doclisboa 2006

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
A selection of shorts and feature films from around the world, made in 2005 or 2006.

NATIONAL COMPETITION
A competitive section of films by Portuguese producers and/or directors, concluded in 2005 or 2006.

INVESTIGATIONS
A competitive section with a selection of films from around the world that explore present-day social or political themes.

AMOS GITAI
Israel’s most important contemporary film director will present a series of films with two indispensable sets of documentaries (dubbed the “Wadi Trilogy” and the “House Trilogy”) about the recent history of Israel. He will also give a masterclass about his work.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
A selection of films outside the competitive sections, all of which have never been screened before in Portugal, with a special emphasis on the most recent works of three consecrated names from the world of international documentaries (Eduardo Coutinho, Vincent Dieutre and Chantal Akerman), a screening of the Trilogy of the Sacred and Satanic by Pirjo Honkasalo (the director of “Three Rooms of Melancholia”) and a preview of two Portuguese documentaries (“Brava Dança” and “Lusofonia, a (R)Evolução”) that focus on music.

NICE WORK
A programme about the continued and prolific portrayal of the world of work by documentary films, which is also a journey through the history of this cinematographic genre. A selection of films curated by Marie-Pierre Duhamel Müller, programmer and director of the Cinéma du Réel festival held in Paris.

MINIMAL STORIES
CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE DOCUMENTARIES
A historic panorama of Japanese documentaries from 1987 to 2006. Two directors represented in this selection, Makoto Satô and Naomi Kawase will be present to introduce their films and discuss the state of documentary cinema in Japan.

REALITY FICTION
NÚMERO ZERO: PROGRAMME SELECTED BY PEDRO COSTA
A new section, aimed at fomenting debates about the relationship between fiction and documentaries, a dialogue that is as old as the history of cinema itself but is especially evident in contemporary cinema. The films that will be screened in this first edition were selected by the Portuguese director Pedro Costa, whose works focus precisely on some of the issues that this programme seeks to illustrate.

20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29

Friday, 20 October

21.30 - Large Auditorium
(INAUGURATION OF THE FESTIVAL)
News from Home/News from House
by Amos Gitai, 97’, Israel 2005
The inaugural session of DocLisboa 2006 also marks the beginning of a small cycle of documentaries by Israel’s most important contemporary director. With “News from Home/News from House”, Amos Gitai completes the trilogy that he began in 1980 with “House” and continued in 1998 with “Une Maison à Jerusalém”, which will also be screened at the festival. Creating a kind of human archaeology, Gitai explores the relationships between the inhabitants of a single house, Israelis and Palestinians alike, in the past and during the present: a building that was abandoned by its Palestinian owner during the 1948 war, which was subsequently requisitioned by the Israeli government, rented to Jewish immigrants from Algeria in 1956 and acquired by a university professor in 1980... This house in Jerusalem is no longer the microcosm that it was 25 years ago. Its inhabitants are scattered and its common spaces have disintegrated, yet, it continues to be an emotional and physical centre at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Amos Gitai will be present to accompany the programme that is dedicated to his works.

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Saturday, 21 October

14.30 - Small Auditorium
EXIT - The Right to Die
by Fernand Melgar, 76’, Switzerland 2005
Switzerland is the only country in the world in which associations such as the one that lends its name to the title of this film exist to help patients who intend to put an end to their lives rather than prolong their agony. For over twenty years teams of volunteers have accompanied chronically ill patients and seriously handicapped individuals towards an exit that they feel is more dignified. This documentary accompanies every step along a long and delicate process, in which both parties come face to face with death. Not as a taboo, nor as an unacceptable end, but instead as a liberation. In a society that tends to control every aspect of life, they pose a very personal question: is choosing the way you want to die not the ultimate manifestation of an individual’s freedom?

14.30 - Large Auditorium

Wadi 1981-1991
by Amos Gitai, 97’, France/UK 1991
Wadi is a valley located to the East of Haifa, a sort of enclave in which immigrants from Eastern Europe who survived the camps live in a fragile co-existence with Arabs who were also displaced from their homes. Gitai visited the site for the first time in 1981 and began a trilogy about the place (“Wadi 1981”, “Wadi 1981-1991” and “Wadi Grand Canyon”). Ten years after the first “Wadi”, Amos Gitai once again resumes the tale of the inhabitants of Wadi Rushmia. The protagonists of the first film are still there. Their living conditions have worsened and new immigrants from Russia have arrived and taken up residence. Individual stories and circumstances reflect the political and social situation of the region, which has deteriorated in the meanwhile.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

Magino Village - A Tale
by Shinsuke Ogawa, 222’, Japan 1986
This masterpiece by Shinsuke Ogawa and his team was thirteen years in the making. Few films - from any country or at any time - have portrayed history in such detail. The oral traditions that have been passed down over generations in the village of Magino are related to the transmission of stories, butô dances and fictional recreations. The latter mix famous actors with the inhabitants of the village, who play the roles of their ancestors. The director seeks out the remote origins of Magino’s history in an archaeological excavation in the midst of paddy fields. This kind of research provides a new perspective that somehow manages to avoid seeming like a demystification of the folkloric and spiritual dimensions of life in this village. The scientific microscopy of rice flowers inspires a silent wonder and when academics appear to explain the probable origins of a story they only end up by confirming the veracity of Magino’s living history. This masterfully complex film is characterised by the rhythm of the harvests and the Sun’s journey across the vast skies of Yamagata.

16.30 - Large Auditorium

Masterclass with Amos Gitai
In the context of DocLisboa’s retrospective dedicated to his works, the Israeli director Amos Gitai will give a conference and meet with audiences at the festival, where he will speak about his vast body of documentary works - with a special emphasis on the two trilogies being screened here - and about his work methods. Gitai will also approach the multiple threads that link these documentaries with his fictional films, namely, a focus on Israel’s recent history and themes/figures such as the land, exile and memory.

18.30 - Large Auditorium

No Fim do Mundo
by Mariana Gaivão, 13’, Portugal 2006
Fora da Lei
by Leonor Areal, 83’, Portugal 2006
The protagonists of “Fora da Lei” made headline news on televisions in Portugal a few months ago. Teresa and Lena tried to get married, but the media attention they attracted resulted in even more difficulties and discrimination. These two mothers - and two daughters - really are a family, but not in the eyes of the law. For them, life at home, school and work can present serious problems. The short that opens this session also shows what the media’s cameras, voracious but fleeting, leave behind in their wake. In the Fim do Mundo neighbourhood in Cascais, on the outskirts of Lisbon, a shack caught fire and a mother perished in the flames along with her five children. A photography workshop was held in this shanty-town, which gave local children a chance to express their views of their day, their neighbourhood, their world.

