Melanie Pereira
Directing
Biography
A film director, her work gravitates around two central themes, Portuguese migrations and women's voices. Her first films, which are part of what she calls the Emigration Cycle, deal with migratory fragments through observations, memories, times and archives. A feminist activist, she also develops several researches and works around cinema and women, especially in the Portuguese context.
Known For
As she goes through hills and rivers looking for Melusina, a mutant and legendary mermaid from the city of Luxembourg, where she grew up, the director talks to four women about their uncertain identities: what it is like to be an immigrant without being one, and to be a Luxembourgish without being one. A journey through memory in rainy weather. A search for ever-fragmented identities. An uncertain attempt at reconciliation. The memory of emigration from a contemporary perspective of a generation with a radically different relation to territories and displacements.
The Melusinas at the Edge of the River
A journey through journeys. A tribute to parents. A self-portrait.
To My Parents
In a house under construction for 30 years, the reading of its descriptive memory and the collection of documents about its construction process awaken fragments of uncertain memories. From an image and sound research, an unfinished film emerges about an unfinished house.
Descriptive Memory
The hands question what they can have in common with hands covered in cement, in mud, in dust, dressed in blue construction gloves and yellow cleaning gloves. Those hands that, instead of building houses, repeat images, stretch sounds, construct films.