Correspondencias, Rita Azevedo Gomes, Portugal, 2016, 145', VOSE
Two of our passions come together in this film. On the one hand, filmic correspondence: writing letters and postcards with images and sounds, a topic that we have already dedicated an entire programme to during our pre-Tabakalera period, when we were in Sukaldea. On the other, contemporary Portuguese film and one of its key figures: Rita Azevedo Gomes.
In our last yar's Oh Portugal! cycle we scheduled her previous film, A Vingança de Uma Mulher (2012). And now we are back with her latest work, inspired by the correspondence between two Portuguese writers, exile Jorge de Sena and his friend and great writer Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. Jorge de Sena had to leave Portugal for political reasons and never returned, living in exile first in Brazil and later in the United States.
Their epistolary exchange is an example of absolute freedom in times of Salazar's dictatorship and also shows the depth of a friendship that goes beyond literature and geographical distances. But as it could be no other way in the case of this Portuguese director, her film opens up and expands in multiple directions: it is not only about recovering those letters but also talking about the subtle and infinite correspondences and connections between images, words, musics, photographs, family films, memories and comments on the life of these characters, the life of the director herself and even our own memories and experience as spectators. The result, a film-essay where history, politics, past and future are mixed with absolute freedom and cinematographic mastery.
International première at the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) 2016.
Latest work by filmmaker Rita Azevedo Gomes, inspired by the correspondence between two Portuguese writers, exile Jorge de Sena and his friend and great writer Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.