-
Wednesday, 18 April – 7pm
Session 1
Second session: Monday, 23 April – 7pm
Manoel de Oliveira
Douro, Faina Fluvial (Labour on the Douro River), 1931
Portugal, 35 mm, silent, b/w, 26'Paulo Rocha
Máscara de Aço contra Abismo Azul (Steel Mask Versus Blue Abyss), 1988
Portugal, 35 mm, colour, 64'First session presented by António Preto, professor of Film Studies and Audiovisuals at the Escola Superior Artística and Universidade Lusófona (Porto) and head of the Manoel de Oliveira House-Museum (Serralves Foundation, Porto).
This session centres on the avant-garde art which was contemporary to Pessoa. In 1931, Manoel de Oliveira screened his first film, Douro, Faina Fluvial, a cinematic portrait of the Douro River, the lifeblood of Porto, his home town. Oliveira constructs a visual symphony along the lines of Walter Ruttmanny’s Symphony for a Great City and Dziga Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera in a film, brimming with evocative compositions and cadenced edits created through repetition — akin to the montages of the time — widely recognised as a masterpiece and a precursor of experimental cinema in Portugal. The film paints a unique portrait of Porto in 1930, a city caught between tradition and modernity, between the manual and the mechanical. In Máscara de Aço contra Abismo, meanwhile, Paulo Rocha, another point of reference in Portuguese cinema, takes a highly personal approach to the career of the foremost artist in the Portuguese avant-garde scene, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, who died in 1918 at the age of 30 and whose work calls into question the dominant narratives in avant-garde movements of the past.
-
Thursday, 19 April – 7pm
Session 2
Second session: Thursday, 26 April – 7pm
Manoel de Oliveira
Non ou a Vã Glória de Mandar (No, or the Vain Glory of Command), 1990
Portugal, 35 mm, colour, 111'The film Non ou a Vã Glória de Mandar explores the misfortunes of Portugal’s history and the myth of King Sebastian of Portugal. His death aged 24 in a battle in North Africa engendered the country’s loss of independence as it fell into the hands of the Spanish kings, monarchs of Portugal by direct succession until 1640. From that point on the belief was born that the return of Sebastian one foggy morning would mark the end of any crisis the country faced. This myth, and the loss of identity of a nation mired in underdevelopment, foreign influence and melancholy of the past, also runs through the work of Pessoa, above all in his poetry collection Mensagem (Message), which to some degree is expanded upon by Oliveira in this film.
-
Friday, 20 April – 7pm
Session 3
Second session: Friday, 27 April – 7pm
Júlio Bressane
O Batuque dos Astros (Drumming Beat of the Stars), 2012
Brazil, digital archive, colour, 74'First session presented by the director, Júlio Bressane.
The work of Fernando Pessoa was greeted favourably in Brazil once it started to gain traction. Notable is its influence on the film O Batuque dos Astros, in which a master of Brazilian cinema, Júlio Bressane, sets forth a parallel journey around the city of Lisbon and the life of Pessoa, combining his writings and the places he lived. Consequently, it expounds a seemingly abstract documentary cartography with an Impressionist structure to its narration, using music to dramatic effect and the asynchronous concept of sound to create atmosphere. An icon of non-conformist cinema in the Brazilian underground, Bressane brandishes a defence of life as a method of film-making in this film, paying homage to Fernando Pessoa and alluding to the multi-faceted relationship between cinema, writing and the city, arduously reducible to one sole form.
-
Saturday, 21 April – 7pm
Session 4
Second session: Sunday, 29 April – 5pm
João Botelho
Conversa Acabada (The Other One), 1981
Portugal, 35mm, colour, 105'João César Monteiro
Conserva Acabada (The End of the Conversation), 1990
Portugal, digital archive, colour, 12’First session presented by Portuguese director João Botelho
Conversa Acabada is a feature-length film by João Botelho which focuses on the correspondence Pessoa kept with his friend and poet Mário de Sá-Carneiro, with whom he founded the first magazine of Portuguese modernity, Orpheu (1915). This film ushers in a decade, the 1980s, in which Pessoa’s work spread far and wide, both in Portugal and overseas, with the publication of a number of unpublished texts, most notably The Book of Disquiet, which in turn prompted Botelho to make another film, Filme do Desassossego, in 2010. The same session also features the screening of Conserva Acabada, a short film by João César Monteiro on the difficulties a director faces to secure funding and make a film on Pessoa. The work constitutes the first paradoxical and irreverent critique of the tourist industry’s appropriation of Pessoa and the creation of a “Pessoa brand” with the statue of the writer in the famous A Brasileira café in Lisbon.
Pessoa and Film
![Julio Bresane. O Batuque dos Astros [Algarabía de los astros]. Película, 2012](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/pessoa-gr.jpg.webp)
Held on 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 abr 2018
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) and the invention of the modern subject in a body of writing intersected by melancholy and the conception of multiple fictitious identities form the backbone of this series, a survey on the author of The Book of Disquiet from the perspective of film. The programme touches upon themes such as the relationship between writing and life, performance and narrative, and non-literary forms of text, featuring films by four Portuguese directors, Manoel de Oliveira, João Botelho, Paulo Rocha, and João César Monteiro, and one Brazilian, Júlio Bressane, whose work constitutes, historically speaking, a playful, popular and counter-cultural opposition to Cinema Novo.
