LX Filmes

As the summer of 1980 ends, 16 and 17 year old sisters Maria and Alda flee to Lisbon from Angola?s civil war. In the hands of fate, they must learn to live without money in a foreign city. On the edge of the law, the two have to grow up and become women. When the problems are already overwhelming, news comes that makes them unbearable. This blow, however, will give them the push to decide their futures: Alda is going to France and Maria back to Angola in search of her roots.

On the night of April 26, 1974, the prison doors of Caxias opened and the political prisoners were released. Two women: Diana Andringa and Maria José Campos relive their detention in Caxias in this film. Even though they did not suffer the torture and other forms of violence that most of their companions were subjected to, both speak with great emotion of isolation and the so-called “normal regime” period in which they shared the space of a cell with other prisoners and learned to live in prison.

Angolares are the oldest inhabitants of the island of São Tomé. Control of the island was wrested from them in the late 19th century, and their descendents have been reduced to a small fishing community. This fascinating film explores the tangled history of the Angolares and their beautiful island.

A recreation of an event to commemorate the presence of the dead and the decayed memories of the living, of filmmaking

Margarida Senhorinha, aged 69, is illiterate but records poems, songs and memories of her birthdays on a tape recorder. She’s spent forty years in her house with its garden amidst the blocks of flats of an ever expanding Cacém. Now, her entire life depends on her landlord. She’s at risk of lose her house, perhaps to make way for yet another tower block. A living memory of rural Portugal that has come face to face with urban Cacém, Margarida Senhorinha asks simply: “and now where do I go?”

In 1462, the first African slaves were settled on the island of Cape Verde brought by the Portuguese colons. It is supposed that they were the first inhabitants of the archipelagos. They carried with them the rhythms and the seeds of what became the BATUQUE: a music form, performed mostly by women, both singers and dancers. The singers, repeat very strong lyrics, sitting in a circle and beating the rhythms with their hands on a piece of cloth between their legs. While one woman performs a very sensual dance with her hips in the middle of the circle. During the colonial era, it has been strongly forbidden but it remained alive in clandestinity. The group Raiz de Tambarina, one of the oldest groups of Batuque on Santiago island, is composed of ordinary people, saleswomen, fish merchants, drivers... Through their every day life and performances we discover Cape Verde today and their passion for the Batuque.

Akerman, Monteiro, Oliveira, Ruiz, Schroeter and Wenders are among the directors he produced: Deux, trois fois Branco is a portrait of Portuguese producer Paulo Branco, between life and legend.

As in the original paradise, the inhabitants of the Bissagos archipelago, located in the west coast of Africa, live according to ancient traditions and in absolute respect for nature, until a gang of drug dealers occupies their sacred islands. The medicine man dies and everything seems lost, until his young successor decides to fight the invaders to save the village.

Joáo Bénard da Costa, director of the Portuguese National Film Archives [deceased in 2009], interviews the dean of contemporaneous film directors [96-years-old then]. Two humanists of different philosophical backgrounds, both with their long, entire lives dedicated to culture in general (music, painting, literature) and to film in particular, discuss freely, sometimes haltingly, the director's power as a creator or a magician, the philosophy beyond particular scenes in classic movies, film technique, the importance of color, sound and music to films, art versus entertainment, and much more. Their talk takes place in a museum room, seating in front of "The Annunciation" (a 1510 oil painting by João Vaz, a Portuguese artist), which eventually leads to a discussion of 'Leonardo da Vinci', and the relationship between a trend-setter master and his disciples.

Rede de Dormir starring Gilda Nomacce, Vitor Dutra, and Cida Augusto. A tale about the hammock and its forgotten use as a shroud.

Guinea-Bissau, 1969. A violent war between the Portuguese colonial army and the guerrillas of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea. Nome leaves his village and joins the maquis. After years, he will return as a hero, but joy will soon give way to bitterness and cynicism.

A short-film in 35 mm, black > white stages a day in which the main character discovers that she stopped seeing in color. Written as photographer’s film, it was shot on several locations in Lisbon. It is the only purely fiction work by the author.

Poet, agricultural engineer and revolutionary Amílcar Cabral was born in Guinea-Bissau to Cape Verdean parents. After studying in Portugal, he emerged as the charismatic leader of the anti-colonial struggle against Portuguese rule. With his utopian ideas, he sparked a cultural and an armed uprising that went on to inspire other African liberation movements.

A documentary shot in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Portugal that includes a series of interviews and testimonies of people who lived through the period of the anti-colonial war and liberation in Guinea-Bissau. This documentary, directed by Diana Andringa and Flora Gomes, sets the tone for a debate around the themes of reconciliation and historical memory in the post-conflict period of the Portuguese colonial war.

Colonia del Sacramento is a city in Uruguay founded by the Portuguese in the 19th century. It was said that there still lived a man who would be descended from the founders. Going in search of this man, the film follows its trail to the great metropolis of Buenos Aires that reveals its scars, memories and characters.

A plan to avoid job losses at a factory in 1976 becomes the starting point for an incisive account of our current and future economic situation.

During the Second World War, Lisbon was a corridor for refugees going from Hitler's occupied territories to America. This film tells two parallel stories about exile and accommodation. Through a narrated memoir and photographs, the tale of a German Jewish family that decided to stay in Portugal is recounted. The larger, more sociological account of the others who used Lisbon's escape route is skillfully told as well, using beautifully shot historic footage and written memoirs by some of the era's leading intellectuals, including Heinrich Mann and Alfred Döblin. This film evokes a desperate, intensely romantic period of exile, despair, and, ultimately, freedom.

Lisbon, with thousands of years of human occupation, may seem like an unlikely refuge for wildlife, but many species find space to live and thrive in the city. The documentary reveals the nature that coexists with us in the streets, rooftops, and gardens of the capital, often invisible to hurried eyes.