1998
Super 8 transferred to digital format, colour, sound, 5’52"

From the mid-1990s, Ana Léon developed the majority of her work in the areas of drawing and animated film on Super 8, abandoning her early painting and sculpture activity. The idea of metamorphosis and animation has dominated all the films she has made from then on.

In ‘Jeux’, from 1998, one or two headless ballerinas make gestures in front of the barre and mirror, until they place their own, initially absent, heads on their necks.

Marked by a sense of playfulness, often ironic or cynical, and by a deliberate simplicity of means, the films focus on the figuration and progressive destruction of the bodies, narrative and repetition, anonymity in the elimination of the face, and the strangeness of the intermittent movements and disarticulation. The lighting, the choreography and the overall dynamic are given significant scenic importance.

2015-16
Video, HDV, colour, sound, 53'05"

This work adopts and blends the languages of experimental and documentary cinema. It is the result of four years of artistic collaboration with children and adults who chatted about memories of childhood, concepts of parenthood/fatherhood and motherhood, desires and dreams. One of the children is the artist’s son, Mateus. 

The film includes an old family archive of Super 8 films and photographs, excerpts from fictional films watched by the artist during her childhood and excerpts from a video file that Mateus made in 2011 for his Youtube music channel.

The work interprets and constructs childhood using the diverse voices involved and as a restaging of certain periods of time, inviting the viewer to participate in that process; it suggests that childhood is an active process materialised through bodies and the use of language; and it reflects on consciousness of relationships, memory and time.

2016
Video animation, sound, 13'58"

This animated video explores walking as an ancient method of travel that catalyses knowledge, criticism and creativity; as well as the concept of insularity as desire, utopia, autonomy or refuge.

In ‘Ilhas Afortunadas’ (Fortunate Islands), we hear a narrator – the artist – in voiceover, as she takes a walk in the city of Porto. Like a logbook, the animated video highlights details of what she sees, the places she visits, as well as countless reflections on Porto’s ‘ilhas’ (run-down urban neighbourhoods), islands in Europe, the myth of the ‘fortunate islands’ and the Fifth Portuguese Empire (Fernando Pessoa), utopian islands, those of tourism and those of refugees.

This video contains scenes that may not be suitable for all visitors.

2004
16 mm film, transferred to DVD, colour, sound, 8'16''

The result of a four-hour filmed performance, this film includes shots captured using a steadicam and a camera suspended on a crane. In a dark space, a human figure (the artist himself), with armour and sword, struggles in a simulated fight. This Romanesque-style confrontation stars the celebrated figure of Lancelot, one of King Arthur’s knights.

The sound structure of the film is a key element in the composition: the sound of the artist’s panting and the dripping of water suggests cold, discomfort, tiredness and desperation. The fight against an imaginary opponent is perhaps against himself, according to the artist.

The allegory of confrontation is represented at the limit of its expressive potential: with shouting and sweating, falling and starting again, darkness and restricted space, willpower and loss, strong physicality, but also intense inner movement. The warrior fights an invisible enemy, inside his ‘Grail,’ recreating the dark grey of metal and stone.

2011
HD Video, 16:9, colour, Dolby 5.1, sound, 10’

Against the backdrop of the North Sea, depicting one of the toughest professions in memory, ‘Golden Dawn’ is filmed on a fishing boat: the water and the lights in the dark night, the bright colours of the plastic overalls, the nets being cast and hauled in, the crates of fish on ice, gutted or whole, the buoys marking paths through the sea.

In the complete absence of words, in this document on the life of Dutch fishermen, it is the camera shots that fill the space with something of a performative and narrative tension; the music of Felipe Felizardo and the title of the film (the name of a Greek neo-Nazi party, but also of a secret society devoted to hermetism) extend the tension beyond that which the images lead us to expect.

2013-16
16 mm transferred to digital video, colour, no sound, 7'39''

Made in 2016, this film is an essay on play, experimentation and creativity in childhood, showing constructions made through play by the artist’s son, filmed over a period of three years. It was presented at the exhibition ‘Downtime / Tempo de Respiração’ (2020), in the CAM Project Space.

In Manon’s artistic practice, the experience of time is firmly anchored in the conditions of creation, incessantly producing both presence and the present, and resisting a normative concept of time ruled by work. Manon seeks to offer a response – or an image – to the moment when creativity bursts out and manifests itself, in a suspended and free time that is full of potential.

The title is taken from an excerpt of the book ‘Painting, Writings, Remembrances’, by Agnes Martin. Manon invites teenagers to join in a game of (de)construction and inner discovery, proposing improvised exercises of movement linked to dance.

