No Táxi do Jack No Táxi do Jack

Mensagem do Realizador Director Statement
From 2007 to 2011 I worked as a Skills Recognition and Validation Professional for an adult education process that was being implemented by the New Opportunities Programme. The programmed had had a significant social impact due to low levels of education among the Portuguese population – ‘a million enrolled’ was the banner of the socialist party that ruled at the time. So I went to work at a New Opportunities centre with the goal of making a film. The o ce where I worked was in Vila Franca de Xira, a city located 30 km away from Lisbon, which had been heavily industrialised and was now on the final stretch of an industrialisation process that had begun in the 1980s. From my desk, I watched dozens of workers who lost their jobs during that period. That was when I met Joaquim. During my interviews and sessions with these people, I listened to men and women talk about their life trajectories, the conditions that determined their existence, as well as their di culties. Like them, I was also inside this process: If, on the one hand, it was exhausting to be exposed to all this, on the other hand, it was engrossing. For five years, I filmed my workplace, which resulted in my 2013 film Active Life. Afterwards, I had the desire to make other films, to give shape to the stories and impressions that I had written down during that period. From that archive, Trials, Exorcisms was born in 2015, which tells the story of a factory’s insolvency. Combining various styles, Jack’s Ride was my way of continuing this journey through the work history of a people, their beliefs and disappointments. Joaquim Calçada, his Portuguese name, initially guides us through his memories. It is through his voice that we begin the journey, aboard his phantasmagoric taxi. This is not solely a geographical journey. It interweaves fragments of Portugal’s recent history. Close to retirement, Joaquim is confronted with an economic crisis that forces the company where he works to re-structure itself and subsequently fire workers. This event unleashes an intersection of forces that converge from di erent locations and times. Joaquim navigates his own atlas as a place of memory, which is also a version of a place and a history: on the one hand, the U.S. and its immigrants; on the other, a Portugal impoverished by decades of dictatorship and successive economic crises. Jack’s Ride is a closed road movie: instead of taking us down a straight line with di erent stops, we trace a concentric movement around Jack’s history.

Biografia do Realizador Director Biography

She was born in Lisbon in 1974. In 1998 she received a B.A. in Communication Sciences from Lisbon’s Nova University. Since then she started to make films that have been shown in the following festivals: Cannes (Directors’ Fortnight), Berlinale, Rotterdam, BFI London IFF, Angers, Viennale, Visions du Reel, Rio de Janeiro, among others. In 2006 she became a member of the production company Terratreme (formerly Raiva), where she has been working as an executive producer in several projects. During the present year she will be preparing the feature film Rabat City.

Distribuição Distribution
Terratreme Distributor Portugal All Rights