Sergei Loznitsa and Le Chagrin et la Pitié by Marcel Ophüls. It will also launch the book De Casa em Casa - Sobre um encontro entre etnografia e cinema, an essay by Filomena Silvano accompanied by an exibition of  João Pedro Rodrigues' documentaries.

This section focuses on biopics of various personalities such as Gerhard Richter, the Aho-Soldan family, Milos Forman and Roman Polanski.

Fernando Lopes was a major Portuguese director who left an outstanding imprint upon documentary films, and that is why Doclisboa wants to pay him a tribute. An official order from the city of Évora, As Pedras e o Tempo (1961) - directed after his return from the London Film School - is considered by many the true "film zero" of the new Portuguese Films. Olhar/Ver - Gérard Fotógrafo (1998) is one of the many documentaries Fernando Lopes directed on other artist friends (as O Meu Amigo Mike ao Trabalho, that premiered in 2008 at Doclisboa - section Riscos). It is not just a look upon the work by Gérard Castello Lopes, who actually also co-directed, just like Nuno Bragança, another film with Lopes, Nacionalidade: Português (1972), but also a reflection upon images and ways of seeing, and the director's most confessional film. It evokes - along with photographs by Castello Lopes - the same Portugal portrayed in Belarmino. Also an order from Porto 2001 - Capital Europeia da Cultura, Cinema evokes the early days of Portuguese film with A Saída dos Operários da Fábrica Confiança by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, but also the new Portuguese films by Paulo Rocha and Fernando Lopes, with Isabel Ruth saying "Cinema", a poem by Carlos de Oliveira, an author Fernando Lopes had previously adapted in his outstanding film Uma Abelha na Chuva.

Tribute section to Curtas Vila do Conde festival on the occasion of its 20th birthday.