Three films by João Botelho, Marco Martins and Edgar Pêra will distribute 1,8 million euros of the first contest to support feature films in 2018, Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual (ICA).
According to the ICA board, 600,000 euros are awarded to each of the three feature films supported: Great Yarmouth. Provisional Figures’ by Marco Martins, ‘The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis’ by João Botelho, and’ Não Sou Nada ‘by Edgar Pêra.
The project of Marco Martins originates in the play ‘Provisional Figures. Great Yarmouth ‘, which the filmmaker and filmmaker designed and directed in the United Kingdom, an art residency for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, last May, based on the personal experiences of immigrants, mainly Portuguese, who settled on the east coast of England.
The play was premiered in Great Yarmouth in May, about a month later it was performed at the Rivoli Theater in Porto, in the framework of the International Festival of Iberian Expression Theater (FITEI), and was staged at the Maria Matos Theater in Lisbon, at the end of June. The production for cinema joins A Stone in the Shoe and the Sells Movies.
The next film by João Botelho, ‘The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis’, about José Saramago’s novel, produced by Ar de Filmes, is set to begin in 2019. The film marks the director’s new incursion into the literary universe, in a career that began with ‘Conversa Acabada’, about the friendship of Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá-Carneiro, and that goes from authors like Eça de Queiroz and Agustina Bessa-Luís to Charles Dickens.
Edgar Pêra’s “Não Sou Nada”, or “The Nothingness Club,” will be produced by Bando a Parte, and marks the return of the director to the universe of Fernando Pessoa after “Lisbon Revisited.” The film will have the collaboration of Luísa Costa Gomes, a writer with whom she worked on the adaptation of ‘O Barão’ by Branquinho da Fonseca.
Edgar Pêra debuted this year ‘O Homem Pikante’, about the poet Alberto Pimenta, took ‘Magnetic Pathways’ to the Caminhos do Cinema Português festival, which ends today in Coimbra, and prepares the series ‘Kino Pop’, ‘cine-diários’ about bands and figures from the 1980s, based on their own archives.
The deliberation of the ICA Board of Directors now published is dated November 20.
The competitions to support the cinema and audiovisual sector of 2018 opened on May 30, several months late, with 19 million euros to be distributed by various programs, in the area of cinema and audiovisual, according to the announcement of the ICA.
Since then, and until the end of November, results have been announced in support of the distribution of national works in Portugal and in international markets, support for international dissemination and promotion, ad hoc support, distribution and exhibition and under the Portuguese- French.
The calendar and annual declaration of priorities for the 2018 competitions were published almost mid-year because they were dependent on the application of the new regulations on the cinema and audiovisual law, which came into force in April.
At the time, in statements to the Lusa news agency, ICA president Luis Chaby Vaz said that 2018 would be a “zero year” for the sector because a “big legislative review” was made.
“We will lighten the bureaucratic burden in the funding applications phase. There are lines of support that did not exist and aim to contemplate areas that were not foreseen, “he said.
