When, during the first months of 1975, José Alves de Sousa (Vila Nova de Gaia, 1942) purchased a film camera and an 8mm projector in Andorra, he “was yet far from knowing about the existence of a great movement surrounding non-professional cinema”. It was around the same time that he got to know some people who were circling around the Cineclube do Porto, whose direction he became a part of from the “hot summer” of 1975 until the early 1980s.

Within the cineclub, “there was an important segment of amateur cinema” and they “often showed each other the movies we were making”. The purchase of this camera came at the right time as, thanks to it, he was able to document a revolutionary period that bore great enthusiasm for political participation, in a true celebration of democracy. The footage we are screening was produced mostly during this time, filming on Porto’s streets and squares a huge popular mobilization that nowadays, given the apparent general indifference towards political participation, may seem to us like something from a time and space that are gone forever. What we see in these movies was shot on dates that became fundamental for the consolidation of our current democratic regime.

An “opposer to the New State”, Alves de Sousa nonetheless never took “significant side with any of the political camps clashing against each other at the time, which caused some criticism from colleagues within the Cineclube do Porto, much more politicized, of the neutrality of my films”. Together with these three movies spotlighting important dates in our journey towards a democratic society, we present another very different footage, for reasons, shall we say, of a more “local” nature: it depicts the Vila Chã beach, in Vila do Conde, where the maker of these images “often went to at that time, and during each visit I would film aspects of nature and work”. 

These, and many other movies, including works of fiction, remained hidden and invisible for a long time, having been restored thanks to the enthusiasm and persistence of our friend Francisco Laranjeira, who championed them being digitized and made available to the public.

Some of these films have already been screened along with a live score; however, this time we came up with a different approach, using Rodrigo Brandão’s words as commentary, reinforcement, or counterpoint to Alves de Sousa’s images. Brandão, an agitator, poet and “spoken word” performer, left an indelible mark on his second album, “Outros Espaço”, in the context of a more revolutionary jazz. Since then, Brandão moved to Lisbon and will perform at Curtas Vila do Conde with a band made up of some of the Portuguese protagonists of a more exploratory side of jazz and improvised music (Rodrigo Amado, Hernâni Faustino, or João Valinho), as well as of a more experimental electronic sound (Carla Santana), giving new life and new meanings to the footage shot by Alves de Sousa almost five decades ago – exactly in 2022, when Portugal completes as many years of democracy as it had of dictatorship when the New State was overthrown on April 1974.