21.00 - Small Auditorium

Gitmo - The New Rules of War
by Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh, 82’, Sweden 2005
Concerned about the treatment meted out to a Swedish citizen who was held prisoner on the American military base of Guantanamo, the directors of this documentary undertook an investigation that had never been successfully attempted before. With access to secret military documents and hitherto unknown testimonies by former prisoners, they reveal what goes on within the walls of the most infamous prison on Earth, i.e. the extreme conditions to which the prisoners are subjected and the torture inflicted upon them in the name of the war against terror.

21.00 - Large Auditorium

A Sunday in Pripyat
by Blandine Huk and Frédéric Cousseau, 27’, France 2006
The Fisherman and the Dancing Girl
by Valeri Solomin, 54’, Russia 2005
A return to Pripyat, a model city built in the early 1970s, twenty years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. “The Fisherman and the Dancing Girl” takes place against the backdrop of Siberia. Natalia, Yuri and their children hear a tempest blowing outside the small meteorological station of which they are in charge. Natalia only has one grudge against her husband: he prefers fishing on the ice to waltzing with her. A poetic and expressive documentary in which people and landscapes blur together.

23.00 - Small Auditorium

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On
by Kazuo Hara, 122’, Japan 1987
One of the most controversial documentaries ever made about Japan’s history and the war. Okuzaki Kenzo, a former Japanese soldier in New Guinea, attacked the Japanese Emperor with a homemade pistol, thus becoming the first Japanese to publicly accuse him of being responsible for war crimes committed during World War II. Okuzaki began a solitary crusade against Emperor Hirohito. Hara, as a director and cameraman, followed Okuzaki’s peculiar life. In the context of facts that come to light and their true reasons, this Japanese director records the changes in Okuzaki’s behaviour who, aware of the images being filmed and the consequences of his acts, grows increasingly radical and begins to look for strategies aimed at manipulating the truth.

23.00 - Large Auditorium

Oxalá Cresçam Pitangas
by Kiluange Liberdade and Ondjaki, 60’, Portugal 2006
A film made in Angola, about Luanda. Angola, thirty years of independence, three years of peace. Capital, Luanda. A city built for 600,000 inhabitants, which currently has a population of four million people. The crossroads of various realities, with people from all provinces. The city that links Angola to the rest of the world. Its people are the lifeblood of this city. What people? Via ten figures, this film shows different ways of living and interpreting the city.

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Sunday, 22 October

14.30 - Small Auditorium

Bait (House)
by Amos Gitai, 51’, Israel 1980
“Bait” is the first chapter of the story of a house in West Jerusalem, which Amos Gitai follows over the course of three films and twenty-five years: abandoned during the 1948 war by its owner, a Palestinian doctor, requisitioned by the Israeli government as “vacant”, acquired by a university professor who transforms it into a villa... the building is like a theatre in which its former residents, neighbours, workers, builders and the new owner all play a part. Israeli television censored the film.

14.30 - Large Auditorium

China Blue
by Micha X. Peled, 87’, USA 2005
An impressive documentary about the “side-effects” of globalisation, seen through the arduous everyday lives of young female workers in a jeans factory in China. The day-to-day work conditions to which Jasmine and her teenage colleagues are subjected disrespect all international labour norms. The situation is aggravated further when the owner of the factory closes an important deal with a Western client and begins to demand that his employees work overtime to carry out the order.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

Kz
by Rex Bloomstein, 98’, UK 2005
Guided tours are held for tourists and young students in an erstwhile Nazi concentration camp situated near the tranquil Austrian city of Mauthausen. The contrast between the atrocities committed there in the past that are described by the guides and the present-day normality of tourist visits provides a glimpse of the progressive banality of the evil that enabled the Holocaust.

16.30 - Large Auditorium

Pintura Habitada
by Joana Ascensão, 52’, Portugal 2006
A documentary about the work of Helena Almeida, a plastic artist who, since the late 1960s, has developed a body of work in which she explores the limits of the different media that she uses, be it painting, drawing, photography or video. The film focuses on the various phases and elements involved in the elaborate creative process by which Helena Almeida constructs her works, highlighting the human body.

18.30 - Small Auditorium

Les Malles
by Samba Félix Ndiaye, 13’, France 1989
Salesman
by the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin, 90’, USA 1968
A classic work of cinema vérité, “Salesman” follows four door-to-door Bible salesmen as they experience a gamut of emotions ranging from enthusiasm to desperation. Paul “The Pest” Brennan, Charles “The Athlete” McDevitt, James “The Rabbit” Baker and Raymond “The Bull” Martos, all named for their respective sales techniques. The directors first show them working in Boston and its suburbs, where the company is based, later in Chicago at a conference for Bible salesmen and finally in the new “Promised Land” of Miami and the surrounding areas. Their mission is simple: to convince people to buy. In “Les Malles”, filmed in Senegal, a group of friends recover metal containers used to transport tar. After cleaning them in large bonfires, they take them apart and cut them into metal sheets that will later be used to make suitcases, which will then be sold after being painted and decorated.

18.30 - Large Auditorium

Logo Existo
by Graça Castanheira, 52’, Portugal 2006
“Logo existo” deliberately excluded the first word of the expression “I think, therefore I am” (“Penso, logo existo”). Over the course of the past few centuries, the study of the human mind has been relegated to the realm of philosophy and religion. However, in recent decades, neurobiology has made great advances in this field. “This film is about a quest for a word that can substitute the Cartesian “think”, which defined concepts about human identity over three centuries ago without making us happy” (Graça Castanheira).

21.00 - Small Auditorium

Fragments sur la Grâce
by Vincent Dieutre, 101’, France 2006
Vincent Dieutre undertakes an investigation about theological questions that left their mark on 17th century France. The filmmaker dives into the incandescent universe of Port-Royal and the Jansenist doctrine via an interpretation of Baroque texts (amongst the readers one can find Matthieu Amalric), visits the historical sites associated with Jansenism and converses with historians and theologians, taking the film to the boundaries of the unanswerable question about the nature of Grace.

21.00 - Large Auditorium

The Seeds
by Wojciech Kasperski, 28’, Poland 2006
Elogio ao ½
by Pedro Sena Nunes, 70’, Portugal 2005
In “The Seeds”, a poor family that has been rejected by the isolated community in which they live carries the weight of past traumas. “Elogio ao ½” takes place in Meia-Praia, the name of a land of “Indians” who, coming from Monte Gordo, spontaneously built their refugee shacks. An architectural plan was prepared after the 25 April 1974 Revolution with a view to rehabilitate these shacks made from junk. Many of the political promises made thirty years ago have still not been fulfilled. What is it like to live in Meia-Praia today?

