┐ Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt, “I hate Portugal” & “I hate Algarve” └

from 30th of May to the 6th of June, the complete film can be seen online here

“Palácios is a film about Portugal, and the line about hating Portugal and the Algarve is indicative of how part of that project was made. Gabriel wanted to make a film in Portugal, and was very interested in exploring cinema’s relation to nation, particularly as national myth machine (especially in the US, from Griffith’s Birth of a Nation to Bigelow’s Zero dark Thirty). Gabriel wanted to be quite direct, with blunt and broad statements about Portugal, such as “I hate Portugal”. Then Daniel wrote “I hate the Algarve” as a humorously specific response, transforming it into an absurd comment on Portugal, since the beach resorts the Algarve is known for are such a banal contrast to the history of violent oppression being discussed in the rest of the film.

(…)

This insincerity, this emptiness of expressive capacity, this refusal of psychology, relates to the main theme in our work. We are concerned with how idealism, morality, and politics are mostly subservient to private desires, and how even these private desires come from the social, economic, and cultural background of the characters. In our films, the characters are both unable to be sincerely political, sincerely expressive, or even pursue sincere desire. They move and talk as shadows of a prefabricated political melodrama. In the case of the tween protagonists of Palácios de Pena, we wanted to represent upper class coming of age youth in Lisbon, which is totally ignorant of the history of oppression they are inheriting, while unconsciously reproducing its symptoms. We wanted to see how Portugal’s history of government sanctioned xenophobia and sexual intolerance, spanning from the inquisition to fascism, would surface in Lisbon’s wealthy teen coterie.” by GA & DSº