Regina Guimarães

The Life of Mirrors is one of the sections of the exhibition Luis Miguel Cintra - Small Theatre of the World. A commission by Serralves Foundation to Regina Guimarães and Saguenail, and constructed after an unpublished interview with Luis Miguel Cintra, this film is the result of a long and painstaking exercise of selecting and editing excerpts from films by Manoel de Oliveira in which Cintra participates as an actor. In this way, The Life of Mirrors is a reflective, retrospective essay film, which opens the Carte Blanche, thus establishing a gateway to Luis Miguel Cintra's cinematographic and cinephile career.

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.

To attain knowledge, man and woman had to be willing to give up their innocence," says Boris Lehman. Life Lesson is a poetic and philosophic reflection on the theme of paradise lost. Some fifty persons illustrate the planet's convulsions and the world's vacillations. Trying to communicate, to commune with the invisible, they cry out, sing out, give out messages, each in their own way, in their own state of solitude. These are like multiple echoes that resemble waves in the water or stars in the sky. " Behind these images and sounds that have been stifled by today's society, Lehman hunts for noises, cries, songs, messages that go astray. He says that if we look at the invisible we may hear the words. He invites us to look beyond the appearances of social life and to vibrate in tune with life's polyphony that is all around us."

On a farm in rural Brazil in the 18th century, a new overseer arrives. He falls in love with one of the enslaved women, Mestiça, beloved by all the men. When a pair of silver earrings disappears from the farm and the overseer orders the leader of the enslaved women arrested, Mestiça decides to take revenge.

'A Távola de Rocha' enables us to enter Paulo Rocha’s universe, to gather memories and find, within his personal and professional relationships, a key to decipher some of the unknown symbols and allusions contained in his films.

Set in the Lisbon during the festivities of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lovers and the old town. The story is about Cato, a nationalist politician who is charismatic and unscrupulous. He obsessively pursues Silvia, a mystical and mysterious young transvestite whom he meets at the festival. When Silvia runs into Vicente, a policeman who arrests transvestites and threatens them, Silvia must look towards blackmail to save herself. Compromising photos of Cato start to emerge among opposition parties and he must do all in his power to save his political career.

Thirty-something Vítor still lives with his mother, Fátima, in his grandmother Júlia’s apartment. Fátima is a hairdresser with a quiet disposition who, at night, fantasises about the policeman who has just moved in next door. By day, Vítor is a lowly employee on a TV show. But at night, he dons his neighbour’s uniform to win the favour and satisfy the desires of a boy he’s met online. In her retirement home, Júlia is unable to sleep at night and has long forgotten what drugs she is meant to be taking. She misses her dead husband, who manifests himself in the body of a living friend, and gets involved in her daily activities. Through these characters, Diogo Costa Amarante constructs a fascinating portrait of lives lived while desires remain unrealised.

A film motivated by anger at the frivolity with which sex is treated in cinema. On the aquarium screen, an attempt is made to materialize thought.

Twenty years ago, believing she was doomed, Irma took a trip to Greece. Today, she retraces that journey, accompanied by three young men. From island to island, between sky and sea, the travelers read, listen and live, carried by a longing for beauty and clarity.

The night of the summer solstice. Fireworks resound between the two banks of the river like a bombardment. On the water, boats appear and disappear. Lost in the dark, rich and poor dissolve under the coloured firework lights. Is it war? Is it the light of the sky descending upon them? Is it the Apocalypse? Is it a fresh new start or the end of the world has come?

Inspired by the work of Bertolt Brecht and filmed in Porto's former industrial slaughterhouse, A Santa Joana dos Matadouros is a meta-cinematic essay about the labor market in times of economic crisis in Europe. The film explores the possibilities of cinema in its relationship with theater and brings together a cast of professional actors, amateurs, renowned artists from various disciplines, and a group of unemployed residents of Vale de Campanhã.

Carolina, an aging local grande dame who works at a crossing point on the titular river, marries another late-in-life character, the dredging-boat operator Antonio. Not long after their union, she becomes intensely jealous of Antonio's fondness for their winsome goddaughter, Joana, and insinuates herself into a relationship brewing between Joana and a mystical gypsy gold salesman. Soon, tempers are flaring, mystical secrets are being revealed and death is hovering over the central characters.

Vanitas is the new feature film by veteran Portuguese director Paulo Rocha. With a script by Regina Guimarães, the film brings together actresses Isabel Ruth and Joana Bárcia – no strangers to this director's world – in a story about a depressed fashion designer who falls in love with the daughter of one her tailors.

An act of passion, filmed in a church turned into a bar, on Easter 2003, and starring as many actors as the days of the year… Taking the sacred painting as a reference, the film questions the human condition: letting oneself die like Christ or betray scientifically like Peter?

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Antónia didn't play with dolls, nor did she learn to read and write at the age when children go to school and don't usually sell their labor power. She experienced the harsh social inequalities of Salazarism. Used to toiling from sun up to sun down, work is still her "sport" today. She regrets that those who miss the dictatorship are not forced to experience in the flesh what fascism was like... She tells us all this while her hands prepare the dough for the Easter cakes, scented with aniseed, with the zeal of a master.

C and B are twin cats who live in a rundown harbour town, inhabited by downtrodden birds who, under the yoke of an oppressive and silencing power, have lost the ability to sing or fly. C is a restless dreamer and B is a pragmatic thinker, but both are determined to change their destiny and save the town. Dom Fradique unravels the adventures of these twin cats who, although choosing distinct paths, embody the transformation of both the place they inhabit as well as their own selves, echoing present day themes that unsettle younger generations and the challenges they face, on a social, ecological and political level. What they discover will change them, their lives, and their town forever.

Notebooks filled with words and outbursts remind us of a series of works by Regina Guimarães—her notebooks; works that take the form of a kind of visual diary, revealing (...) not only her inner universe, but also her relationship with the world and its images...

In an empty theatre, a woman is watching an American film - "Ma's Sin" - which tells the weird revenge story of a middle-aged wife, driven mad by jealousy and a deep feer of dying. During the screening, the viewer's fantasies embodied in male characters harass her. Thus she will live the double adventure of the projected motion picture and of her own mental film. But as the lights turn on, she leaves the theatre, apparently unaffected.