23.00 - Small Auditorium

Wadi Grand Canyon
by Amos Gitai, 90’, Israel/France 2001
Twenty years after his first Wadi, Amos Gitai returns to Wadi Rushmia for the third time. The site has been almost completely destroyed by property speculators. Yussef and his wife, the guardians of the site and its history, still live there though...

23.00 - Large Auditorium

Tweety Lovely Superstar
by Emmanuel Gras, 18’, France 2005
Tierra Negra
by Ricardo Iscar Alvarez, 90’, Spain 2005
“Tierra Negra” is an overall panorama of the mining valley of Lumajo, in the Spanish province of León. However, from this very specific location, the film seeks to analyse and discover the mechanisms that regulate the lives of any community, in a manner that is simultaneously scientific and poetic. In “Tweety Lovely Superstar”, the short that opens the session, four men and a child destroy a house in Beirut, virtually brick by brick, with only the simplest of tools.

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Monday, 23 October

11.00 - Small Auditorium

Sisters in Law
by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi, 106’, UK 2005
In “Sisters in Law” we find two women from Cameroon who seek to ensure that justice is done, by exercising the law, in a context characterised by a tradition of abuse and violence with regard to the weaker sections of society. The victims are almost always women and children. The film follows some of these victims when they find someone willing to defend their rights in the person of these two lawyers and captures their courageous activities in the streets, courts and prisons of their country. The film won the IDFA Grand Prix in 2005.

14.30 - Small Auditorium

Une Maison à Jerusalém
by Amos Gitai, 87’, France/Italy 1998
Eighteen years after “Bait”, Amos Gitai returns to the scene of his first film to observe the changes in the new house and the neighbourhood. The director works like an archaeologist, revealing a complex, multi-layered labyrinth of destinies.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

Mysterion
by Pirjo Honkasalo, 90’, Finland 1991
The first film in a triptych about religious questions that Pirjo Honkasalo dubbed the Trilogy of the Sacred and Satanic. “Mysterion” was filmed in a convent in Estonia. The Finnish filmmaker tried to understand how sixty young Orthodox nuns, who were mainly from Russia and had been raised under Communism, live their faith and relate to a changing world. A reflection about modernity and spirituality.

18.30 - Small Auditorium

Living on the River Agano
by Makoto Satô, 115’, Japan 1992
The Agano River is Japan’s ninth longest river and extends over 210 km. Its waters tumble over a mountainside in what is one of the highest waterfalls in the world. As it has abundant quantities of water and it flows smoothly throughout the year, it has an uncommon dignity when compared to other Japanese rivers. However, its waters were contaminated by mercury, which was discharged into the river by the Showa Electric Company. Living in a rented house in the mountains near Agano, a team of seven individuals led by Makoto Satô spent four years between 1988 and 1992, closely recording the situation, which ironically led them to the disease.

18.30 - Large Auditorium

Excursão
by Leonor Noivo, 25’, Portugal 2006
Cartas da Ditadura
by Inês Medeiros, 60’, Portugal 2006
The documentary by Inês Medeiros revisits memories of the Salazar period, echoing the voices of women from different walks of life who, with a greater or lesser degree of receptivity, had been contacted to manifest their support for Salazar on the pretext of the first crisis that shook the dictatorship, the campaign by General Humberto Delgado. The short entitled “Excursão” opens the session. The pamphlet promised a fantastic day of fun on a bus tour that would take us sightseeing around the country. The trip, only for people over 25, also included a delicious lunch, a snack, gifts, giveaways and a “demonstration of articles for your home and health”. A day not to be missed, said the leaflet.

21.00 - Small Auditorium

El Comité
by Mateo Herrera, 93’, Ecuador 2005
A report on the degrading living conditions in the central jail in Quito, Ecuador, ends up by becoming an impressive account of a riot by a group of prisoners who, having seized control of the building without resorting to violence, seemed determined to demand a more humane treatment on the part of the police authorities and the government. The conversations between prisoners and the authorities reveal a system that had washed its hands of the fate of these men a long time ago.

21.00 - Large Auditorium

Things
by Martha Hrubá, 18’, Czech Republic 2005
As the Sun Begins to Set
by Julie Moggan, 58’, UK 2006
The QE2 is no longer what it used to be. In another age, a cruise aboard this liner was a privilege within the reach of very few people. Nowadays, middle-class British pensioners realise the dream of a lifetime by taking a voyage on this luxury liner. “As the Sun Begins to Set” is a good-natured and affectionate account of some of these passengers. This observation of social typologies serves as a pretext to relate a bittersweet story about the illusions of life and the steady approach of death. In “Things”, the short that begins the session, two women have different habits and philosophies. One of them only keeps things that she still uses, while the other tries to find uses for objects that people have thrown away.

23.00 - Small Auditorium

Makom, Avoda
by Nurith Aviv, 81’, Israel 1998
Nosotros, los de Allá
by Anna Klara Åhrén, Anna Weitz and Charlotta Copcutt
46’, Sweden/Bolivia/Chile 2005
“Nosotros, los de Allá” descends into the Potosi mines in Bolivia, where the tourist can contemplate the work of authentic miners. The local tourist agency and the Lonely Planet guide were not exaggerating: working conditions in the mines have changed little since the colonial period and the “show” is well worth a visit. “Makom, Avoda” accompanies the story of twenty-five Israeli families who, in 1981, founded a cooperative agricultural village near the large Palestinian town of Beth Awah. Initially, the inhabitants of the cooperative worked the land themselves but soon incorporated youths from the nearby town. In 1988, at the beginning of the Intifada, one of the residents of the village was murdered and the identity of his killers was never discovered. From then on, just like in the rest of the country, it was decided to substitute the workers, who had all been Palestinians until then, with foreign labour.

23.00 - Large Auditorium

Gagarin’s Pioneers
by Vitali Manskij, 100’, Germany/Russia 2005
Some young Gagarin’s Pioneers betrayed the country when, at the age of ten, they left the Soviet Union, along with their parents, to settle in Israel. Others did what the director of this film did, they changed their names and erased all traces of their Jewish family identity. Those who left disappeared into a parallel universe and nothing was heard of them for over thirty years. Setting out from an old photograph taken when he was a child in the Pioneers group, Manskij goes in search of his old companions (in Israel, in the U.S.A, in Canada, in Ukraine) and deals with the years that have passed in the lives of each of them and in the history of their country.

