EDGAR PÊRA: RETROSPECTIVE - 22 NOV

The City of Cassiano | 23 min.Combining documentary footage and fictional re-creation, The City of Cassiano is a filmic interpretation of the work of the Portuguese architect, Cassiano Branco. The film questions how Cassiano translated architectural modernism into a national style, with numerous iconographic allusions to the great narratives of Portuguese history, while humanising and reconfiguring these references using an aesthetic that is close to film noir. Lisbon – the city of Cassiano - could indeed have been (or be) another city. Halfway between a treatise on architecture and the detective novel the film traces a confrontation between an initial compromised modernity, and contemporary modernity, that assumes a commitment to invent new things.


Lisbon-Bon 345 Years after the Earthquake | 15 min.The short film Lisbon-Bon 345 Years after the Earthquake can be seen as a subversive glimpse of the future: Lisbon, 345 years after the earthquake. The film is shown as a very different city from the one we know. Using the elementary techniques of animation cinema, Edgar Pêra takes advantage of the state of ruin - the 1755 cataclysm is, although on another scale, a prototype of the 1988 fire in Lisbon’s Chiado district - to devise an absurd Utopian city, halfway between a garden of Eden and an unbearable hell, rebuilt on the ruins.


Stadium (Phantas-Mix) | 8 min.While casting an admiring gaze at the project by the architect, Eduardo Souto de Moura , for Braga Municipal Stadium, Stadium (Phantas-Mix) evaluates the relationship between large-scale architectural works and political power. The typology of the stadium lends itself, in a particularly literal way, to this type of inquiry, whether in terms of the functions that architecture acquired during the Roman Empire, in fascist regimes or, in particular, in the framework of the Euro 2004, European Football Championship. The "quarry stadium”, as it is also known, is the stage in this film for age-old struggles that date back to the stone age.


Heavy Architecture | 25 min.Commissioned by the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Heavy Architecture sarcastically challenges four paradigmatic works that aimed to "project" a renewed image of Portugal in Europe. Viewed by the vox populi as Pharaonic works, inconsistent with the state of the country's finances, these buildings are depicted in the film from a negative perspective, symbolically formalised through confrontation of an array of wildly different voices: images from TV news archives with a series of justifications that don’t halt the controversy, and musical comments by the singer Nel Monteiro, who embodies, using a fearless vernacular, the judgment "of the common man."
THE CITY OF CASSIANO, 1991 LISBON-BON 345 YEARS AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE, 2000 STADIUM (PHANTAS-MIX), 2005 HEAVY ARCHITECTURE, 2007
Director, camera and editing: Edgar Pêra  Original idea: Edgar Pêra, Henrique Cayatte  Cinematography: Álvaro Rosendo, Laurent SimõesMusic: Tiago Lopes Special appearances: Adriana Freire and Laurent Simões, António José Branco Pires, Miguel Lajes, Jorge Silva, Carlos Pinheiro, Rui Santos, Margarida Matos, Nuno Guimarães, Paula Varanda, João Pinto, Lígia Pereira, Jorge Bruto, Maria Ribeiro da Silva, Artur Martins Almeida, Carlos Alberto, Paulo Guilherme, Production: Catarina Santos for the Councillor of Culture of Lisbon Municipal Council [for the exhibition, Cassiano Branco e o Éden-Lisboa 91, Lisbon 1991]Format: video, black and white, 23 min.

Director: Edgar Pêra  Texts: Manuel Rodrigues, Tony GazunzaDirector of Photography: André SzankowskiEditing: Jacub Hruska Soundtrack: Gué, TerraKotaSound: João CostaCast: Inês Marreiros, Jéssica Raquel, Luiza Gabriel, Madga Bull, Maria Teresa Mealha, Romi Anauel, Sheila B., Alexandre Louza, André Pacheco, Humberto Tomás, Ali Ahmad, Ebenezer Mensah, Eduardo Magalhães, João Magalhães Producer: O Circo a Vapor, Patrícia Delgado, Production: Ofícios NecessáriosFormat: video, colour, 15 min.

Original idea and director: Edgar Pêra Director of Photography: Daniel NevesEditing: Sergei DiesSound: Marco PereiraMusic: VortexSoundTek, Vítor RuaSound-mixing: Luís DelgadoCast: Mário Costa (Adrianus 2012), João Dias (Aurelius 0013)Line production: João Pinto SousaProduction: Corda SecaFormat: video, colour, 8 min.

Original idea and director: Edgar Pêra  Music: Nel Monteiro and Vítor RuaInterventions: Nel MonteiroDirector of Photography: Paulo AbreuEditing: Tomás BaltazarSound-mixing: Pedro AlçadaProducer: Rodrigo AreiasProduction: Bando à Parte, for the Lisbon Architecture Triennial [based on a proposal by Jorge Figueira and Nuno Grande for the Lisbon Architecture Triennial]Format: video, colour, 25 min.