Film Archive

Filmstill Extended Presences

Extended Presences

Cinzas e nuvens
Margaux Dauby
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Portugal,
Belgium
2023
12 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal)
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

The gaze is firmly fixed on the horizon and distant tree lines, distinguishing natural from smoke clouds. Seasonal work for Portuguese women who observe the landscape from behind the glass panes of fire lookout towers, radio always in reach to report wildfires immediately upon discovery. While the boundary of the visible blurs in the grain of the analogue film stock, Dina, Adriana, Ana Paula, Helena, Luisa, Cristina, Dulce, Lídia, Inês, Fátima, Francisca and Vera emerge as agents of anticipation, modern-day seers whose gentle but persistent peering reaches beyond the burning world. Meanwhile, their male colleagues monitor the situation on computer screens. Poetical textures of waiting and wokeness. The female vision is sharpened and has expectations from the not yet visible future.

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Margaux Dauby
Cinematographer
Margaux Dauby, Afonso Marmelo
Editor
Raul Domingues
Producer
Margaux Dauby
Co-Producer
Roxanne Gaucherand
Sound
Margaux Dauby
Sound Design
Margaux Dauby, Paulo Lima, Selia Çakir
Extended Reality 2023
Filmstill Her Name Was Gisberta
Her Name Was Gisberta
Sérgio Galvão Roxo
Gisberta Salce was a Brazilian trans woman who was tortured for days and at last brutally murdered by 14 young men in Portugal in 2006. This film honours her memory.
2023
Filmstill Her Name Was Gisberta

Her Name Was Gisberta

Seu nome era Gisberta
Sérgio Galvão Roxo
Extended Reality 2023
XR
Portugal
2023
30 minutes
Portuguese (Brazil),
English
Subtitles: 
English

Gisberta Salce, called Gis by her friends and family, was a Brazilian trans woman who was tortured for days and at last brutally murdered by 14 young men in Portugal in 2006. This 360° film keeps her memory alive and illuminates the horrific scale of this hate crime, uncovering systemic transphobia and advocating for justice and change.

Lars Rummel

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Concept
Sérgio Galvão Roxo
Production Company
corpo-paisagem
Editor
Sérgio Galvão Roxo
Animation
Sérgio Galvão Roxo
Sound
Sérgio Galvão Roxo, Pedro Velho
Script
Pedro Velho, Sérgio Galvão Roxo
Narrator
Alexia Vitória
Director
Sérgio Galvão Roxo
Beyond Animation 2023
Filmstill Lemon Tree
Lemon Tree
Joana Silva
A memory dream of a place of childhood: Growing cracks in the wall, proliferating colour stains and crumbling pieces of furniture let the eyes and ears touch interior worlds.
Filmstill Lemon Tree

Lemon Tree

Limoeiro
Joana Silva
Beyond Animation 2023
Animated Film
Portugal
2017
5 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal)
Subtitles: 
English

A raven perches in the lemon tree near the house, giving away an egg. The narrator’s voice remembers childhood like a dream. Emotions from back then find physical expression in a constantly changing room. Growing cracks in the wall, proliferating colour stains and crumbling pieces of furniture let the eyes and ears touch interior worlds.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Joana Silva
Producer
Royal College of Art
Camera Lucida 2023
Filmstill Play Dead!
Play Dead!
Matthew Lancit
Diabetes: Matthew Lancit lives in constant fear of the complications of his disease, so he simply anticipates the body horror himself. The result is equally funny and disturbing.
Filmstill Play Dead!

Play Dead!

Fais le mort!
Matthew Lancit
Camera Lucida 2023
Documentary Film
France,
Portugal
2023
80 minutes
English,
French
Subtitles: 
English

If there is one person Matthew Lancit can’t get out of his mind, it is his uncle Harvey. Dark rings around his eyes, pale, blind, his legs amputated. Like Harvey, the filmmaker also suffers from diabetes. He has the disease under control, but one question is always nagging at him: How much longer? His long-term (self-)observation reliably revolves around fears of infirmity and mutilation. He translates the feared body horror into film, stages himself as a zombie, vampire, a desolate figure. Lancit playfully anticipates his potential decline, serving up a whole arsenal of effects which – as video recordings prove – go back to his youth. It is not for nothing that the “dead” in the title is also reminiscent of “dad.” Because “Play Dead!” also negotiates his own role as a father.