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Tuesday, 24 October

11.00 - Small Auditorium

A2
by Mori Tatsuya, 131’, Japan 2002
October 1999. Mori Tatsuya picks up a camera almost two years after having completed “A”, an investigation about the Aum phenomenon. At this time, the Aum religious cult (now known as Aleph) had established its presence in various centres in different parts of Japan and was continuing its activities. The world described in this film - a world of beliefs, neighbours, police, right-wing nationalists, the mass media and the space they all share in a strange way - has little in common with what the majority of Japanese believe. While television channels continue to portray the Aum equation as being equivalent to the enemy of the people, this film presents another Japan.

14.30 - Small Auditorium

Der Kick
by Andres Veiel, 82’, Germany 2006
In 2002, three German teenagers killed a friend after having tortured him for several hours. Despite the fact that there were various witnesses and abundant proof, the crime was solved only several months later. The director of this film, Andres Veiel, travelled to the city where the crime occurred, interviewed family members and friends of the killers and the victim and analysed the extreme right-wing motives that were behind the crime. He then wrote a play for only two actors (who play all the different roles) and ended up by adapting it for cinema, while maintaining this theatrical base, to respond to a uni-dimensional truth that the media had transmitted about this case.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

Without Memory
by Hirokazu Koreeda, 84’, Japan 1994-1996
Although Koreeda is better known for his work in fictional cinema (his film “Nobody Knows” was screened recently in Portugal), it is in the field of documentaries that he has made some of his first and most important films. This is the case of “Without Memory”, in which he accompanies some patients suffering from Wernicke’s encephalopathy, a neurological disorder caused by a lack of vitamins that results in the loss of short-term memory. Hiroshi Sekine was hospitalised in 1992 and was fed glucose over the course of five weeks, which deprived his body of vitamins. He was affected by the disease and has struggled to live a life of dignity ever since. The film is a protest against medical negligence and bureaucratic inertia.

16.30 - Large Auditorium

Sombras do Passado
by José Manuel Fernandes, 59’, Portugal 2006
This is José Manuel Fernandes’ first work, made within the scope of a course in cinema at the Lusófona University. It is a journey through the decadent space of the mining town of São Domingos, with the region’s inhabitants, whose lives were changed in one way or another due to the establishment of the mining industry in the area.

18.30 - Small Auditorium

Wittstock, Wittstock
by Volker Koepp, 117’, Germany 1997
Three women from East Germany have spent almost twenty years of their lives working in a textile factory in Wittstock and suddenly find themselves unemployed in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. This provocative documentary tells their tragic stories. Starting in 1974 and ending in 1996, it is a critical view of the “other side” of German reunification. The film follows the lives of these women from the 1970s onwards, through the growing difficulties that regulate their existence and their permanent search for work and stability after the crisis in their lives that was caused by political changes.

18.30 - Large Auditorium

A Casa Don Bosco
by Manuel Monteiro Grilo, 47’, Portugal 2006
Pátria Incerta
by Inês Gonçalves and Vasco Pimentel, 52’, Portugal 2006
“Pátria Incerta” examines an aspect of colonisation that nobody ever speaks about: the tendency of colonial societies to produce a unique civilisational synthesis. For 450 years Goa was part of the Portuguese colonial empire, turning her back to the rest of India. During the first sixty years of the occupation, half the population (which was very cultured, structured and Hindu) was forced to convert to the Catholic faith. Just like the humid climate in Goa hinders the healing of wounds, similarly, it seems that the scars of the past will never heal. The memory of Portuguese culture lives on in Goa and the film also reveals the vitality of Goa’s Hindu culture, which never disappeared and is omnipresent - even in Goan Catholics, descended from Hindu converts. “A Casa Don Bosco” was filmed in an orphanage in Sri Lanka, where one hundred boys live together. Here, the children ensure their survival via agriculture; they have little time to pursue their studies. The orphanage does not have the capacity to shelter everyone but the construction of a new dormitory promises to improve their living conditions. In this journey through a lost childhood, a translator, Felicia, protects the children from more difficult questions, and proves to be a single mother who sacrificed her life for her son.

21.00 - Small Auditorium

Embracing
by Naomi Kawase, 40’, Japan 1992
Katatsumori
by Naomi Kawase, 40’, Japan 1994
Dividing her work between the realm of fiction and documentaries, the Japanese director Naomi Kawase is one of the most important names in contemporary Japanese cinema. Her documentaries are almost always diaries on film (and one can find numerous autobiographical elements even in her fictional works). The two films of this session are examples of her methods and of the complex questions that accompany her auto-representation (not the least of which is filming intimacy without voyeurism) and they follow the saga of a filmmaker in search of her identity. In “Embracing”, Kawase looks for the father she never knew; “Katatsumori” is a tender and complex portrait of her grandmother’s sister, who raised her.

21.00 - Large Auditorium

Brava Dança
by José Pinheiro and Jorge Pires, 75’, Portugal 2006
The film revisits the story of the Heróis do Mar music group in order to analyse the clash between images of an ancient Portugal and modern Portugal. The ideas, the ideals and the dynamics at play in popular Portuguese music during the 1980s and its position in a European context, through the voices of musicians and other individuals who were involved in creating this conceptual plot. A documentary that revolves around the relationships between popular music, politics and society in Portugal, and the image that the country created - and still creates - of itself.

23.00 - Small Auditorium

Memories of Agano
by Makoto Satô, 57’, Japan 2004
Ten years after having filmed “Living on the River Agano”, Makoto Satô returned to Niigata and revisited the landscapes he had portrayed in the first film, which have by now been almost completely abandoned. The result is a phantasmagorical poem about absence and the power of images and sound as a means of reviving the past.

23.00 - Large Auditorium

Impending Doom
by Edgar Pêra, 8’, Portugal 2006
Arcana
by Cristobal Vicente, 96’, Chile 2005
“Arcana” is a visual record of the last year of an old prison in Valparaiso, in Chile, which was shut down in 1999. It pays homage to the prison and the values of the men who lived in it over the 150 years of the prison’s history. “Impending Doom” was filmed in Super8 and is a visual testimony to and a sonorous interpretation of two ceremonies that took place in Rome and Lisbon in 2005: the funerals of Pope John Paul II and Álvaro Cunhal. Despite having different beliefs and ideologies, the two communities shared a feeling of pain, hurt and peace in a world at war.

