Melgaço
International Documentary
Film Festival

mdoc © Álvaro Domingues

Presentation

MDOC - Melgaço International Documentary Film Festival, organized by AO NORTE Association and the Municipality of Melgaço, intends to promote and disclose social and ethnographic cinema, reflecting with the films about identity, memory and border, and to contribute for an audiovisual archive about the territory.

MDOC/2024 is marked by the following main components:

• EXHIBITION OF DOCUMENTARIES

In the running for the Jean-Loup Passek Award. MDOC will select documentaries that reflect the author’s point of view on social, individual and cultural issues related with identity, memory and border.

• JEAN-LOUP PASSEK AWARD
for best film

The Official Jury will assign a trophy plus a monetary prize to the winners::
− Best international feature film – 3000 Euros;
− Best international short or medium-length film – 1500 Euros;
− Best Portuguese documentary (Portuguese production / direction) – 1000 Euros.

Film submission

• D. Quixote Award

Awarded by the Jury of the International Federation of Film Clubs. The Don Quixote Prize from the IFFS – International Federation of Film Clubs consists of a diploma plus the worldwide promotion of the winning film throughout the network of film clubs.

• Off Screen
summer course

A meeting for reflection, debate and development of research and creative practices in the fields of Cinema, Social Sciences, Arts and Communication Sciences.
The Summer Course 2024 focuses on the general theme of the Melgaço International Documentary Festival - Identity, Memory and Border and addresses issues of Cinema and Revolution.
The Summer Course is coordinated by José da Silva Ribeiro, Manoela dos Anjos Rodrigues and Alfonso Palazón, and is an initiative of AO NORTE, through its Group of Film Studies and Digital Narratives.

Summer course

• Frontal Shot
Film and Photography Residencies

Residencies that produce documentaries and photographic projects about the region in each edition of the Festival. Its main objectives are the promotion of documentary film and the emergence of new technical and artistic teams; and contribute to an audiovisual archive about Melgaço and its territory, whilst providing the Memória e Fronteira Museum with films about the region’s intangible heritage.
Frontal Shot is addressed to all those who have recently completed their education or final-year students attending Higher Education Film and Audiovisual Schools.
Pedro Sena Nunes is the director / tutor with a long professional and pedagogical experience, who will guide the directing of documentaries, coordinate the planning of tasks and provide a systematic reflection on the work produced on a daily basis. These processes will be supported by a technical and operational team from the AO NORTE Association.

Film Residency Photography Residency

• Who Are We Here?

Is a project that interrogates the geographic space and local society, dedicated in 2023 to Alvaredo, in the municipality of Melgaço.
The project’s visibility will use the following resources:

  • Audiovisual record – Spoken Photographies
  • The collection and digitalization of photographs from family albums of inhabitants of Alvaredo;
  • A photography exhibition based on family albums, opening in the parishe of Alvaredo;
  • A publication about all work undertaken in the project.

This project is organized by Álvaro Domingues and Daniel Maciel, with scientific guidance and monitoring by Albertino Gonçalves, executive production by Rui Ramos, coordination by Carlos Eduardo Viana and the collaboration of João Gigante, Miguel Arieira and Daniel Deira.

Who are we?

• Cinema workshop
The house and the world

Workshop led by director Catarina Mourão.
“In this workshop I will share my directing creative process. What I have learned in the last 25 years, what still haunts me, what continues to worry me. It is essentially a work in the microcosm of the family, the house and the street. It feels like we travel to what is familiar and yet we find strangeness and new stories beyond our comfort zone. Catarina Mourão”.

X-RAYDoc
Talk / debate

X-RAYDOC proposes to analyze a single film whose importance is indisputable for the History of Documentary film-making in which the relationship with the other, in context, is highlighted as a structuring element. This relationship has consequences at different levels, from the outset in terms of narrative solutions shaped according to both ethical and aesthetic criteria.