The Director\u2019s Cut section, dedicated to films about cinema, returns this year with recently restored treasures (Hopper\/Welles<\/i><\/b>, Three Days Without God<\/i><\/b> and The Last Stage<\/i><\/b>) and films that rework on the cinematographic heritage. In the Mouth of Madness section, on the other hand, programmed films are unsettling and tear language and genre boundaries, without taboos. IndieLisoa returns to the usual venues from August 21 to September 6, 2021.<\/p>\n
In focus in the Director\u2019s Cut <\/b>section is Hopper\/Welles<\/i><\/b> by Orson Welles, premiered in the last Venice Festival – its first public exhibition after 40 years on the shelves. Shot in 1970, this conversation seizes both directors in a crucial moment of their careers: It had been over a decade since Welles had worked within the Hollywood system, and he had begun to strike out on his own as an independent, ruthlessly idiosyncratic artist; Hopper, on the other hand, had just had an unexpected major success with the studio-financed counterculture hit Easy Rider<\/i>. This unscripted talk on two cameras, in lush black and white, lit only by a fireplace and hurricane lamps is a historic and revealing record of these two film mavericks.<\/p>\n
Another surprise is Three Days Without God<\/i><\/b>, the first fiction feature ever directed by a woman in Portugal. B\u00e1rbara Vig\u00ednia, who was 22 years old at the time, directed the film, co-wrote the script and played the main role. The film premiered on August 30, 1946, in Lisbon\u2019s Cinema Gin\u00e1sio<\/i>, and would later in the same year be part of the Portuguese delegation on the second edition of Cannes. At the moment of its first screening, it had approximately 102 minutes (around 2800 metres of film). Of those, only 26 minutes (688 metres of film) were preserved and the soundtrack was lost. The result of the scan and digital restoration of that fragment is now presented in IndieLisboa, on the day marking exactly 75 years since its premiere. Tr\u00eas Dias sem Deus <\/i>is part of the Director\u2019s Cut In Context <\/b>selection, co-programmed with the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Lost and Found<\/i><\/b> by Clara C\u00fallen, a documentary about the director’s grandmother – who was an Argentinean woman filmmaker and Barbara Virginia\u2019s contemporary – will also be screened.<\/p>\n
Two other Portuguese are in focus: Samuel Barbosa\u2019s Around Rocha\u2019s Table<\/i><\/b>, an exploration of Paulo Rocha\u2019s creative process, which will be screened in IndieLisboa after its Locarno premiere in August; and Di\u00e1logo de Sombras<\/i><\/b> by J\u00falio Alves, on world premiere, about Pedro Costa\u2019s universe and taking his exhibition in Serralves as starting point. Pedro Costa: Companhia <\/i>establishes a dialogue between the Portuguese director and the characters that inhabit his world.<\/p>\n
Wanda Jakubowska\u2019s The Last Stage<\/i><\/b> is one of the first portrayals of life in concentration camps, shot soon after World War II and now presented in a digitally restored version. Jakubowska herself was a prisoner in the concentration camp she was filming, before its dismantling. The footage is coupled with a fictional narration of what she lived and experienced there.\u00a0 A film that connects with From Where they Stood <\/i><\/b>by Christophe Cognet, programmed in the Silvestre section.<\/p>\n
In contrast, There Are Not Thirty-six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse<\/i><\/b> by Nicol\u00e1s Zukerfeld is an entertaining film, based on an investigation about a quotation identified as Raoul Walsh\u2019s and the resulting attempt to draw it. From a collection of characters riding in Walsh\u2019s films comes a film-essay.<\/p>\n
In Mouth of Madness<\/b>, genre <\/i>and language boundaries are torn. Among the features, an Italian horror classic celebrates its 50 years: Mario Bava\u2019s A Bay of Blood <\/b><\/em>tells the story of a rich countess\u2019s death, which triggers a battle over her heritage and a succession of deaths that doesn\u2019t seem to cease.<\/p>\n She Dies Tomorrow <\/i><\/b>by Amy Seimetz brings together psychological horror and absurd humour. Amy is a girl who has just bought a house, but she is confident that she will die the day after. An ideia that seems to become contagious around her.<\/p>\n In Spree,<\/i><\/b> by Eugene Kotlyarenko, Joe Keery (the friendly boy from the popular TV series Stranger Things<\/i>) is Kurt Kunkle, a driver obsessed with the idea that you need to register yourself to exist. Told in first-person, the film is a hybrid between comedy and horror, with a caution message regarding social media.<\/p>\n Among the section\u2019s shorts, in Percolate Galactic\u2019s Rendang of Death<\/i><\/b> two friends fight over the last piece of the best rendang <\/i>ever. You\u2019re Dead, Helene<\/i><\/b> by Michiel Blanchart follows H\u00e9l\u00e8ne, who is unable to detach from the love that still unites her with her boyfriend and keeps haunting him after her death. And MeTube3: August sings \u201eUna furtiva lagrima\u201c<\/i><\/b>, by Daniel Moshel, is the third chapter of a series of shorts marked by humour and the love of opera.<\/p>\n