Catarina Alves Costa Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Catarina Alves Costa
Directing
Biography
Catarina Alves Costa is a Portuguese documentary filmmaker and anthropologist. In 2000, she co-founded with Catarina Mourão the production company, Laranja Azul.
Filmography Movies
Acting
The King's Trial
At the time Portugal presented a strange spectacle to the rest of Europe. D. Afonso VI, son of the fortunate D. João de Bragança, was in possession of the throne and was an insane imbecile. His wife, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and cousin of Louis XIV, dared hatch a plot to oust her husband from the throne. The king's stupidity justified the queen's bravado. Despite being master of unusual strength and having slept with his wife for a long time, she accused him of being impotent. Marie Françoise had acquired through artfulness what Afonso had lost in anger in the kingdom. She had him imprisoned ( November 1667 ) and quickly obtained a papal bull from Rome to confirm her virginity and bless her marriage to her brother-in-law Pedro. Portugal's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.
A True and Faithful Account
The young girl, Antónia Margarida Castelo Branco, is handed over by her mother to Brás Telles de Meneses because of the obscure interests between rural aristocratic families in the North. Brás is a ruined man, a bohemian with a reputation for violence and erratic behaviour. Antonia’s fortune is the first sacrifice made by the young wife. Fascinated by the man who humiliates and ill-treats her, she follows him in a pilgrimage to increasingly barren lands, to increasingly less hospitable houses.
Le voyage étranger
11th century. Descended from the aristocracy, Alexis flees a world dominated by money and strength. The young man, in love with justice and freedom, sets off on the roads to discover the world, abandoning his wife and family.
Production
Margot
Between 1958 and 1961, Margot Dias participated in four ethnographic missions to the northern end of Mozambique. She shot and taped hundreds of minutes—unique visual and sound recordings of Makonde culture. One seeks to portray the woman behind the records from those trips, from her youth in Germany in the 1920s, to meeting and marrying Portuguese ethnologist Jorge Dias, to the missions they made together to the then Portuguese colony. As she meets with Makonde people today and hands them back these images, the director seeks the gaze of the other director, whom she knew at the end of her life.
O Arquitecto e a Cidade Velha
A documentary about Álvaro Siza Vieira in Cape Verde and his project to restore the old town of Ribeira Grande, the first city to be built by the Portuguese in Cape Verde on the island of Santiago in 1462.
Pedra e Cal
A film about rural houses in the interior of the Algarve, showing the relationship between the present and memories evoked in the intimacy of the home. Working architecture from the "social imaginary", focusing on how homes were and are lived.
Swagatam
Lisbon has the second largest community of Hindus in Europe. This film portrays this community, focusing on a family originally from Diu, who then emigrated to Mozambique and then, in 1976, to Lisbon. The film portrays the contrast and conflict between this group of Diu families, low caste with the Lohanas group, the merchants caste. A new temple is being built, however in the courtyard of his house the family Carsane still makes its parties and alternative rituals ....
Senhora Aparecida
In Aparecida, 50 Km from o’Porto, the atmosphere surrounding this years preparation of the yearly festivities is tense: the new priest aims to discouraje the "Promise payers" from doing it having themselves carried in open coffins through the village untill th chappel of the Appeared Lady. Superstition against Theological Argument, fidelity to the vows or reinterpretation… The conflict becomes unavoidable. It’s the local identity and its inhabitants identity that’s in stake. If this type of processions were common in the last century on the north of the Iberian Peninsula, this one, will probably be the last in Portugal. At the village of Senhora Aparecida the festivities of August are set. The main wooden bier that will carry the Saint may be 15 metres high. It is now being assembled and decorated. Those who escaped death now celebrate life. The Lady redistributes the power she's been given.
O Arquitecto e a Cidade Velha
A documentary about Álvaro Siza Vieira in Cape Verde and his project to restore the old town of Ribeira Grande, the first city to be built by the Portuguese in Cape Verde on the island of Santiago in 1462.
We Talk About António Campos
A portrait of António Campos, an extraordinary cineaste that was called an amateur, one of the most unique Portuguese directors due to the way he filmed the country on the 1960 and 1970’s. Considered as a director out of the mainstream, a loner, instinctive, Campos stands for the passion of filming.
Restless
Houses to sell…houses to live in…houses to fill and die in… Mr. António Carlos works in a real estates agency, he is pressurized daily by his superiors to close contracts and bring profit to the company. Joana, a single mother, and her baby, Joaquim, are moving house hoping for a different life. Mr. Pinto has an old-fashioned removal company and his days are spent waiting for the phone to ring, but there isn’t much work and when finally work shows up it always hides a surprise. Three stories set in Oporto, Portugal, about people, houses, and restless lonely urban lives.
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