Doclisboa has announced the first confirmed titles for its next edition, running 19-29 October. Five films in the Heart Beat section and five in the From the Earth to the Moon section “draw up a unique, rhythmic, varied landscape; from dance to literature, to music and the pleasures of the palate – and from the stage to the deep green jungle,” write festival organisers.
The names revealed August 31 include “the late, great and irreverent Luís Ospina,” a director that is of crucial importance for the festival, organisers note. Doclisboa dedicated a retrospective to Ospina in 2018 – followed by a tribute in 2019. Ospina Cali Colombia by Jorge de Carvalho focuses on a meeting with the director in Lisbon, and follows him as he talks about his life and his prolific work. The film will be screened in the festival’s HEART BEAT (see below) section – and has “its perfect counterpoint” in Ospina’s posthumous film, Silent Witnesses (Jeronimo Atehortua Arteaga, Luís Ospina), described as “a cinematic collage that (also) tells a story, of Colombian silent cinema in the first half of the 20th century, built from all the surviving material from the time.”
The FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON section presents director Sara Dolotadabi’s intimate vision of her father, Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (author of the longest narrative written in the Persian language) in An Owl, A Garden & The Writer.
The Chamber by Cristiane Bernardes and Tiago Aragão, a world premiere at Doclisboa, follows elected women from different political spectrums in Brazil, who held office in the Chamber of Deputies during the last year of Jair Bolsonaro’s government.
L’amitié by Alain Cavalier, whom the festival describes as “a fundamental filmmaker”, depicts, “with a nostalgia clean of sentimentality, the indelible ties that bind him to those who know how to share and hold space with him, whether in front of or behind the camera.” The section also includes Frederick Wiseman’s latest opus, Menus Plaisirs – Les Troigros, about the crucial moment when the famous restaurant is passed on to the next generation of the family, which has run it for four generations.
HEART BEAT, the section which organisers say “symbolises Doclisboa’s pulsating life,” showcases Joan Baez I Am Noise by Karen O’Connor, Maeve O’Boyle and Miri Navaski. A searing personal portrait of the soul of folk legend and activist Joan Baez, the film is an immersive experience that follows the singer on her last tour and retrieves precious documents from her extensive archive.
Nôs Dança by Rui Lopes da Silva is a journey led by dancer and choreographer António Tavares to the islands of Cape Verde, “as he discovers – through other dancers, as well as through people who preserve stories and knowledge – the dances spread across the archipelago, from traditional rhythms to contemporary styles.”
In Asif Kapadia’s Creature, described as “a beautiful union of the languages of dance and cinema,” the director expands on a choreography by Akram Khan. The film is “the unfolding of a fascinating conversation between two genres and between two creators; it is also a powerful reflection on authoritarianism, the climate crisis, love and loss,” the festival writes.
Finally, Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV, by Amanda Kim, tells the story of how the most celebrated Korean artist and video art pioneer rose to fame in New York, and of how he predicted a future where “everyone will have their own TV”. The twists and turns of how we got here, to our present times, is described in the future tense by the visionary Paik.
