30.06 — 15h45
→ casa comum, Q&A with the director
[12 min, exp]


competition programme
session #materials

The moment when the young couple of O Fim do Mundo (The End Of The World; Basil da Cunha, 2019) escapes for a romantic walk in an idyllic meadow on top of a hill (a sort of Nature’s last stronghold for lovers on the edge of the city) sends us back to the walk of Júlio and Ilda in the classical Portuguese film Os Verdes Anos (The Green Years; Paulo Rocha, 1963). And from there, a putative history of Portuguese cinema is told from this particular locus. Hills of shelter for the lovers, they are a paradoxical place between escapism and introspection that would influence all Portuguese modern cinema since the Cinema Novo’s movement in the 60s. The refuge of these couples is also a sign of a country permanently under construction, as the city is gradually looming over and engulfing the surrounding countryside, converting it into outskirts and forgotten areas. A process in tune with the hard urbanization in Europe since post-World War II, and of which Italian neo-realism was an original witness. This video essay proposes a reflection on this sort of “genealogy of the Hills” in European cinema and especially in Portuguese cinema.


no dialogue