Reel Women Fanzine March 2017

FANZINE

Bem vinda! Welcome!

Susana Nobre and Cláudia Varejão’s films have travelled the festival circuit from Cannes to Busan Film Festival and many others, bringing their perspective on the multi-faceted reality of contemporary Portugal throughout the globe. With contrasting and original cinematic styles, they engage us in a journey through life stories and experiences in which humanity breaks down all barriers between characters and people, between spectators and fiction, inviting us to live with them rather than to look at them. Let’s warmly welcome Susana and Cláudia’s first stop-over in the UK! Loreta Gandolfi, Programmer

LISBON - PROVINCE Susana Nobre FICTION / 35MM / 19’ / 2010

A nurse takes care of a patient in her house. Maria do Céu has been a nurse for more than forty years, working at an old Hospital in Lisbon. She was sixteen, when she arrived to Lisbon, coming from a small village in Alentejo. At the Hospital, she reads the file of an old patient who was also her friend. The file is then closed. Maria do Céu returns to her village, where she sings at the people’s house choir.

Susana Nobre was born in Lisbon in 1974. In 1998 she concluded her degree in Media Studies at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She collaborated with the Cinematography Laboratory at Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (Universidade Nova) She developed with the cinema production company Raiva a Senior Film Workshop with ICAM´s financial support in 2004. In 2005, she attended the cinema-directing course through the Calouste Gulbenkian´s Artistic Creativity and Creation Program in collaboration with the London Film School. In 2008 she cofounded TERRATREME. She directed the short-films ‘The swimmers’ (2001), ‘It would have been simple’ (2006), ‘LisbonProvince’(2010) and the feature documentaries ‘Daycare hospital’ (2003) and ‘Active Life’ (2013).

LUZ DA MANHA Claudia Varejão FICTION / HD / 18’ / 2012

Morning Light closes a circle of three short films by Cláudia Varejão on family (dis)encounters, where the roads do not always coincide and unexpected disruptions are not necessarily the result of a failure. Everyday life hides larger and quieter forces and their understanding is often presented as a task too violent or even useless. Whatever the look that is allowed to live, the transcendence of human relations will always be there, front, unwavering and gross. Morning Light approaches the distance between three generations - mother, daughter and grand daughter. In a dense river that unites them, for no apparent reason other than exhaustion, a fissure emerges.

TRIALS—EXORCISMS Susana Nobre FICTION / HD / 25’ / 2015

A train passes through the town of Alhandra, between the hills and the river. Óscar, who has spent twenty-five of his forty-eight years working at the same factory, is waiting to hear the court’s verdict on his employer’s insolvency claim.

With production at a standstill and salaries overdue, Óscar and his coworkers continue to show up everyday for work, hoping to keep their jobs. But when the closing of the factory is confirmed, Óscar makes peace with the world again when he’s hired by the factory next door.

COLD DAY Cláudia Varejão FICTION / HD1080 25P / 27’ / 2009

“I intend this film to be a portrait of incongruity. With characters whose relationships are at once both trivial and complex, and who inhabit their own worlds in isolation. I am drawn by the possibility of portraying intimacy through the gestures and words that identify us. I want to make a film where for a moment it is possible to forget fiction, one where the human landscape insinuates itself, full on, in every frame. Where the more predictable and even routine the characters’ actions and situations are, the greater the possibility (and probability) of getting to the core of our being. It is here, in this apparent simplicity that my motivation for this idea resides. An idea that will develop around the people whose antagonist is no other than life itself, with nothing (and everything) heroic that that involves.”

Cláudia Varejão was born in Porto in 1980. She began her film studies in Lisbon, first on camera and then later took a directing course at Restart. She has also done an intensive course on feature film directing at the International Film Academy in São Paulo and, undertook further film studies with the German Film und Fernsehakademie, Berlin. She directed the documentary “Falta-me”, which was awarded an honourable mention at DOCLISBOA 2005, and the IT’S ALL TRU FESTIVAL, 2006, Brazil) and “Fim de Semana” on the official selection of PIFF – the Pusan International Film Festival, South Korea and Indie Lisboa 2007. She was also worked as director of photography on several other documentaries.