Barbs, Wastelands (Farpões, Baldios). 2017. Portugal. Written and directed by Marta Mateus. With Francisco Barbeiro, José Codices, Gonçalo Prudêncio, Maria Catarina Sapata, Maria Clara Madeira. DCP. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 25 min.
Trás-os-Montes. 1976. Portugal. Directed by António Reis, Margarida Cordeiro. With the people of Trás-os-Montes, Portugal. 4K digital restoration by Cinemateca Portuguesa; courtesy Cinemateca Portuguesa. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 108 min.
Trás-os-Montes stands among the most poetic cinematic portraits of rural life. António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro film a Northern Portuguese village’s mythical, ancestral life and blend it with urban fables and legends—as in a stunning scene in which a family eats snow. Reis and Cordeiro craft a singular visual language—somewhere between reality and the mystical reverberations of a forgotten life—that aims for truth and purity in the cinematic form, and the result inspired future generations of filmmakers in Portugal (most particularly Pedro Costa, to whom Reis was a mentor in Lisbon’s film school) and abroad. Past and present also meet in Marta Mateus’s Barbs, Wastelands, in which old workers in the Alentejo region pass stories of resistance and revolution in lands they once occupied to a younger generation.