Lancit deeply involves his family in his fantasies, letting them become demons and lurch through the living room together. The documentation of his own diabetes also allows us a look at a modern Paris family life with two small children and a partner who usually plays along sympathetically with her husband’s carryings-on. Lancit’s approach deliberately transgresses borders, opens body, soul and front door. The result is a humorous and occasionally disturbing self-testimony.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Matthew Lancit
Script
Matthew Lancit
Cinematographer
Matthew Lancit
Editor
Ariane Mellet
Producer
Simon P.R. Bewick
Sound
Jules Wisocki
Sound Design
Jan Vysocky, Stéphane Rives
Score
Etienne Nicolas
Broadcaster
ARTE/LA LUCARNE
Filmstill Smoke of the Fire

Smoke of the Fire

O fumo do fogo
Daryna Mamaisur
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Portugal,
Ukraine,
Belgium,
Hungary
2023
22 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal),
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

Learning a foreign language is like creating another self. How can you speak it without losing your own sound, without dissolving completely in it – and still be heard and noticed? This film is a charming and intellectually fastidious attempt to navigate the complexities of language, identity and trauma.

To do this, the filmmaker resorts to her own biography. Because Russia invaded Ukraine when Daryna Mamaisur, who comes from Kyiv, was in Portugal for a Doc Nomads graduate course. Home and the search for it became the defining factors of this work, as well as the traumatic situation of only being able to “witness” the difficult situation from a distance. She, the Ukrainian in Portugal, learns Portuguese. She lets the new words for “war,” “explosion” and “attack” roll off her tongue. She compares them with the soft, intimate sound of her native language, with the sound of Kyiv. Friends send audio and visual recordings from Ukraine which, combined with animations, become a multilayered essay and finally a testimony – for the resilience of language and culture, no matter where they are spoken and lived, and not least for the power of the artistic documentary, which can make speech and sound possible.

Victoria Leshchenko

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Daryna Mamaisur
Cinematographer
Shaheen Ahmed, Daryna Mamaisur, Svitlana Vostrikova
Editor
Daryna Mamaisur
Producer
Frederik Nicolai, Daryna Mamaisur
Sound
Ghada Fikri, Juliette Menthonnex, Tetiana Usova
Sound Design
Anna Khvyl
World Sales
Valentina Zalevska
Filmstill Tale of the Three Flames

Tale of the Three Flames

As três chamas
Juliette Menthonnex
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Portugal,
Hungary,
Belgium,
Switzerland
2023
21 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal),
Spanish,
Dutch
Subtitles: 
English

“See you next year!” a Portuguese fire warden says as he dismantles his control equipment at the end of the season. Humans and nature in southern Europe may be used to forest fires, but that does not change the facts: The ever more massive conflagrations are caused by climate change. We have long been living in the age of fire.

In the Portuguese interior, a forest fire has just devastated a large area. Wounded nature is silent, not a single bird is heard, only the wind that makes the charred tree trunks rustle. But the vegetation recovers astonishingly fast. Where all life seemed to be gone, greenery soon sprouts from the ruined trees. The residents of the affected region are engaged in the reconstruction with great respect for their natural environment. Because plants, too, are sentient creatures. In quiet, almost melancholic, but also hopeful images, the film pays tribute to the strength of the trees and illustrates how essential it would be for humanity to learn to live in harmony with nature again.

Annina Wettstein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Juliette Menthonnex
Cinematographer
Ilona Szekeres, Sergio da Costa
Editor
Antoine Flahaut, Juliette Menthonnex
Producer
Véronique Vergari, Victor Candeias, Agnès Boutruche
Sound
Juliette Menthonnex
Sound Design
Yatoni Roy Cantu