English Version | Roteiro: books, music, stuff

In love, freedom, optimism and change for the better. The power of resilience, the kindness of the human being and the commitment to act in a world where tomorrow is uncertain. These books are reminders that hope can be found anywhere - including between the lines.

These books give us hope In love, freedom, optimism and change for the better. The power of resilience, the kindness of the human being and the commitment to act in a world where tomorrow is uncertain. These books are reminders that hope can be found anywhere - including between the lines.

ART IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF HOPE & OTHER QUOTES BY ARTISTS, by Phaidon Editors, Phaidon (2016), € 19,95.

IMAGINE JOHN YOKO, by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Grand Central Publishing (2018), € 42,15.

AMERICANAH, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anchor (2014), € 16,60.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HOPE, by C.R. Snyder, Free Press (2003), € 21.

AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFÉ: FREEDOM, BEING, AND APRICOT COCKTAILS, by Sarah Bakewell, Other Press (2016), € 11.

HUMAN KIND A HOPEFUL HISTORY, by Rutger Bregman, Bloomsbury Publishing (2020), € 23,96.

HOPE IN THE DARK: UNTOLD STORIES, WILD POSSIBILITIES, by Rebecca Solnit, Haymarket Books (2016), € 11, 97.

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, by Betty Smith, Cornerstone (1992), € 12,99.

200 WOMEN, by Kieran Scott, Ruth Hobday, Geoff Blackwell, Sharon Gelman and Marianne Lassandro, Chronicle Books (2019), € 53.

ON BEING NICE, by The School of Life, The School of Live Press (2017), € 17,97.

These movies give us hopeBecause there's nothing like escaping reality (even more to the reality of 2020) and find comfort in the seventh art.

Cinema is a magical place. It transports us to enchanted worlds, alternative realities, fantasy scenarios. Cinema is a magical place, but it is also a reflection of reality - a reality that, like the one that unfolds outside the big screen, manages to be obscure, complex, cruel, unfair. And when reality becomes obscure, complex, cruel, unfair, it is to hope that we turn to. From Chris Gardner’s impressive and inspiring resilience and determination (played by Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness) to the small gestures that Amélie (character portraited by Audrey Tautou in Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) makes for people around her, the big screen is full of reminders of why we say hope is the last thing to die. From The Breakfast Club (1985) to Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), from The Blind Side (2009) to Selma (2014), the big screen is full of reminders of why hope is so important. And, at times like these, there is nothing like feeling this magical place that is the cinema and letting it inspire us to have more hope. If only for those two hours.

These plans give us hopeAfter “canceled” having been the word of the quarantine with regard to festivals, concerts, exhibitions, in short, face-to-face artistic demonstrations of all kinds, we see renewed hope with the arriving of the rentrée season.

Plans for what? Of any kind: musical, theatrical, comical, dramatic, anything that is exposed, not hidden. If you missed some of the concerts that started to appear around the country, timidly, take advantage of September and beyond to make use of the vocal chords - and support national artists. For example, the duo Best Youth performs live in two concerts that will serve as a preview of the songs that will be part of a new album in 2021 - they will play next September 12th at Casa da Música (Porto) and September 22th at the Maria Matos theater (Lisbon); Sérgio Godinho will also be at Teatro Maria Matos on September 15th and 21st (after the concerts in that same place on August 31st and September 1st); Pedro de Tróia is at Teatro Aveirense (Aveiro), on the 10th of September; Dino d'Santiago on October 3rd, at Teatro Viriato (Viseu); Luísa Sobral at the Teatro da Trindade Inatel (Lisbon) on the 06th; Capicua at Rivoli, on October 24; and Manel Cruz arrives at Teatro Sá da Bandeira (Porto) on October 29th. Other stages, with other vocal cords, welcome artists like Ana Arrebentinha, in Coisas de Mulheres, a monologue with a humorous approach to the female universe, which takes place on October 11th, at the Cineteatro Municipal de Messias (Mealhada); and there is also Chicago, staged by Diogo Infante, from September 2nd to November 1st, at Teatro da Trindade Inatel (Lisbon). If you prefer to just contemplate, there are exhibitions for that: until December 27th, Um século e tanto – 130 anos National Geographic will be at the Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Porto. And if you are tired of dancing alone between four walls, try to see others doing it - and better: on November 13th and 14th, the CCN Ballet by Lorraine Merce Cunningham / Petter Jacobsson & Thomas Caley occupies the Grand Auditorium of Rivoli (Porto); and on December 18th and 19th, contemporary dance meets the theater in the studio room of the National Theater D. Maria II (Lisbon) with All Together, a performance by Michikazu Matsune with Frans Poelstra and Elizabeth Ward. Do you hope to attend one of these artistic events? They also hope - and need - you to go. 

These pairings give us hope.Man does not live on bread alone, which is why a Portuguese house has bread and wine on the table.

