h4.jpg

INTRODUCTION

FAMILY FILM PROJECT

Archive, Memory, Ethnography
International Film Festival

The FAMILY FILM PROJECT is a film festival that takes place annually in Porto, having been increasing its visibility and internationalization since the first edition in 2012.

The competitive programming sessions are traditionally divided into three thematic areas: Lives and Places (with a focus on the voyeuristic, biographical or documental record of habitats and everyday life), Connections (focused on interpersonal and community dynamics) and Memory and Archive (dedicated to creative approaches from testimonies and found footage).

The festival welcomes films of different genres in its competition section, from documentary to experimental, from short films to feature films. Whether through ethnographic cinema, archival or found-footage cinema, “home movies”, the various forms of experimental cinema or the hybridization between cinema and the performing arts, the Family Film Project seeks to highlight the challenges of cinema in its testimonial and artistic double facet.

The festival program always reserves a prominent space for internationally renowned film theorists, directors and invited artists, such as Jonas Mekas (2012), Péter Forgács (2013), Alina Marazzi (2015), João Canijo (2016), Regina Guimarães (2017), Bill Nichols (2018), Daniel Blaufuks (2018), Jaimie Baron (2019), Cláudia Varejão (2019), Harun Farocki (2020), Ruben Östlund (2021), Catarina Alves Costa (2022), among others.

In addition to film screenings, the Family Film Project organizes various types of parallel cultural events: exhibitions and installations (which may extend beyond the festival date), film concerts, performances in different locations around the city (Private Collection), masterclasses, conferences and book releases focused on the aesthetic and anthropological dimension of cinema.

With different lines of action, the festival places itself on the conceptual thresholds between cinema and other arts and areas of thought.