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Porto/Post/Doc brings cinema of affection and the discussion of identity issues to Porto in November

The dates are set for the 6th edition of Porto/Post/Doc. As a meeting point for creators, audience and industry professionals, the festival dedicated to the cinema of the real aims to foster film culture, screening new forms of contemporary cinema. With an eclectic philosophy, ranging from the International Competition and parallel programmes (such as Transmission, for documentaries about music and night parties; or the Forum of the Real, with debates with specialists and academics), the festival will be hosted from November 23rd to December 1st and will occupy  several venues in Porto – including Porto Municipal Theater – Rivoli and Passos Manuel Cinema -, a historic and cosmopolitan city, the centre of a vibrant community and nightlife.

This year, the thematic and principal focus of the the festival is Identities. Devoting itself to the discussion of identity issues in contemporary society, the festival will be home for various platforms, which will serve as a starting point for conversations around the notion of identity in its many dimensions and its intrinsic relationship with the cinematic device. One of those platforms is the aforementioned Forum of the Real, which will be taking place between November 27th and 29th, at Passos Manuel Cinema and will feature three panel speakers: the first, Of Earth, will discuss the relationship between identity construction and territory; the second, Of Thought, aims at an approximation of philosophical content to the very concept of identity and identities, in the plural; finally, the third panel, entitled Of Images, intends to reflect on contemporary cinema and its interweaving with the most diverse individual and collective identity flows. Álvaro Domingues (geographer), Antonio Guerreiro (critic), Ben Rivers (director), Christiana Perschon (director), Daniel Ribas (researcher), Marie-José Mondzain (philosopher), Pedro Mexia (critic), Susana de Matos Viegas (anthropologist), Valérie Massadian (director) are some of the attendees already confirmed in this forum. Entrance will be free.

The second platform is a parallel film program, in which Porto/Post/Doc will present a selection of short and feature films, with the aim of seeting on dialogue classic film history – such as Persona by Ingmar Bergman, Street of Shame by Kenji Mizoguchi or La Salamandre, by Alain Tanner – with some contemporary discoveries and productions. In the same context, the festival will also feature three short films by Swiss activist and director Carole Rossopoulos, shot during the 70s, of an eminently political and militant nature, these films show some of the main French social struggles of the time, such as case of FHAR (Front homosexuel d’action revolutionary). Also noteworthy is the screening of Ghost Strata and Now, At Last!, two of Ben Rivers’s most recent feature films; the return of Gürcan Keltek (2017 edition winner) to the festival with the short film Gulyabani; and the special session of Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory, a Mohanad Yaqubi film made from archival footage of the Palestinian struggle produced between the 1960s and 1980s. This session will be followed by a debate with the filmmaker moderated by Nuno Lisboa (Doc’s Kingdom director and programmer). The program also features Christiana Perschon’s film She Is The Other Gaze, Sol Negro by Laura Huertas Millán, Coffee Colored Children by Ngozi Onwura, Portrait of Jason, by Shirley Clarke, and Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait, by Khyentse Norbu. The festival will also present a retrospective of the Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys, award-winning documentary filmmaker that has directed hybrid and essayistic works such as Earth of the Blind (1992) or Uku Kai (2006), two of the seven films to be screened. The director will be present at the festival to comment the sessions of this retrospective, promoted in partnership with the Lithuanian Film Center. In addition, the festival also programmed two special sessions: a carte blanche of Stonys from the work of his compatriot, Jonas Mekas, who has recently passed away, and another titled Landscapes of Forbidden Memory, with several Lithuanian films that have inspired Stonys and that were personally chosen by him.

But wait, there is more. Another point of focus of this year’s Porto/Post/Doc will go towards director Ute Aurand, one of the references of German experimental cinematography, and the cinema of affection. The director will present Porto/Post/Doc’s focus on her work, a selection inhabited by family, friends and daily experiences that emphasizes the poetic and intimate character of a cinema that focuses on affection and human relations. This will include eleven of Ute Aurand’s short films that will be screened during two sessions and will feature the director’s presence in the room. The program will also feature a conversation between Ute Aurand and Garbiñe Ortega Postigo, artistic director of the Punto de Vista festival.

Last but not least, Port/Post/Doc will also host the Transmission program, devoted to music and pop culture, that includes the screening of Nick Broomfield’s Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love and a special by director Mike Christie. The premiere of Nick Broomfield’s hip documentary about Leonard Cohen’s relationship with one of his muses, Marianne, will mark the opening of the festival’s 2019 edition, taking place on November 23 at 9:30 pm, at Porto Municipal Theater – Rivoli. The focus on British director Mike Christie includes the national premiere of three of his latest documentaries: Hansa Studios: By The Wall 1976-90, about the golden years of one of the best-known recording studios of the city of Berlin, as well as New Order: Decades and Suede: The Insatiable Ones, about the homonymous bands. Throughout the week, the festival will also screen Haut Les Filles by François Armanet, a documentary about the female figures of French rock music featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy or Vanessa Paradis; David Dietl’s Berlin Bouncer, which proposes a trip through the city’s clubbing culture through the stories of three security guards from some of the German capital’s most famous nightclubs; and Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, directed by Stephen Nomura Schible, about the Japanese composer. In Portuguese, Transmission also includes the screening of the film Batida de Lisboa by Rita Maia and Vasco Viana, a documentary shot in the suburbs of the Portuguese capital that seeks to reveal musicians and producers from different origins – from Angola to São Tomé, from Cape Verde to Guinea Bissau – as well as their identity struggles. The festival will also screen Um Punk Chamado Ribas, by Paulo Miguel Antunes, and O Desvio, by Tiago Afonso. This year, Transmission extends to Braga, with the presentation of two sessions at gnration: Wednesday, November 27, with screening of Batida de Lisboa, and Thursday, November 28, screening of New Order: Decades.

Porto/Post/Doc 2019 takes places at Porto Municipal Theater – Rivoli and Passos Manuel Cinema, in Porto, from November 23rd to December 1st. For more information regarding all sessions and corresponding tickets, please visit the festival’s website here.

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