João Viana
2021Água para Tabatô
Paulo Carneiro
António Pedro Figueiredo, João Viana
In mid-summer 2011, Paulo Carneiro and set out as assistant director for a film crew working on a project on the west African coast. There he unexpectedly ended up shooting his own film, a documentary report about a sinking ship near the coast of Guinea-Bissau on which he was a passenger. The digital camera records the growing panic on the ship after it has gotten stuck in the ocean in an oppressive nighttime atmosphere. In shaky interview footage, we see passengers move from an initial apathy to nervous anxiety, and from there fluidly to a fear for their lives. The growing tension on board is reflected in the film's ever quickening tempo.
Water to Tabato
Our Madness
João Viana
Ernania Rainha, Pak Ndjamena
Ernania is hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital in Mozambique. She dreams about her little son, Hanic, and her husband, Pak, who is a soldier of the war. In the meantime, a quirky musical instrument plays: her own bed. Ernania’s musical virtuosity, attracts the attention of the hospital nurses. One day, her song is played in a radio program and Rosa, an evangelical priest of “Rádio Moçambique”, goes to the hospital to listen to Ernania’s song. Ernania takes the priest’s visit as an opportunity to run away from the hospital.
Our Madness
A Batalha de Tabatô
João Viana
Mamadu Baio, Fatu Djebaté
Fatu’s father has returned home to Guinea-Bissau from Portugal to attend her wedding. The young woman teaches at the university and her future husband is a well-known musician. Their wedding is supposed to take place in Tabatô, a village where everyone makes music. On the way there, it becomes apparent that the father is seriously traumatised by his experiences as a soldier in the colonial war decades earlier.
The Battle of Tabato
Tabatô
João Viana
Mutar, who fought in the war, is back in Guinea. In his luggage, he brings strange objects. Fatu, his daughter, takes the opportunity of Mutar's absence to open his bag. Shortly afterwards, Fatu's boyfriend Idrissa finds Mutar with his hand soiled in blood and Fatu dead. It is then that Idrissa picks up a drum.
Tabatô
O Acordeão
João Viana
João Viana, the crisis of cinema in one minute. On July 2010 the Portuguese Association of Directors challenged the Portuguese directors to do a sixty seconds long film with their own means of production. “Due to the lesser and weaker attention of the governments of this country to the Arts and Culture, where the lower budget is invested and with the goal to achieve improvements in the cultural policies, (…) we propose a challenge to direct a film that is a statement, an individual and completely free glance that will respond to the serious situation of the support of the Arts.
O Acordeão