An architect, Álvaro Siza, and his team are called to coordinate the recovery project of the Old Town, on the island of Santiago in Cape Verde. The ultimate goal is this city’s application for a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Old Town is a historical place: formerly called Ribeira Grande, it was the first city founded by the Portuguese in Cape Verde. This whole process raises high expectations of improving their living conditions in the local population. This film tells the story of the encounter between these two worlds, that of the architect and that of the population, following over three years some of the stories that happened...

biografia

Catarina Alves Costa is a director and anthropologist. Among other films, she directed Margot (2022), Viagem aos Makonde (2020) Pedra e Cal (2016) Falamos de António Campos (2010) Nacional 206 (2009) O Arquiteto e a Cidade Velha (2004) Mais Alma (2000), Swagatam (1998) Senhora Aparecida (1994) and recently co-directed Um Ramadão em Lisboa (2019). Graduated in Social Anthropology, she received a Master’s degree from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester, as a fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and a PhD from Nova University of Lisbon with the thesis Camponeses do Cinema. Representations of Popular Culture in Cinema Portuguese. In 2000 she founded with Catarina Mourão the producer Laranja Azul where she produced films by Daniel Blaufuks, Sílvia Firmino and João Ribeiro, among others. She is an Assistant Professor at Nova University of Lisbon and Coordinator of the Master’s degree in Anthropology – Visual Cultures and the Audiovisual Laboratory, FCSH Pole of the Center in Network in Anthropology / CRIA. She organized for the Portuguese Cinematheque in Lisbon / Cinema Museum the Ethnographic Archives of Margot Dias filmed in Mozambique and Angola between 1958 and 1961. She also teaches at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, and at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Barcelona. She received among others the Best Documentary Award of the Recife Ethnographic Film Festival (2019), the Critics Award from Caminhos do Cinema Português (2009), the Planéte Award at the Bilan du Film Ethnographique (1999), the Society for Visual Anthropology American Anthropological Association Film Festival Excellence Award, USA and the 1st Prize of the FESTIVAL VII Rassegna Internazionale di Documentari Etnografici (1996).

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