In the 2019 edition of Porto/Post/Doc, we focus on Audrius Stonys' work, with the screening of several of his films and the presence of the director.

Contemplation, spiritualization, dignification and glorification (of the potential) of the (in)visible: a look at the real. Film gestures that carry us from the mundane to the eternal, from the human to the divine, from the real to the documentary. They are records of the immensity of the universal and the individual, of the exacerbation of the natural power of individuals and of the universe around them.

Audrius Stonys' vast work is a potent symbol and significant to (and of) the world. From the early 1990s – until now – the Lithuanian filmmaker takes us along paths of encounter with the “other” but, above all, with the core of what it means to be human. Stonys captures the essence of being through careful observation, a look that reflects fascination and respect for everyone and all that he presents (and represents). This is partly due to a legacy of the 1960s Lithuanian film tradition – which has in Henrikas Šablevičius one of its greatest forms of expression – but also to its connection with photography. These are influences that reach a maximum exponent in his work due to the humility, beauty and transcendence of each portrait, each film. Stonys trod a path marked by the (apparently paradoxical) duality of the representation of the individual as divine element and as lost element in the immensity of the world. A game of contrasts that allows us, however, to observe the world as such: a center created from countless – or endless – parts, a totality created from small – or tiny – centers that make it up. 

Images prevail and seek to decode, within their form, what we see. The melodies that echo in the created spaces, the expressions that are perpetuated on the screen, are the necessary clues for the creation of a world that brings us closer to what we describe as “real”, but above all, to what we (really) are.