Polo Cultural Gaivotas| Boavista

A family of beekeepers lives in a rural area of Tuscany. Soon, the fragile balance of their home is disturbed by the arrival of a strange foreign boy, and the participation of the local community in a television program. Following the thematic line of Corpo Celeste (2011), this is a film about youth and emancipation, an intimate account of the complex dynamics of family life. (Source: LEFFEST)

Curated by: Sons of Lumière

Creation: Alice Rohrwacher

Elmira Shahanaghi's short film looks back at her experience as a war refugee, emphasizing what she felt and feels.

Toronto, Canada, 2019 (5 min.)

Curator: Elmira Shahanaghi

A short film that is still in the creation phase.

Curator: Elmira Shahanaghi

Blackface, the Documentary marks the reunion between Heverton Harieno and Marco Mendonça, after having worked together on the play of the same name, written and directed by Marco Mendonça.

In this documentary, directed by Heverton Harieno, Marco Mendonça answers questions about the process of creating his play Blackface. Filled with images accumulated over months of research for the creation of the play, the film is an imaginary journey that tries to reveal a little of the nuances and motivations surrounding the show.

Direction and photography: Marco Mendonça and Heverton Harieno
Portugal, 2024 (24 min.)

Production: CUDO FILMES

A Caucasian insurance salesman, Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambridge), gets the surprise of his life when he wakes up to find that his skin now resembles that of a black man. On a daily basis, he finds himself the victim of discriminatory practices - the same kind of behavior that, ironically, he himself would have used against black people. When his wife (Estelle Parsons) leaves him and all attempts to explain and reverse the phenomenon fail, Jeff comes to accept and even profit from his new condition.

Created by: Melvin Van Peebles
USA, 1970 (1h40)

Aurora is a Portuguese worker in an e-commerce warehouse in Glasgow. Working irregular shifts, her job consists of fetching orders from shelves and registering barcodes. Trapped between the confines of her workplace and a shared apartment, Aurora dreams of escaping this life of slave wages and social alienation and finding meaning in her life. Marked by the blues and greys of industrial spaces, the film's persistent gaze shows how insignificant the lives of workers are in the face of larger economic forces and paints an intimate and clear portrait of contemporary financial and social precariousness.

Creation: Laura Carreira

Portugal, United Kingdom, 2024 (1h45)

Open-air movie sessions every Wednesday.

Curated by: The Sons of Lumière

Team Choice

Dreaming of Lions is a dark, romantic and surreal tragicomedy about euthanasia. In Portugal, where euthanasia is not yet legal, Gilda and Amadeu, both terminally ill and with little time to live, meet through a clandestine organization that helps terminally ill patients commit suicide painlessly and go on a surreal adventure to Spain to finalize their plans.
While Gilda is a force of nature, particularly adept at detecting the hypocrisy of the world through her devastating humor, Amadeu is an affable, modest and introverted man. The two go through "euthanasia seminars" seen through Gilda's imaginative perspective, including narrative moments directed directly at the camera, with the situations becoming increasingly absurd. In the fateful Bonnie & Clyde-style comic adventure that unfolds, the friendship between Gilda and Amadeu evolves into attraction and great love. When their criminal acts almost land them in prison, they decide to travel to Spain, where euthanasia is legal. However, Amadeu hides a dark secret that threatens the very purpose of this trip..

Creation: Paolo Marinou-Blanco

Portugal, 2023 (1h28)

Choose the Active and Healthy Ageing Program of the Misericórdia Parish Council

With millennia of human occupation, Lisbon has grown to meet the needs of the population. The city may seem an unlikely refuge for wildlife, but many species find conditions here to survive and raise offspring. In the streets, rooftops and gardens of the capital, we discover the nature that lives on our doorstep and often goes unnoticed.

Creation: Madalena Boto

Portugal, 2024 (50min.)

The movie of the month will be chosen by the public through a call for entries.

The SillySeason collective, using the concepts of post human and post future, seeks to question certain governmental discursive logics, their dissemination in daily and collective life, and their interference in an idea of the future, which is increasingly suffocating rights, freedoms and guarantees.

The show takes the form of a staged journey.

Direction: SillySeason (Cátia Tomé, Ivo Saraiva e Silva, Ricardo Teixeira)

Performed by: Cátia Tomé, Ivo Saraiva e Silva, Ricardo Teixeira

Production: Inês Pinto

Technical director: Tiago Coelho

Sound design: Ricardo Remédio

In the year in which the first staging of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull" turns 130, and in the year in which Polo Cultural Gaivotas | Boavista celebrates its 10th anniversary, the Lost Content collective has recovered the Russian playwright's original text and decided not to do it, not to take it to the stage. Or maybe a little. After much debate between the founding creators of this collective, we decided to take as our starting point the discussion that a dramaturgy can and should raise about art and the artist, the conflicts between traditional artistic creation and innovation, the relationship between art and life and the search for artistic freedom.

Exactly one of the main themes of "The Seagull". How do we reflect on the conditions and freedoms of contemporary creation and expression in the current context of political radicalization, artificial intelligence, among other challenges and urgencies? How to act, what to create, what to say, at a time when the paradigm as we know it is changing? How do we resist so as not to regress? Will we create from what remains or destroy in order to create? We will take the creative act of this show/performance - which mixes video and live performance - as a seagull's flight. "If you ever need my life, come and take it". It might fail, as it would be risking a flight on the high seas, but we're in the right place to try.

Collective creation: Lost Content

Text and dramaturgy: Gisela Duque Pereira and Mirró Pereira

Sound and video: João Gambino, Miguel Afonso and Pedro Costa

Performed by: Gisela Duque Pereira, João Gambino, Miguel Afonso, Mirró Pereira and Pedro Costa

Production: PlateiaParalela

Note: the show contains a sequence of flashing lights or patterns. Shoes must be removed when entering the room (socks will be provided for each spectator).