SUMMARY
FAMILY FILM PROJECT 2016
5th International Festival of Family Films, Ethnography and Archive
09 to 13 November | Rivoli and Passos Manuel | Porto
In its 5th edition, the international film festival Family Film Project once again proposes a varied program with competitive sessions, performative events, installations, conferences and authorial film cycles in the presence of invited filmmakers.
The festival will take place at the Rivoli Theatre and Cinema Passos Manuel over five days of programming (9 to 13 of November 2016) inviting, once again, to the immersion in the universe of familiar - but also marginal - landscapes that define, in the era of image, our imagination and our imagery.
João Canijo is the guest director in this year's festival, with screenings, on November 12th and 13th, of the author's three most recent feature films: "Sangue do Meu Sangue" (2011), "É o Amor" (2013) and "Portugal – Um Dia de Cada Vez" (2015). The director will be present in Porto on November 12th.
Under the theme of "Marginal Forms", the festival reinforces, in this edition, its commitment to the experimental, the casual, the precarious, but also the themes of exclusion, of not belonging and interdiction.
Marginal Forms are also the theme of the conference taking place on November 10th at the Faculty of Letters, with the presence of the Italian philosopher Mario Perniola, followed by interventions by João Sousa Cardoso, Miguel Leal, Né Barros and Filipe Martins, in partnership with the group Aesthetics, Politics and Knowledge of the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto.
Also on November 10th, the Israeli director Barak Heymann will held the Masterclass “Documentary Filmmaking - Heymann Brothers Films” at Passos Manuel.
Before that, on 9 November, the festival will have its opening in Rivoli with a performative event by Italian actress Marika Pensa based on the text "Ventiquattrore" by Mario Perniola, who will also be on scene.
As in previous years, the sessions of the competitive program are divided into three thematic areas: Lives and Places (focusing on the voyeuristic, biographical or documentary recording of habitats and quotidian), Connections (focused on interpersonal and community dynamics) and Memory and Archive (dedicated to creative views from testimony and found footage). There will also happen a separate competitive section dedicated to Fiction and Animation, with a selection of seven short films, all from different nationalities.
Among the works in competition, we highlight the most recent feature films of the brothers Barak and Tomer Heymann (Israel), world premiering in Portugal: "Mr. Gaga "(2015), about the renowned choreographer Ohad Naharin, and" Who's Gonna Love Me Now "(2016), about a homosexual and HIV-positive former military who is looking to resume family ties. Another highlight to the awarded "La Laguna", by Aaron Schock (2016, USA); also to the awarded "A Family Affair", by Tom Fassaert (2015, Netherlands); and to the feature film "An unfinished film, for my daughter Somayeh" (2015, Iran), by Iranian director Morteza Payeshenas, documenting efforts to repatriate his own daughter, after she joins a recruitment group in Iraq. From Spain come the last two projects by director Xacio Baño, "Ser e Voltar" (2014) and "Eco" (2015), with peculiar approaches on memory and family space.
Competitive sessions gather, in total, two dozen films from sixteen nationalities (Germany, Belgium, Slovakia, Spain, France, Holland, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Sweeden, Switzerland, Turkey, USA) offering an absolutely multicultural landscape of the global film scene. From documentary to fiction, from experimental to video installation, from short to feature film, the films received in this edition form an eclectic panorama of possible accesses to intimacy, family, ethnographic and archive through the cinematic approach.
