Marcelo Felix is a filmmaker. Cinema, as a poetic and essayistic art form, guides his practice across experimental films, poetry, research and interdisciplinary work, leading him to classical studies and translation, contemporary art and film programming. Society’s conflictual relationship with nature and the formation of an awareness of civilisation’s vulnerability are themes that recur in his films, beginning with Eden’s Ark (2011, an essay on the parallel paths of botanical and cinematic preservation, between the Global Seed Vault in the Arctic and Portuguese film archives), notably in Flower and Eclipse (2013, a foretaste of female emancipation defended by force), Paul (2016, the meeting of music and factory work in a threatened nature reserve) and Dominion (2019, a countdown farewell to the world we once knew). Between the background and the foreground, this dimension continues in several of his ongoing projects.
Takashi Sugimoto is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Portugal. Born in Japan and living in the West for nearly three decades, his practice reflects the perspective of inhabiting the space "between cultures." Through cinema and photography, he explores the intersections of cognition and memory, bridging the micro of everyday gestures with the macro of the cosmos. His poetic visual language examines the profound resonance between civilization, life, and spirituality. His latest film, Black Gold (2024), was awarded the Grand Prix of the Belgrade International Festival of Ethnological Film and the Special Jury Prize of Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
