Queer Porto announces its return to the city screens unveiling the titles of the retrospective “No Present. No Future. No Wave.”, which will focus on the New York punk movement of the late 70s.
The retrospective will have a special focus on the work of Irish filmmaker Vivienne Dick, who will be present in Porto during the Festival. Vivienne Dick leaves Ireland for New York during the 70s, where she discovers the social and cultural universe of the city's avant-garde. Mapping it in "Guerillère Talks" (1978) and in "She Had Her Gun All Ready" (1978), the author portrays issues related to female identity and social gender norms. "Beauty Becomes the Beast" (1979) and "Liberty’s Booty" (1980) continue to question the position of women in the face of patriarchal structures. "New York Conversations" (1990) and "New York Our Time" (2020) create a juxtaposition of the city's materiality, how it was and how it has been transformed. Outside urban bohemia, she latter develops more poetic aesthetics in the places where she grew up, such as in the powerful family portrait "A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy" (1994). In two of her most recent films, "Red Moon Rising" (2015) and "The Irreducible Difference of the Other" (2013), Dick embraces existential questioning in a world oriented towards war and consumption.
The retrospective will bring Dick's cinema into dialogue with films by other seminal filmmakers of the time, such as Bette Gordon and Beth B, and with prominent figures such as Nan Goldin or Lydia Lunch. The artistic life of the iconic Lydia Lunch is portrayed in the documentary "Lydia Lunch: the War Is Never Over" (2019), directed by Beth B, who, together with Scott B, also signs the disconcerting "Black Box" (1979), also starring Lunch. "Empty Suitcases" (1980), by Bette Gordon, navigates a woman's social and economic conflict through the deconstruction of image and language; “Rome ’78” (1978), by director James Nares, simulates an improvised Roman life in what is perhaps the movement’s most seminal manifesto.
This year, the programming team of the Queer International Film Festivals - Queer Lisboa and Queer Porto considered 1.061 films, 455 of which were received as submissions. The Queer Lisboa 27 and Queer Porto 9 competitions and the rest of the program for both Festivals will be known over the next few weeks.
RETROSPETIVA “No Present. No Future. No Wave.”:
A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy, Vivienne Dick (UK, 1994, 23’)
Beauty Becomes the Beast, Vivienne Dick (USA, 1979, 41’)
Black Box, Beth B, Scott B (USA, 1979, 20’)
Empty Suitcases, Bette Gordon (USA, 1980, 52’)
Guerillère Talks, Vivienne Dick (USA, 1978, 25’)
The Irreducible Difference of the Other, Vivienne Dick (Ireland, 2013, 27’)
Liberty’s Booty, Vivienne Dick (USA, 1980, 48’)
Like Dawn to Dust, Vivienne Dick (USA, 1983, 7’)
Lydia Lunch: the War Is Never Over, Beth B (USA, 2019, 75’)
New York Conversations, Vivienne Dick (UK, 1990, 21’)
New York Our Time, Vivienne Dick (Ireland, 2020, 79’)
Red Moon Rising, Vivienne Dick (Ireland, 2015, 15’)
Rome ’78, James Nares (USA, 1978, 82’)
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