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Wednesday, 25 October

11.00 - Small Auditorium

Surfarara
by Vittorio de Seta, 10’, Italy 1995
Harlan County
by Barbara Kopple, 103’, U.S.A. 1976
Sulphur mines are an integral part of the vast landscapes of central Sicily. Few structures reflect on the outside the dark battles and the invisible tragedies that take place in the depths of the earth. There, down below, just like in fields or at sea, the immense and noble drama of human labour unfolds, captured in “Surfarara” by the great Italian documentary-maker Vittorio de Seta. The film by Barbara Kopple documents a mining strike in a small village in Kentucky. With unprecedented access to the miners’ struggle, Kopple and her team captured the often violent clashes with strike-breakers, the local police and mining bosses. With a haunting soundtrack that included the participation of country and bluegrass artists, the film is a record of a thirteen month long conflict between a community that struggles for its survival and a large company determined to take the battle to the limit.

11.00 - Large Auditorium

Masterclass with Makoto Satô
Part of this year’s programming dedicated to contemporary Japanese documentaries, DocLisboa presents a masterclass with Makoto Satô. This is a rare opportunity to listen to one of Japan’s most illustrious and influential filmmakers (and that’s not all, Satô is also a professor and a historian of documentary cinema) talk about his work, his affiliation with a tradition of Japanese documentaries that deal with social issues (as can be seen in his two films being screened during the festival: “Living on the River Agano” and “Memories of Agano”) and the current state of documentary cinema in his country, which he portrays with a somewhat critical eye.

14.30 - Small Auditorium

Tanjuska and the Seven Devils
by Pirjo Honkasalo, 80’, Finland 1993
Tanjuska is a 12 year old Byelorussian student who, from the age of ten, stopped eating, speaking and, finally, stopped growing. She lives with her father in a religious community in Estonia. The local priest and her family believe that the girl is possessed and reject the medical explanations they are given - that Tanjuska is suffering from schizophrenia.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

The Cheese & The Worms
by Kato Haruyo, 98’, Japan 2005
The director lives in a rural town with a sick mother and an aged grandmother. Her brother, sister-in-law and their young children live nearby. They come together to support their mother’s battle against her illness and to take care of her with the warmth of family love. In the face of the imminent death of her mother, the director maintains a stoic distance from the object of her documentary, without giving in to sentimentalism and tries to extract an austere portrait of life and death, preserving the fragility of each moment of truth and capturing a slow but steady and mysterious love of life behind these images.

18.30 - Small Auditorium

Six Fois Deux- Episódio 1a Y'a personne [T]

Entuziasm: Sinfoniia Donbassa
by Dziga Vertov, 68’, USSR 1930
Six Fois Deux - Episode 1 Y’a Personne
By Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, 58’, France 1976
“Entuziasm” is a film that was made to demonstrate the efforts of the miners in Dom to carry out their part of the Five Year Plan in four years and represented a challenge for Vertov in terms of using sound, which he used in an extremely dynamic manner, equivalent to his use of images in his silent films. His innovative approach found a fan in Charles Chaplin who wrote: “I would never have believed that it was possible to orchestrate mechanical sounds to create such beauty. One of the most superb symphonies I have ever heard. Dziga Vertov is a musician”. Television soon provided Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville an opportunity to embark upon a vast project: adopting the medium to better denounce its contents, in 1975-1976, in Grenoble, they directed “Six Fois Deux/Sur et Sous la Communication”, a series of six programmes of a hundred minutes, each of which was subdivided into two fifty minute broadcasts to be circulated more easily. This series of broadcasts, of which only the first episode will be screened here, is a reflection about means of communication, denouncing “those who smother the truth”, to propose a different sort of television in exchange, one that is closer to social realities and is more critical.

18.30 - Large Auditorium

O Casino
by Hugo Maia, 13’, Portugal 2006
À Espera da Europa
by Christine Reeh, 58’, Portugal 2006
Vânia, a young girl who is the subject of “À Espera da Europa” came from Bulgaria to live in Portugal in search of her independence and to realise the dream of a better life. She experiences hopes and fears, while she tries to find the answers for life’s great decisions. When she begins to live in Spain, she suddenly realises how isolated she is and that she is trapped in a typical cycle of dependence. This film is about emigration from a feminine point of view. It is about growing up and postponing life...while waiting for the utopian dreams of Europe to come true one day. The short that opens the session follows the inauguration of the Lisbon Casino, in a ceremony where VIP guests and ordinary people are both present, the former partying in an enormous tent that was built for the event and the latter watching the excitement from the street; but both of them await the moment when the casino will open its doors.

21.00 - Small Auditorium

Ears, Open. Eyeballs, Click.
by Canaan Brumley, 95’, U.S.A. 2005
This film by Canaan Brumley is a complete and brutal immersion into the universe of recruits, depicted here in the elite Marine corps in the U.S.A. In spaces that are difficult to bear on account of the permanent exhibition of the physical and mental violence to which the recruits are subjected during their military training, the film is a portrait of a military institution that has less in common with Frederick Wiseman’s “Basic Training” than with the first part of “Full Metal Jacket” by Stanley Kubrick. And after seeing this film one can inevitably find a partial explanation in this entire process for the abuse and humiliation perpetrated by the same soldiers that we see here in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

21.00 - Large Auditorium

Cigaretta Mon Amour
by Rosa Hannah Ziegler, 6’, Germany 2006
La Consultation
by Hélène de Crécy, 91’, France 2005
Following the day to day activities of a general practitioner in his consulting rooms, “La Consultation” is an investigation about medical practices. Within the four walls of Dr. Luc Perino’s clinic, patients talk about their joys and suffering: a fever, a birth, alcoholism and depressions caused by life and work. We witness these medical consultations and understand that there is a diagnosis for each person and that the stories of their lives are parallel to their ailments. Dr. Perino would certainly not approve of the inveterate, but extremely cool, smoking of the protagonist of “Cigaretta Mon Amour”, the very brief short that opens the session.

23.00 - Small Auditorium

Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom
by Naomi Kawase, 65’, Japan 2002
The last days of Nishii Kazuo, a photography critic and essential figure in the world of photography in Japan. When Nishii knew he had only a few months of life left owing to a terminal illness, he asked Naomi Kawase to film him. She agreed to his request and thus began a series of regular visits. Kawase recorded their conversations and Nishii’s growing difficulty in answering and reacting. Nishii likewise had a camera in his hand and filmed Kawase while he was being filmed. The exchanges between the two resulted in “a memory of time shared” that remains for posterity.

23.00 - Large Auditorium

Babooska
by Rainer Frimmel and Tizza Covi, 100’, Austria/Italy 2005
“Babooska” portrays the daily struggle for survival in one of the last forms of nomadic life in present day Italy. Over the course of a year, the directors followed young Babooska, a circus artist who travels all over the country with her small family circus. It is a gaze full of empathy - and one without the habitual clichés, commentaries or interviews - exploring a microcosm that survives on the fringes of society.