Pessoa’s interest in film led him to write six scripts, ranging from the absurd, a critique of one sole identity and a reconsideration of genres (Note for a Silly Thriller, Note for a Thriller and The Multiple Nobleman, for instance), and to establish his own production company, Ecce Film, for which he designed a logo and searched for premises. Neither the company nor the films ever came to fruition, however.
Furthermore, the writing of Fernando Pessoa assembles some of the key themes in contemporary auteur cinema, mapping a route through the major reference points in modern Portuguese film. In essence, the crisis of existence, the city and urban experience as a transition towards dissolution, the conception of identity as a multiple and performative act, the progressive decadence of a country after its past nationalist glories, and the assimilation of cultural critique in tourism and cultural brands, for instance with Pessoa in modern-day Lisbon, are themes which enable the confluence between the writer and the film-makers to be established.
This series engages in dialogue with the exhibition Pessoa. All Art Is a Form of Literature (Museo Reina Sofía, until 7 May 2018), and, by the same token, looks to explore the relationships between writing and life, in this case through film, and to delve into non-literary forms and spaces in texts and writing.
With the support of
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
In collaboration with
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Christian Nyampeta and the École du soir
13, 14, 15 NOV, 11, 12, 13 DIC 2025
Christian Nyampeta is a Rwandan artist, musician and film-maker whose work encompasses pedagogies and community forms of knowledge production and transmission. His Ècole du soir (Evening School) is an art project conceived as a mobile space of collective learning and is named in homage to Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), a pioneer of African cinema who defined his films as “evening classes” for the people, a medium of education and emancipation through culture.
This block is made up of three double sessions: the video work of Christian Nyampeta, the films of École du soir and one of Ousmane Sèmbene’s feature-length films. Nyampeta will introduce all three first sessions.
Long Live L’Abo! Celluloid and Activism
4, 5, 6 DIC 2025
L’Abominable is a collective film laboratory founded in La Courneuve (Paris, France) in 1996. It came into being in response to the disappearing infrastructures in artisan film-making and to provide artists and film-makers with a self-managed space from which to produce, develop and screen films in analogue formats such as Super 8, 16mm and 35mm. Anchored in this premise, the community promotes aesthetic and political experimentation in analogue film opposite digital hegemony. Over the years, L’Abominable, better known as L’Abo, has accompanied different generations of film-makers, upholding an international movement of independent film practices.
This third segment is structured in three sessions: a lecture on L’Abo given by Pilar Monsell and Camilo Restrepo; a session of short films in 16mm produced in L’Abo; and the feature-length film Une isle, une nuit, made by the Les Pirates des Lentillères collective.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.
On the Art of Occupying Spaces and Curating Film Programmes
23, 24, 25, 30, 31 OCT 2025
On the Art of Occupying Spaces and Curating Film Programmes is a film programme overseen by Miriam Martín and Ana Useros, and the first within the project The Cinema and Sound Commons. The activity includes a lecture and two films screened twice in two different sessions: John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948) and John Gianvito’s The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (2001).
“By virtue of a group of film curator enthusiasts, small plazas and vacant lots in Madrid’s Lavapiés neighbourhood became cinemas with the arrival of summer. The city streets made room for everyone: the local residents who came down with their seats tucked under their arms, or those who simply came across the Lavapiés Film Festival with no prior knowledge of it, but knowing how to recognise a free and convivial film screening, as enticing as light is to moths. The Festival’s film curators had to first reach a consensus with one another, by assembly, and then with others, addressing issues ranging from electricity to the transfer of rights to show the films.
Whereas the annually organised Festival resembled a camp, the weekly CSOA (Squatted Self-managed Social Centre) La Morada film society looked more like a settlement. In each squatted social centre, a micro civilisation is founded, and nestled among its infrastructures is always a film society. Why? We’ll see. A direct outcome of the 15M anti-austerity movement, this film society was contentless in form (the content, the films, were decided upon from session to session). Anyone was free to enter, and therefore free to curate the line-up, although not haphazardly — there was a method, ultimately devised so the community would not close, so it would never have one set image of itself.
Part of this method entailed relating the film from the following week to the recently viewed one, and the same method has gone into putting together this two-session programme. The Festival and the film society were, moreover, attempts at rectification: the festival logic and the very same film-club logic, according to which film boils down to an excuse for debating serious issues. There would be nothing to debate but much to ponder. For instance, about the manufacturing of enemies by a nation that chooses enemies in the world, with one film from the year the State of Israel was proclaimed and another from the year the Twin Towers were razed to the ground. The USA manufactures functional enemies and heroes and American cinema, in addition to showing us this, manufactures unforgettable characters: the Apache chief, Cochise, and mother courage, Fernanda Hussein. We’ll see”.
Miriam Martín and Ana Useros