Filmes do Homem

Cinema and Migrations

The 2nd edition of FILMES DO HOMEM – The Melgaço International Documentary Film Festival, dedicated this year to the theme Migrations, inaugurates a competitive section for the Jean-Loup Passek award, in honour of the writer and critic of French cinema who donated his estate to the municipality of Melgaço.

A jury made up of Jorge Campos, Catarina Alves Costa, Jean-Loïc Portron, José Manuel Sande and Tiago Hespanha, will award the prizes for best international feature-length film, best international short or medium-length film and best Portuguese documentary that addresses the Festival’s chosen theme.

The program will feature all candidate films and special screening sessions, in the parishes of Parada do Monte, Castro Laboreiro, Cristóval (S. Gregório) and Arbo, in Galicia.

The Outside the Screen summer course is another of the activities which debuts in the 2015 edition. This initiative pretends to be a meeting for reflection and multidisciplinary debate around the theme Cinema and Migrations and to approximate artistic and technological approaches, and from human and social sciences, involving Universities and Research groups in Portugal, Galicia, Brazil and Mexico and the local community.

Besides the activities that première in this edition, there will also be room for the initiatives that have already taken place in 2014: special screenings and the film and photographic residency Frontal Shot, in which students of Cinema, Audiovisual and Photography will be integrated to direct documentaries and photographic projects on local themes that will be proposed to them.

Since last year that photographs of personal files documenting stories of emigration are being collected and scanned. Part of this estate can be seen at the exhibition Us, Here and There, displayed at Melgaço’s House of Culture.

An exhibition at the Melgaço Museum of Cinema Jean-Loup Passek will evoke Manoel de Oliveira, a filmmaker who reflected on culture and Portuguese history throughout his entire body of work and chose the region as the setting for one of his films.

In August, the path of migrations goes through Melgaço. We are waiting for you.