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Thursday, 26 October

11.00 - Small Auditorium

Les Yeux ne Veulent pas en Tout Temps se Fermer ou Peut-être qu’un Jour Rome se Permettra de Choisir à son Tour (Othon)
by J. M. Straub and Danièle Huillet, 88’, Germany/Italy 1969
In 1968/69, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet left Germany to settle in Italy. There, in Rome, they directed their film entitled “Othon”, based on a play by the French playwright Pierre Corneille, written in 1664. It is a play about love and power, private and public life, and political intrigues. Marguerite Duras, fascinated by the film, wrote: “Straub catapulted Corneille to the present. He restored its subversive significance to the tragedy, stimulating its regenerative process and resurrecting it with this brilliant work.” Apart from this, the film frees Corneille from the constraints of the stage, returning him to the magnificent skies of Rome with an exceptional cast of characters.

14.30 - Small Auditorium

Kya Ra Ka Ba A
by Naomi Kawase, 50’, Japan 2001
Tarachime
by Naomi Kawase, 43’, France/Japan 2006
In “Kya Ra Ka Ba A” that along with “Embracing” and “Katatsumori” constituted a well-defined cycle of films about the absence of her father, Kawase crosses documentaries with fiction, resorting to her body as a way of filling the void left by a paternal figure. “Tarachime” begins on 24 April 2004, when Naomi Kawase gave birth to a son, Mitsuki. In accordance with Japanese traditions, she gave birth on a tatami mat, assisted by a midwife and surrounded by her entire family. As soon as the umbilical cord was severed, she picked up her camera to begin to film her child and her ninety two year old grandmother. With this emotionally compelling docu-diary, Kawase continues to reflect upon the world that surrounds her, her origins and her future. Despite the fact that initially she only wanted to describe the life that she carried within her for nine months, Naomi Kawase extended the film to include Mitsuki’s interaction with the people around him. Deliberately shunning any notions of temporal linearity, she gently creates, albeit occasionally with some violence and severity, a movement that deftly swings between past and present moments and sentiments.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

EDN Masterclass with Adrian Wood
Taking advantage of the fact that Culturgest is simultaneously playing host to DocLisboa and Lisbon Docs, the European Documentary Network (EDN) and Apordoc are jointly organising a masterclass with the participation of Adrian Wood entitled “Hidden Treasure: The Wonders of Archives”. Adrian Wood has developed a prolific career in the United Kingdom as the author of several documentaries that use archival images. In this masterclass he will speak about the unique nature of his work and the potential of historical documentaries, in the light of the treasures available in leading film archives in Europe, a field in which he is acknowledged to be an authority.

18.30 - Small Auditorium

Numéro Zéro
by Jean Eustache, 110’, France 1971
I remember walking in Paris, from Montparnasse to the 18th district, walking while thinking, as though I were on a journey that would turn back the clock. When I arrived home, my grandmother spoke to me for a long time. I had the distinct impression that she was talking about important things. When I told her: “Listen, we have to record all this”, she answered: “But, after all, they’re things that aren’t pretty”. “That is of no consequence”, I answered, “it is essential to record things, irrespective of whether they are pretty or not, they are important, they are great”. I arranged enough money to buy some black and white 16mm film, I rented two cameras, asked Théaudière to take care of them and Jean-Pierre Ruh to look after the sound. And the length of the movie was the length of the film, the two cameras functioning alternately, without stopping, without cuts. The movie was thus the story of the film, from the beginning to the end. At the same time, as I was a professional filmmaker, it was a film by a professional filmmaker and a family film, an amateur film in 8mm, shot on the beach” (Jean Eustache).

18.30 - Large Auditorium

Onze Burros Caem no Estômago Vazio
by Tiago Pereira, 28’, Portugal 2006
Cantai Cantigas
by Cláudia Tomaz, 50’, Portugal 2006
On the Miranda do Douro plateau, Tiago Pereira came across stories of donkeys and traditional songs. “A kind of popular surrealism about how people live in Northern Portugal, their relationship with their donkeys and the way they live with it. They are so musical that it is possible to manipulate without ever losing their essence...” (Tiago Pereira). In “Cantai Cantigas” we are also in the Trás-os-Montes region. Two journeys, Summer and Winter, in search of people and songs. Eight year old Bruno sings along with cassettes. Deolinda herds cows and shows them the village cemetery that “has a lot to see”. Ninety year old Aunt Ana sings songs by the stove. Tragic stories that remind one of Shakespeare.

21.00 - Small Auditorium

British Sounds
by Jean-Luc Godard, 97’, UK 1969
Humain, Trop Humain
by Louis Malle, 75’, France 1970
Whispered comments can be heard over shots of a production line factory, a trade union meeting, a nude woman, students - a disassociation between sounds and images, a polyphony that recalls the revolutionary events that took place in the United Kingdom. The film, which was deemed to be very impertinent, was refused by the BBC, which had commissioned the work. “The film is a sound that we contrasted with another sound: a revolutionary sound against an imperialist sound” (JLG). In the early 1970s, at the height of a period of social and political conflicts, Louis Malle filmed the production line of the new Citroën factory in Rennes. The director shows sweeping shots of faces, restores sounds and lingers long enough to capture gestures without adding any critiques or comments.

21.00 - Large Auditorium

Strip-Tease
by Attila V. Nagym, 7’, Hungary 2005
Our Daily Bread
by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 90’, Austria 2005
Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech agriculture. To the rhythm of omnipresent machines, “Our Daily Bread” presents, without comments, some of the sites of the system that provides food products to our society. These are monumental spaces, surreal landscapes, strange sounds. A cold and industrial landscape that allows little leeway for individuals, in which men and women, animals and plant species all play a specific role in a complex process of logistics that is almost completely mechanised. In comparison, we can feel nostalgia for the fate of the geese in “Strip-Tease”, the short that begins the session.

23.00 - Large Auditorium

Lusofonia, a (R)Evolução
Collective film produced by the Red Bull Music Academy, 60’, Portugal 2006
A new generation of musicians, producers and DJs are making their mark in Portugal, who are attuned to the aesthetic and technological changes in the world of music and also claim a distinctive legacy inherited from the Portuguese culture of which they are a part. This musical movement sums up five centuries of history and through it Lisbon is affirming itself as a stage for mixtures of musical elements that reflect this Portuguese heritage: the rhythms of coladeras along with jazz, kuduro beats with hip hop, reggae and creole. “Lusofonia, a (R)Evolução” is a glimpse of a moment of creative fervour in Portugal’s musical landscape.

