Queer Lisboa '23: Sweden's "Opponent" and other festival highlights

by Cláudio Alves

Soon after completing my Toronto Film Festival Coverage, it was time to dive into another fest experience. This turn, it was closer to home, Queer Lisboa being the oldest running film festival in the Portuguese capital, now on its 27th edition. This year, it offered a program rich in stories of marginalized identities and desires, with a particular emphasis on art intent on decolonizing our collective thought and promoting a more progressive view on the labor and lives of sex workers. There was even something for the awards nuts among us – Sweden's official Oscar submission for the 96th Academy Awards, Opponent.

To mark the occasion, let's dive into a selection of titles, starting with that Scandinavian drama, winner of a Jury Special Mention and the Audience Award…

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TIFF ’23: “The Human Surge 3” is cinema’s dream of itself

by Cláudio Alves

I don’t even know where we are and you keep asking where we’re going.

Where is cinema going? Does it know where or what’s ahead? Is it like us - lost in the dark, blindly navigating a road somewhere, maybe nowhere? Perhaps it’s just like us in other ways, too. Can it dream? It must. When it leaves the waking life to visit Morpheus’ realm, it may consider yesterday, today, and tomorrow, others and itself, the possible made impossible, and the other way around, too. Paths appear and disappear as the mind wanders, a string of consciousness twisting itself mad. I’m not sure if writer/director Eduardo Williams’ films know where they’re going, but they’re undoubtedly mad. They dream the future and themselves, infinite possibility.

So it was with 2016’s debut, Human Surge (2016), and so it is with its follow-up, The Human Surge 3, one of the most exciting films at this year’s TIFF…

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Chris Marker @ 100: Visionary, innovator, cat person

by Cláudio Alves

Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve was born 100 years ago, on July 29, 1921. Sources, including the man himself, differ on his place of birth. Whether it was in the capital of Mongolia or France, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that, before World War II, the man became a Philosophy student, later joining the French Resistance. Inspired by his teaching and experiences, he'd become a journalist during the war's aftermath and, eventually, a film critic. From there, he pursued photography and, finally, became a filmmaker during the 1950s. Instead of his given name, the artist preferred to be credited as Chris Marker. This polyvalent artist would become one of the essential names in cinema history, a crucial part of the Nouvelle Vague, and, in his words, the best-known author of unknown films…

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What will we miss with a streaming future?

By Glenn Dunks

All of the talk these last few months about getting back into cinemas has focused on movies like Christopher Nolan’s time-bending Tenet or superhero extravaganzas like Wonder Woman 1984. And it’s not hard to see why. The thrill of watching the biggest movie in the world in a packed cinema with an audience that is eager to go on that ride can be a real buzz.

Many people’s favourite film memories are those rooted in the shared experience of seeing dinosaurs for the first time in Jurassic Park, discovering Darth Vader is Luke’s father or that Bruce Willis was dead all along, watching the Titanic sink or any number of other iconic pop culture moments surrounded by hordes of moviegoers in equal rapture. I may be a bit of an ol’ stick in the mud these days when it comes to American blockbusters, but even I can admit that watching Hollywood do what it does best(?) on a screen the size of a house can add half a star or more to a film’s enjoyment.

For me, however, the largest impact of shut down cinemas hasn’t been felt in the mainstream blockbusters...

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