Agência

AGÊNCIA, A DECADE IN SHORT FILMS

From its inception in 1999, Agência da Curta Metragem has actively participated in the transformation that Portuguese short film underwent. During this period, production of short films increased significantly and so did its acceptance and financing, to the point where, at the beginning of this century, there was talk of a “generation shorts”. As a consequence of that explosion, new production companies emerged as well as new distribution and exhibition channels.

2009 marks ACM’s anniversary, 10 years promoting, programming and distributing Portuguese short films. The occasion allows for a retrospective look at the films that made ACM’s history through a touring programme, in Portugal and abroad, that includes the most representative films of this decade.


	COUNTRY "SAUDADE"
	Belgium, France, Netherlands, Portugal, total duration 91'
	Portugal is about the Portuguese, their identity, recent history, anachronisms and respective endogenous mimicry.


	PORTRAITS
	Portugal, total duration 69'
	Lives and moments in portraits that at the same time examine, explore and expose characters from familiar daily lives and which maybe for that reason are not completely intelligible to us.


	THE SOUND OF MUSIC
	Portugal, total duration 66'
	Characters don’t start singing between the films’ dialogues, but, just like in the classic musicals, time stands still, like clouds, suspended for the length of a melody. In addition, there’s dancing, choreographies and songs, from Doris Day to Prince Buster.


	WITHIN THE FAMILY
	Portugal, Belgium, France, Netherlands, total duration 69'
	The intervals, timeless in origin, of core family relationships, where silences communicate with us but rarely themselves. Confident and aesthetically diverse approaches to the increasing complexity of the world of family relationships.


	TEN YEARS OF ANIMATION
	Canada, France, Portugal, total duration 76'
	Cartoon d’Or and the Grand Prix Le Cristal d’Annecy are two of the most important awards in animated film. These and over two hundred other prizes have been awarded to a set of short films that have marked Agência da Curta Metragem’s trajectory during its first 10 years. At the same time, they represent the scope of Portuguese animation: its undisputed masters, the new wave of prominent directors, the fulfilled promises and the irreverence of young filmmakers.


	ESCAPE
	Portugal, total duration 69'
	It’s being away from where we’re from that turns our minds and feelings to exile.


	BONDS
	Portugal, total duration 68'
	Three “episodes”, which are different in both form and content, but which approach in a very particular way the poetry of affection, from the nostalgia of adolescence, to made-to-order artificial human beings and an evocation of a past-present through a simple, rudimentary and primitive look.


	BETWEEN SLEEP AND DREAM
	Portugal, total duration 65'
	Impressions from two worlds that coexist, between the rough and monotonous day-to-day and the escape to a place somewhere “between sleep and dream”.


	OUT OF THE WATER
	Portugal, Canada, France, total duration 71'
	Someone’s particular distinctiveness may provide a trampoline to achieve a special place among the crowd.


	TRAVELOGUES
	Portugal, Germany, total duration 56'
	Since its beginning, cinema has shown us the most distant parts of the globe, substituting or enriching the travel literature of bygone eras. Diaries and visual impressions from real or perceived worlds organized around a sequential logic based on the filmmakers’ journey, be it real, imagined or suggested.


	FLOWS
	Portugal, total duration 75'
	Our space is created and organized based on references that we deem essential to our expectations and dreams. The search for references and for the conditions for the structuring process of our space often involves a break from the physical space that shapes us to different degrees. It is this movement of constant search and its fortuitous events that we wanted to look at and feel.


	LOST IN ART
	Portugal, total duration 39'
	Cinema revisits other arts. Four different looks at art and artists.


	EXPERIMENTAL
	Portugal, Austria, total duration 62'
	Portuguese cinema still does not have a strong tradition in experimental and non-narrative film and this area is mostly explored by visual artists. However, in recent years, short films have explored the path of a more conceptual and less narrative cinema.

AGÊNCIA, A DECADE IN SHORT FILMS

COUNTRY "SAUDADE"

PORTRAITS

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

WITHIN THE FAMILY

TEN YEARS OF ANIMATION

ESCAPE

BONDS

BETWEEN SLEEP AND DREAM

OUT OF THE WATER

TRAVELOGUES

FLOWS

LOST IN ART

EXPERIMENTAL