Porto/Post/Doc created the Working Class Heroes project, which has Filmaporto - Film Commission as the main partner, with the aim of supporting audiovisual production in Porto and about Porto, inspired by the stories of those who, over time, have been building the city.

This creative grant of €20,000 is implemented through an invitation to emerging filmmakers who have a line of work that corresponds with the festival’s philosophy. Through this support, we hope to create a creative space that listens to all those who have lived and worked in the city. Hence, it is an incentive to listen to the anti-heroes who have made Porto a city where the multiple faces of the working class are reflected.

This project aims, on the one hand, to make possible the production of new films and, on the other, to create through these works a greater proximity between the voices of filmmakers and the local territory and our community.

In each edition of PPD three filmmakers will be invited to pitch before an international jury, and the selected project will be produced during a two year artistic residency in Porto.

INVITED FILMMAKERS

JORGE QUINTELA (Porto, 1981) is a director and cinematographer, who has worked with directors such as Edgar Pêra, Rodrigo Areias, Rita Azevedo Gomes, Gabriel Abrantes, Salomé Lamas and Diogo Costa Amarante. He directed the documentary about the musician Legendary Tigerman, On The Road To Femina (2010), and the film Ausstieg (2010, Honourable Mention at Vila do Conde Short Film Festival). In 2011 he directed O amor é a solução para a falta de argumento, and in 2013 he won the grand prize at Curtas de Vila do Conde Festival with Carosello. His latest short film is Sobre El Cielo (2015). He is the author of several video and 16mm installation works as well as audiovisual performances.

MARIANA GAIVÃO (Lisbon, 1984) is a director and editor, who has worked with directors such as João Pedro Rodrigues, Marco Martins, João Salaviza, Tiago Guedes and Carlos Conceição. Her first short film, Solo, won, among others, the prize for Best Short Film at Du Nouveau Cinéma Festival. Later, she directed the short film First Light and, more recently, the short Ruby, winner of the prize for Best Director at Curtas Vila do Conde festival and the Cervantes Award at MedFilm Festival in Rome (the film was selected for Rotterdam, Palm Springs, ZINEBI and Las Palmas and was commercially distributed in Portugal, France, Germany, Brazil, Iceland and Uruguay). Her first documentary, a Luso-German co-production, is currently being shot. She was also a programmer at Queer Lisboa festival and taught directing at ETIC.

MÓNICA MARTINS NUNES (Lisbon, 1990) She began her artistic practice as a sculptor working with ceramics, only later entering the realm of film. In both her films and sculptures, she looks for materials, places, people and traditions in the shadow of a fast and seemingly all-encompassing society. While experimenting with the non-melodic musicality of moving image, her montage searches for a rhythm interweaving linearity with the cyclic nature of time. Her first film The Ashes Remain Warm won the Golden Dove in the International Competition Short Documentary at DOK Leipzig, in 2018. Her second film Sortes – a mid-length film dedicated to her grandfather – premiered at Visions du Réel and is nominated for the German Short Film Prize 2022.

PROJECTS

VARIATIONS ON HOW TO FARM A CITY, by Mónica Martins Nunes

They sow, dig, harvest, water, eat, talk, rest. They come back the next day, start again. The choreography of ancient gestures of cultivating the land is repeated, day after day, without fail, under the hammering of buildings under construction and the stirring of traffic.

BUNKER, by Jorge Quintela

The film proposes an essayistic approach to the architectural project of the former Shopping Centre Stop in Bonfim, Porto, currently transformed into a set of rehearsal rooms, at the fringes of the dynamics of real estate speculation.

VIGIL, by Mariana Gaivão

When cities sleep, they still dream of being free. From the shadows of the night, anonymous bodies emerge, meeting in the darkness of parks, under bridges, and in deserted streets, remarking territories that were once theirs, in an ancestral celebration, older than its own name. In this nocturnal dance, the city still belongs to those who guard it.