1972-76
Video, colour, no sound, 4'14''

Resembling crystallised fractals, this film shows soap bubbles contained in a round space and illuminated in close-ups of their making and unmaking. They sparkle, drip and cluster together, in spreading blue foam. Next, we see images of an arm, lights, tentacles, the bubbles being sucked through a tube, and various microscopy shots. There follow spine-like formations, plasma screens, glimmerings...

In this phase of his production, Palolo rejected any kind of strategy of representation, instead using abstract devices with a strong metaphysical dimension. The experimentation facilitated by the support and technique opens up the whole space to the undefined theme and the delirium of sensibility.

2004
Mini-DV, colour, sound,13'

‘Left (L)overs’, from 2004, presents a metaphoric and choreographic attempt to release memories: a male character, his back to us, dusts off the jacket he is wearing, beating – rather violently – first one and then the other shoulder, while the gesture is accompanied by a sound resembling a gunshot.

The staged denial of the self-portrait – because we don’t see the face or know anything other than a repeated gesture and an ambiguous title that simultaneously suggests love and leftovers – this film also proposes another form of self-representation: a close-up that abstracts from the figure’s scale and soberly imposing presence the tragic and anonymous meaning of his anguish.

2010
Video, colour, sound, 52”

This film was part of the Narelle Jubelin exhibition, held at CAM in 2012, at the artist’s initiative.

It starts with a black screen while the narrator speaks. Victor Sousa films the entire process of building a sacred house for the community, in the mountainous region of Venilale, in East Timor. The film documents the construction day by day, from the meals prepared for those labouring in the middle of the mountains, to the scenes in which they are seen cutting palm branches, and constructing walls, roofs and pottery.

The narrator presents ‘A Lulik’ as the umbilical cord between past and present, everyday life and tradition; for the living, it is a safe recipient of memories and knowledge from the past, while for the dead it is an atemporal place, where history is constantly renewed. The narrator continues, explaining that the construction of the sacred house normally takes place every 10 or 20 years.

2021
HD video, colour, sound, 16’10”

Khtobtogone is the intimate portrait of Zine, a 20-year-old man on a quest to become a better version of himself, before he asks his girlfriend to marry him. Khtobtogone describes his everyday life, his past loves and friendships, as well as his emotional setbacks, the torments and inner demons he must constantly control in order to recover his self-confidence and self-esteem.

The animation technique used in this fictional film gives it the atemporal nature typical of fantasy or dreams.

1993
Video, colour, sound, 18' 8''

Hypnotic Suggestion is also the name of a photographic series and an installation by the artists, designed to be presented together.

In the film, the two artists are hypnotised first in English and, immediately afterwards, in Portuguese, a language that neither understands, on a stage evoking the setting of a theatre or cinema. The hypnotist asks them to make gestures to which they respond, according to the instructions. The movements of the twin sisters are almost completely synchronised.

2010
Video, colour, sound, 18’ loop

The luxurious colours and fabrics, in a place where kitsch and convention prevail (filmed at the ballroom dance school in Lisbon, ‘Os Alunos de Apolo’), despite the party atmosphere, act as a mask for all these characters: they all represent sexual, emotional and social roles, they are all dancing in order to get to know someone, to be with someone, to participate in a fiction that allows them to dream.

Moral and emotional clichés are expressed through gestures and words, the stereotype underlined by a very focused point of view that favours the close-up. Classical mythology emerges in the background, giving even more magical substance to each dream. Waiting is the most permanent condition of everyone there; and it is largely the women who are waiting...

2020
HD video, colour, stereo sound, 1’00”

In a modest hotel room, a very peculiar ‘couple’ exchange accusations motivated by jealousy. She is a classical statue made of white stone, he a tiny blue ceramic hippopotamus who fits in the palm of the hand.

He was allegedly seen talking to a votive statue of Cycladic art, she chatting and/or flirting with a sculpted representation of the god Hermes.

The sophisticated animation technique that Gabriel Abrantes has used in his most recent films once again emphasises the mockery of common sentiments and emotions, the humour with which he stages conflicts as banal as they are universal, the unique appropriation of classical works from the more traditional world of art and museums, and the spiritual projection that turns inanimate beings into conscious characters with language.

Before leaving the room, the female character grabs a book that was lying on the bed. Everything is ‘written in stone,’ even if none of it is truly important.

2010
Video, colour, stereo sound, 18’02”

The artist waits for inspiration to strike, but it is taking its time. In the empty studio, she enters and leaves, slamming the door compulsively, while nothing else happens. The uninhibited way she refers to her own inner emptiness is also a warning cry. The expectation of creation becomes the subject of the creation itself, as if seeking to exorcise the forces of blockage. The opening and closing door points to an inner restlessness, an inability to settle, a search formed of attempts and withdrawals.

But that moment in the empty studio is part of the experience of all artists. It symbolises the possibility of everything, the start, the potential for creation.