And this wine may well be the one we have in our own table. Based in Dominguiso (Covilhã), there are at least 100 hectares of this Quinta de São Tiago dedicated to two ex-libris in the area: 75 hectares of vineyards in the Beiras demarcated region and 25 hectares of “sereneiras”, selected from the best varieties. The namesake wines that arrive from here are not the only ones with the farm and quality seal of the Beira Interior region where they are located: there is olive oil, cheeses, jams that go well with this red (or white, or rosé) on the table. On site, the winery is also accompanied by a restaurant - without any fuss, the Quinta de São Tiago Restaurant - with typical Beira cuisine, where there is no shortage of cherries of the season, of course. And more? More landscapes to lose sight of that make our territory the best to go to outside inside. No fly list? The others lose more. Already know how to conjugate the verb “to disconnect”? And pairing with a relaxing glass of wine? Quinta de São Tiago, Dominguiso Covilhã (Covilhã) 6200-540, Portugal.For more information, please contact quintadesaotiago@sapo.pt.

IndieLisboa: movies to watch and to (make us) think.Since 2004, IndieLisboa has proposed to highlight works that are outside the usual circuit of movie theaters. This year is no exception. The 17th edition of the festival should have started in April, but the pandemic did not allow it. Now that we all seem used to this “new normality”, Indie invites viewers to leave the house, so that they can discover hundreds of films that will make them see the world with different eyes. Vogue has talked with Mafalda Melo, from the festival's direction, to try to unveil the best of the programming.

The best of this IndieLisboa 2020. It is a festival that, in its different retrospective sections, reflects a lot on the role of women in cinema, but also on their political and social role. The programming this year makes a very important reflection in this regard, even in the oldest and archival films. And Ousmane Sembène, for example, being a male director, a Senegalese director from whom we are going to do a retrospective, is a convinced feminist, almost all of his films talk about the role of women in the political and social revolution, so I think this point is very important. In his case, the role of women in the Senegalese society.

The impact of the current state of the world on this year's schedule. The gesture of programming is always conscious, it always looks for roots in recent production, but in the case of retrospectives, it is very important to reflect, and this is what we have been doing over the years. In 2020, we tried to bring together the various aspects of the program so that they could talk to each other: such as the focus on Mati Diop, a Franco-Senegalese director whose works for cinema we are going to show. The schedule was residually closed because the festival should have start in late April. But it is interesting to see that, even more than the pandemic, all the social movements that have emerged in the meantime have made these films gain a new importance. It is important to see them and discuss them with the public.

The decision to hold the festival, despite the limitations imposed by social distance. Movie theaters will have 50% of the occupancy, there are free seats between each spectator, it is mandatory to wear a mask, disinfection will be done between sessions, there will be reduced occupancy, the entrances and exits will be out of phase so that there is no crossing of the public in the foyers, everything will be done as safely as possible. This is very important to us. We could have decided to do the festival in streaming, or digital, but for us the important thing is also this relationship between the spectators and the movie theater. It is very important for cinema and to keep this tradition of watching cinema in loco. Being physically present is completely different from seeing [a film] alone, or accompanied, at home. This is also a sign of hope, moving forward with the festival.

About the supposed difference between the look of a director (man) and a director (woman). I think it exists, but I don't know if it is exactly what people are waiting for. I don't know if it's in the way of filming... There is a question of representation that is very important, which is: “Who is it that tells this story? Who does it belong to?" And in that sense, it is different. Imagine, for example, a narrative that has to do with female gender issues. This story can never be the same if it is told from the experience of a male director, or of a female director. Inevitably these two experiences are different. And historically, as there has always been this lack of representation, in the cinema, of the feminine, there are many things that remain to be told and there are many things that remain to be said. And to be discovered. I think we’re already doing it, but there’s still a long way to go. Because in this issue of representation, female stories, throughout the history of cinema, have always been told by men. Residually, they were told by women. Take, for example, a film that we are going to present by Sarah Maldoror, in the retrospective “Forum 50”. She was extremely important in her day, because she was one of the few women to shoot. We look at the history of cinema and we can talk about Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, women exist, but their production processes were always more difficult, they always received less funding, they always had difficulty having larger teams, all this gatekeeping was always done throughout history.

Three films whose message of hope is particularly strong. I would like to suggest Mamadou Dia's Nafi’s Father (2019), a Senegalese film that is in the international competition. It is a film about how a small village in Senegal can fall on Islamic extremist fundamentalism, but it also has to do with the role of women, with arranged marriages, the fact that they want to study and have a different life. The hope, here, is to have a Senegalese director who does a first work in a country whose film production does not usually reach the festival circuit. Then ... Hope in a young Portuguese director, Catarina Vasconcelos, who makes a film called A Metamorfose Dos Pássaros (2020), that is in the national feature film competition, and which is a foray into the history of her own family, starting with the figure of the grandmother, passing through the mother, and ending with herself. It connects these three generations in a beautiful and sensitive way. Finally, perhaps the film about Angela Davis, which is in the Forum retrospective, and which is called Angela Davis: Portrait Of A Revolutionary (1972), directed by Yolande DuLuart. It is a work on this mythical figure of social and political movements, not only in the USA but also in the world, and which today has an active voice in the debate on women, black women, feminist issues. It is obviously another sign of hope.IndieLisboa, until September 5th, in several cinemas around the city of Lisbon. Detailed schedule and programming at indielisboa.com.

Translated from Vogue Portugal's Hope issue, out September 2020. All credits in the original articles.Texto em português na edição em print.