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Friday, 27 October

11.00 - Small Auditorium

Gambit
by Sabine Gisiger, 107’, Switzerland 2005
In July 1976, in a chemical factory near the Italian city of Seveso, a reactor that was producing trichlorophenol exploded, releasing a large quantity of dioxins, extremely poisonous substances. There were no casualties, but a vast area around the site was evacuated and many people were contaminated. Jörg Sambeth, a chemical engineer, tells his story: in the 1960s he began to work for the Hoffman-La Roche company. He was also the supervisor of the factory near Seveso. He describes the work culture at the company, with which he never felt truly comfortable, but whose policies he never dared to criticise, not even after the disaster in Seveso, when he was forced to keep silent about the true nature of the substances that had been released. He now breaks his silence and speaks of the tragic disaster.

14.30 - Small Auditorium

Onde Jaz o Teu Sorriso?
by Pedro Costa, 104’, Portugal/France 2002
While Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub were editing the third version of “Sicily!”, Pedro Costa filmed a “comedy of re-editing”. Behind their patience while at work, often tender and violent, the two filmmakers reveal a certain conception of cinema, of their cinema and their life together, in a nutshell, a certain conception of married life. Pedro Costa takes us to the centre of their own unique brand of cinema, in a singular journey through time and space, offering the viewer a perfect present: to be able to participate in the act of cinematographic creation from within.

14.30 - Large Auditorium

Entre Nós
Collective film, 30’, Portugal 2006
Bien Mélanger
by Nicolas Fonseca, 75’, Canada 2006
To be a foreigner in Portugal, to be Portuguese abroad. “Entre Nós” is the result of an invitation extended to twelve Portuguese filmmakers (André Godinho, Pedro Paiva, Fausto Cardoso, Tiago Afonso, Sérgio Tréfaut, Catarina Alves Costa, José Filipe Costa, Cátia Salgueiro, André Príncipe, Miguel Nogueira, Joana Neves, Leonor Noivo) to create small three minute long films about the theme of immigration. The project was inspired by the organisation of the Gulbenkian Forum about Immigration and was principally aimed at highlighting, via these filmmakers, immigrants’ points of view about our reality. “Bien Mélanger”, directed by a Canadian of Portuguese origin, is a documentary about identity via the perspective of young children of emigrants, namely, those belonging to the Portuguese community in Canada, about questions such as globalisation and tourism. The film also contains testimonies by various experts on globalisation, including Anthony Giddens.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

Marguerite Telle Qu'en Elle-Meme
by Dominique Auvray, 61’, France 2002
On 3 June 1991, Marguerite Duras gave me a copy of her latest book that had just been published, “L’Amant de la Chine du Nord” with a dedication that said: “For my friend Dominique Auvray, to remember the greatest marvel of all: that of a still recent past: from when we worked together in cinema”. For me it was a portrait of the way she was: serious and fun-loving, authentic and provocative, attentive and categorical, but, above all, young and free. The director of this portrait edited three films for Duras, “Baxter, Vera Baxter” (1976), “Le Camion” (1977) and Le Navire Night (1979), and has also edited films by Philippe Garrel and Pedro Costa, amongst others.

16.30 - Large Auditorium

Neighbourhood
by Karoi Kinoshita and Allain Della Negra, 17’, France 2006
Yellow Box
by Ting-Fu Huang, 53’, Taiwan 2006
“Yellow Box” takes place almost entirely within a shop with glass show windows situated in Taiwan. Traffic circulates in front of the camera. Drivers stop to buy areca nuts, a very popular product in Asia that accelerates the heartbeat. In order to improve their sales, the salesgirls, whom the clients call by nicknames such as Honey or Candy and who are exhibited like fish in an aquarium, adopt clothes and gestures that allude to situations of prostitution. “Neighbourhood” questions the relationships between people who share the same virtual community, in the case of the game called “The Sims”, in which they embody alternative lives and personalities as compared to their normal lives.

18.30 - Small Auditorium

Ils ne Mouraient pas Tous mais Tous Étaient Frappés [T]

Die Bewerbung
by Harun Farocki, 58’, Germany 1997
Ils ne Mouraient pas Tous mais Tous Étaient Frappés
by Sophie Bruneau, 80’, France 2005
Farocki on “Die Bewerbung” (literally, “The Interview”): “During the Summer of 1996 we filmed diverse training workshops in which people learnt to correctly fill in an employment form. We filmed long-term unemployed people encouraged by the State to follow this training. We filmed managers who, with their high salaries, could pay a private trainer: just like the free citizens of Ancient Greece who began their studies in Rhetoric with a domestic slave. Teachers, university students, people who had been unemployed for a long time, ex-drug addicts, middle class managers, everyone had to learn how to put themselves on offer, to sell themselves in the name of self-management”. Filmed in three public hospitals in the greater Paris area, “Ils ne Mouraient pas Tous...” accompanies the work of a psychologist and two doctors who treat men and women who are suffering from ailments caused by their jobs. They all describe their suffering at work during an interview. The three specialists listen to them and gradually diagnose the individual ailments of the patients and their relationship with new forms of organising work.

18.30 - Large Auditorium

The Sky is My Ceiling
By Keja Ho Kramer, 11’, France 2006
Kinshasa Palace
by Zeka Laplaine, 75’, Congo/France 2006
In “Kinshasa Palace”, a film that skilfully spans the frontier between fiction and memory to construct an investigation about a family scattered over three continents, the director, Zeka Laplaine, puts himself in the shoes of Kaze, a man who is desperately looking for Max, his long lost brother. Following the few clues he has, he travels to France, Congo and Portugal, as also to Cambodia, in the hope of solving the mystery about the disappearance of his brother. “The Sky is My Ceiling”, which opens the session, projects a fantastic scenario from a story by J.G. Ballard onto the city of São Paulo.

21.00 - Small Auditorium

Los Angeles Plays Itself
by Thom Andersen, 169’, U.S.A. 2003
“Films erase all traces of it, leaving us with what they want us to see, becoming something else. They do the work of our voluntary attention, so that we have to suppress this faculty when we watch films. Our involuntary attention takes centre-stage. But what if we observed with our voluntary attention, instead of letting ourselves be guided by films? If we can appreciate documentaries for their dramatic qualities, we can also appreciate fictional films for their documentary revelations” (Thom Andersen). A cinematographic essay about representations of the city of Los Angeles in cinema, divided into three parts: the city as a setting, as a character and as a theme.

21.00 - Large Auditorium

Into Great Silence
By Philip Gröning, 164’, Germany 2005
The Great Chartreuse, mother-house of the legendary Order of Carthusians, is situated in the French Alps. “Into the Great Silence” is the first ever film about life within the walls of the Great Chartreuse. Silence. Repetition. Rhythm. The film is an austere approach to the silent meditation of monastic life in its purest form. Without music except for the monastery chants, without interviews, commentaries or any additional material. A film about the conscience, the presence of the absolute and the life of men who devote their existence to God in the purest possible way. Contemplation. An object in time.

