This year we want to pay tribute to one of the most charismatic (yet almost unknown) filmmakers in the contemporary filmmaking scene.
One of the pioneers of the aesthetic revolution that took place in Portuguese cinema in the early 90s –along with filmmakers like Pedro Costa and Manuel Mozos–, Teresa Villaverde stands out as a unique author whose works offer a combination of bold aesthetic proposals and radical messages.
Even though her films explore difficult issues like the inability to communicate, the conflicts experienced by disoriented teenagers, the marginality generated by the economic crises, the objectification of subjects, and their reduction to mere commodities, her approach is always poetic and full of a rare beauty.
In addition to the screening of the films, Teresa Villaverde will offer a seminar during which she will share her creative process.
Teresa Villaverde was born in Lisbon on 1966. In the eighties she participated as an actress, co-author and co-director in the Theater Group of the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon. Still in the eighties participates as an actress in the film À Flor do Mar, by João César Monteiro. Works with Paulo Rocha and José Álvaro Morais and as co-writer with João Canijo in A Filha da Mãe. In the early nineties she began her activity as a director, always writing the arguments of her own films. Her films had world premieres at festivals such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin. There have been retrospectives of her work in France, Spain and Italy. She collaborated with several schools, namely the University of Évora (Portugal), and the Haute École d’Art et du Design de Genève (Switzerland). In 2010 she created the production company, Alce Filmes, with the purpose of producing her own films.
Selected filmography:
A Idade Maior (1991)
Três Irmâos (1994)
Os Mutantes (1998)
Água e Sal (2001)
Transe (2006)
Cisne (2011)
Colo (2017)
O Termómetro de Galileu (2018)
