Heart Beat | Films, Art & Rock’n’Roll w/ The Projectionist, Bill Wyman, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Lil Peep and others

Music, dance, cinema, visual and performative arts, literature: the artistic universe reigns at Heart Beat. In Doclisboa’s 17th edition, this section of the festival, dedicated to the cinematic showcase of the most varied artistic strands is, once again, the window to a diversified (and vibrant) range of cinematic archives, with special emphasis, this year, to the musical realm.
Let’s talk about rock: fom the UK, Doclisboa presents The Quiet One, a film about the life and career of Bill Wyman, a founding member of the Rolling Stones, which shows us unseen footage of the first moments of the young Rolling Stones; and The Cavern Club: The Beat Goes On, directed by Christian Francis-Daives and Jon Keats, portrays the story and re-birth (the reconstruction) of the Cavern Club, self-proclaimed “best club in the world”, where the Beatles performed 292 times and which continues to be, to this day, the stage where artists such as Arctic Monkeys and Adele come to perform.
Doclisboa also presents the world premiere of Zé Pedro Rock’n’Roll, directed by Diogo Varela Silva: a film about Zé Pedro, the legendary guitarist of Xutos e Pontapés and one of the main icons of the Portuguese rock’n’roll scene. Diogo Varela Silva’s film makes use of records, public and personal, to illustrate the story of Zé Pedro, the story of Xutos, and the history of rock music in Portugal itself. A man, a story, a band with tremendous in the world of Portuguese music, which will now remain eternalised within the world of cinema.
Women in the rock world (and in French): Oh Les Filles!, directed by François Armanet, displays the story of French rock stars, from Françoise Hardy to Christine & The Queens, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vanessa Paradis, among others. Also from France, Doclisboa also presents Daniel Darc, Pieces of My Life, a film directed by Thierry Villeneuve and Marc Dufaud, about Daniel Darc, the lead singer of Taxi Girl (cult music band from the 80s), that shows us his way of life, through exclusive and intimate footage shot for more than twenty-five years.
Travelling through continents, the festival receives the International Premiere of Daniela Broitman’s Dorival Caymmi – The Sounds of Life. An intimate film, built around an exclusive interview with Dorival Caymmi, as well as interviews with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and other artists that perceive Caymmi as one of the most important singers and composers of Brazilian music.
Everybody’s Everything, directed by Sebastian Jones e Ramez Silyan, is a personal and humanistic portrait of Lil Peep, who created and brought to the mainstream musical realm a singular mixture of punk, emo and trap. A meteoric trip through stardom, even if brief, with the artist passing away of an overdose, shy of 21 years of age.
Moving from music to cinema, the last film directed by Abel Ferrara, The Projectionist, will have its Portuguese premiere at Doclisboa. A documentary on the life and career of Nicolas Nick Nicolaou, friend of the filmmaker, who came to be one of the last owners of independent cinemas in New York. Doclisboa presents Josafá Veloso’s Banquete Coutinho, an Internacional Premiere of the gaze upon the work of Eduardo Coutinho, through a meet-up with the filmmaker in 2012 and vast archival material. A film that keeps the filmmaker’s restlessness in flame, a man who died two years after the interview, but whose work and thought resist the test of time. Forman vs Forman is a collage of specific official rare records of the multi-awarded filmmaker Miloš Forman, from the moment he took his first steps in the world of cinema, as one of the pioneers of the Czech New Wave, up to his life and career in the United States. A Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna’s film, narrated by Petr Forman, son of the filmmaker. Delphine Seyrig and Carole Roussopoulos, in Delphine and Carole. A documentary directed by Callisto Mc Nulty which illustrates the meet-up between the actress and the video artist, which not only highlights their role, but also their influence and work with the feminist movement of the 70s. Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Talking about Trees, shows us four friends, all filmmakers, reuniting after years of distance and exile, to bring life back to their old dream: make cinema a reality in Sudan.
The art of Pauline Kael’s film critic (What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, by Rob Garver); the portrait of the alternative cultural scene post-1989 in Mitte, at the Berlin Centre (Gestern Mitte Morgen, by Peter Zach); the performativity, poetry and the activism of Pedro Lemebel (Lemebel, de Joanna Reposi Garibaldi); the choreography, the rehearsals, the dance of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Mitten, by Olivia Rochette e Gerard-Jan Claes); the electronic experimentalism of Felix Kubin (Felix in Wonderland, by Marie Losier); and the consumer culture in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union (30HA, by Clayton Vomero) are also part of Heart Beat’s programme.
Going back to music and sounds (this time, with documentaries coming from Portugal): Doclisboa presents the World premiere of Paulo Raposo’s The Bridge. A film that portrays a group of sound artists that created a sound intervention in a small bridge over the river Andelle (Normandy). Another World premiere: Zé G. Pires presents Love Essay, where we bestow upon the process of the Crinable group of actors’s stage rehearsals in a theatrical adaptation of Uma Menina Está Perdida no Seu Século à Procura do Pai, by Gonçalo M. Tavares: a story in which Trisomy 21, the chromosome disorder that distinguishes Hanna, is given as a “plus”, and in which this difference is described as a “supplement”. Doclisboa also presents Sara Gouveia’s The Sound of Masks. A film steered by Atanásio Nyusi, in a trip that interweaves Mozambique’s colonial past with the country’s current political situation, introducing us to the Mapiko dance, an old instrument used as social commentary to challenge colonisation, resurfacing now as a celebration of freedom, cultural identity and collective memory.
Heart Beat also presents a special cine-concert session, starting with the exhibition of Mistérios Negros, by Pedro Lino, soundtracked live by composer Philippe Lenzini. The images stage a trip to the centre of the earth, figurative and literally speaking, having as its main vehicle the landscape of the island of Açores. After that, the documental cine-performance O intendente é um lugar psicológico, wherein Tiago Pereira films and conceptualises, and Sílvio Rosado composes and plays, will be shown. This cine-performance will bring memories to the foreground, live. Blend them all together, give them sounds and music. The neighbourhood which is not a neighbourhood, but a body, each arm an artery, the legs ethnicities, combinations. The dancing of what still withstands.