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Saturday, 28 October

10.00 - Small Auditorium
Lisbon Docs Pitching
Forum for co-productions and funding for documentaries.

14.30 - Large Auditorium

Atman
by Pirjo Honkasalo, 76’, Finland/Germany 1996
Atman means “soul” in Sanskrit. In this documentary by Pirjo Honkasalo, which concludes her Trilogy of the Sacred and Satanic, we follow a group of pilgrims over the course of a six thousand kilometre journey from the delta of the Ganges to its source in the Himalayas. A physical and spiritual journey that seeks to harmonise the natural environment with internal landscapes.

16.30 - Small Auditorium

Tout Refleurit
by Aurélien Gerbault, 80’, France 2006
Fascinated by the Fontainhas neighbourhood, Pedro Costa filmed the inhabitants of this shantytown every day. For the director, his work and this neighbourhood are inextricably linked. The film deals with this indestructible bond, following the filming of his latest documentary “Juventude em Marcha”, without limiting itself to the sites where the film was shot. This work by Aurélien Gerbault takes place alongside Pedro Costa’s activities, more precisely, when his day’s filming is over.

16.30 - Large Auditorium

Un Pont sur la Drina
by Xavier Lukomski, 18’, Belgium 2005
Là-Bas
by Chantal Akerman, 79’, Belgium 2006
“Un Pont sur la Drina” remembers Visegrad, a town in Bosnia, and its majestic and symbolic bridge. Through an interpretation of statements made before a military tribunal by the town’s inhabitants we learn a little more about the war in Bosnia. In “Là-Bas”, Chantal Akerman filmed a short stay in an apartment in Tel Aviv, near the sea, and the questions she posed: “Is it possible to live a life here? Is it possible to obtain images here?” A film without the slightest objective - except for perhaps not having any objectives at all - so that something could perhaps happen or become visible.

18.30 - Small Auditorium

Saffron = (Zafaran): a documentary film [T]

Industrial Britain
by Robert Flaherty, 21’, UK 1933
Parabola d’Oro
by Vittorio de Seta, 10’, Italy 1995
Maria (Peasant Elegy)
by Alexander Sokurov, 41’, USSR 1978-1988
Saffron = (Zafaran)
by Ebrahim Mokhtari, 40’, Iran 1992
Filmed mainly by Basil Wright and Arthur Elton, the documentary by Robert Flaherty is characterised by a romantic emphasis upon the importance of individual manual activity during a mechanical age, thus ennobling the worker. In “Parabola d’Oro”, peasants walk in an irregular fashion while they harvest wheat. Behind them lies the vast and undulating landscape of Sicily. The men load their mules with their cargoes of wheat and take them to the square. To encourage their animals, the men sing songs in which they invoke the Sun, the wind, the Gods. By nightfall their work is done, the peasants fill their sacks, load up the mules once more and return to their village. “Maria” is a cinematographic requiem for a Russian peasant. Maria Semionovna grew linseed all her life. When she died, her knowledge about working the fields and her respective methods of agriculture disappeared with her. “Saffron” describes the arduous seasonal labours of saffron growers to the East of the Iranian desert. A peasant from the region guides us through the growth cycle of this product, from the preparation of the soil to the sale of saffron in the market.

18.30 - Large Auditorium

O Fim e o Princípio
by Eduardo Coutinho, 110’, Brazil 2006
A cinema team sets out for the interior regions of Paraíba in search of subjects for a documentary about the lives of the region’s inhabitants. With no prior research, the team goes in search of common people, who have stories to tell. In the town of São João do Rio do Peixe, the film discovers Sítio Araçás, a rural community where 86 families live, most of whom are related to each other. Thanks to the mediation of a young girl from Araçás, the town’s residents - most of whom are quite old - tell stories about their lives, marked by popular Catholicism, hierarchies and a sense of family and honour - a world that is on the verge of disappearing. The local residents tell stories and talk about their lives, hopes and death.

21.30 - Large Auditorium

Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room [SE]

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
by Alex Gibney, 110’, U.S.A. 2005
[Awarding of prizes and closing ceremony]
The sudden financial collapse of Enron, one of the ten largest companies of the United States and a global giant in the field of energy, revealed a series of frauds by the company’s administrators over the course of several years with the complicity of many individuals. In this thorough investigation about the true story behind Enron’s bankruptcy (that some have compared favourably to Michael Moore’s work), the result is a ruthless portrayal of the American political and financial system when large corporations seize control of the market and when their power extends beyond the economic sphere.

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Sunday, 29 October

14.30 - Large Auditorium
Prize-Winning Films 1

16.30 - Large Auditorium
Prize-Winning Films 2

18.30 - Large Auditorium
Prize-Winning Films 3

21.00 - Large Auditorium
Prize-Winning Films 4

Note: The titles of the prize-winning films that will be screened in these sessions will be announced on Saturday, 28 October, after 22.30.

PARALLEL ACTIVITIES

SESSIONS FOR SCHOOLS - MASTERCLASSES - CINEMA WORKSHOPS

With a view to creating new audiences for cinema, DocLisboa is organising special programmes for students: masterclasses, workshops, sessions for schoolchildren, cinema workshops, debates and meetings with directors. The sessions for schoolchildren are free of charge for organised groups (with a minimum of 10 students) via prior reservations. Free tickets can be collected for the masterclasses, which will have simultaneous translation in Portuguese.

Information and bookings: anacristina@doclisboa.org / Tel: 21 887 1639

MEETINGS AND DEBATES AT THE FESTIVAL FORUM

A space located near the Large Auditorium serves as a meeting point for audiences to interact with directors. Every day, throughout the festival, meetings, debates and conversations will be held with directors and other professionals from Portugal and abroad from the world of documentary cinema (producers, distributors, programmers, critics etc.), thus creating an open space for reflection and discussion.

VIDEOTHEQUE

In addition to the films being screened in the two auditoria, festival audiences can view a set of films (comprising about 800 titles, including both shorts and feature films) that have been entered in DocLisboa festivals. The Videotheque is situated in front of the Large Auditorium and is an area open to the public, with some viewing stations reserved exclusively for professionals accredited to the festival.
Viewing hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Organization: Apordoc
Rua dos Bacalhoeiros, 125, 4º. 1100-068 Lisboa. Portugal . Phone & Fax: + 351 21 887 16 39
Email: doclisboa@doclisboa.org