Exibição Exhibition

Casa do Cinema de Coimbra
12 nov., 21:45

Origem Origin

País de Origem Origin Country Portugal
País de Rodagem Filming Country Portugal

Metragem e Género Footage and Genre

Duração Runtime 78’0”

Tipo de Projecto Project Type Documentary
Género Genre
Língua Language Portuguese

A Nossa Terra, O Nosso Altar A Nossa Terra, O Nosso Altar

Sinopse Original Original Sinopsis

A demolição de um bairro afeta a identidade de uma comunidade e o seu sentimento de pertença, forçando a adaptação. “A Nossa Terra, o Nosso Altar” testemunha as rotinas cotidianas e a tensão causada pela iminente demolição das torres onde os habitantes do bairro do Aleixo viveram toda a sua vida, enquanto a gentrificação lhes dita o destino.

Sinopse Internacional Sinopsis

“Our Land, Our Altar” witnesses the everyday routines and the tension caused by the impending demolition of the towers where Aleixo inhabitants have lived in their entire lives – as gentrification dictates the dispersion of these low income communities. In 2013, Aleixo’s neighbourhood, in Porto, was halfway through a demolition process. As a well-known drug center, Aleixo became a difficult ghetto to accept and understand. This film starts in a transition process where two of the five towers were already demolished and their habitants relocated. The remaining residents are still waiting for the letters that will confirm the same inevitable fate. In the meantime, they struggle to deal with a suspended place, trying to keep a normal life and simultaneous feeling the anxieties of an unavoidable farewell. Six years after (2019), there are still people living at the neighbourhood. Throughout those years, all the anger was replaced by a weakness and an overall felling of impotence.

Mensagem do Realizador Director Statement
“Our Land, Our Altar” aspires to tell the silenced stories of so many houses that are about to disappear. When I experienced Aleixo’s neighbourhood for the first time, a part of me was expecting to find a panorama that matched so many ideas and preconceptions built and spread around those buildings. However, when I recall those first days, the ones where I first lived Aleixo, I get profoundly emotional. Between the scattered words through the halls and galleries, the countless stairs or the ephemeral suspensions on the tower’s center, I recall the open doors: the sight of the house’s interior, the voices through the houses, as if those houses where made of voices calling each other. I recall the tower’s empirical architecture, a place of memory. I don’t know if it was the time collapsing on top of them or even the numerous small changes during all those years. What I know for a fact is that somehow all the elements compose a shared story, a living manifest fighting against the eternal age of social stratification. And it’s with this confrontation that the urgency of the document arises; of the resident’s collective redemption which slowly leave and separate from one another throughout the city, watching from far their own houses imposed demolition (and the community itself). Through Luísa’s voice, beloved and confident woman; Zé da Bina, tuff and respected man, who lives embittered by his own condition; and his sister Maria João, Israel’s mother, son of light that passed away in a terrible way, this documentary seeks to be made of people, of words, of height. “Our Land, Our Altar” aims to tell the secrets of a territory and its people. To deal with the neighbourhood as a living being, a universal place where time slowly consumes the river seen by the windows, while children shout throughout the springs. To dignify the silence.