Raw Rhythms

Raw Rhythms is my first exhibition in Porto and Vila do Conde. Produced during an artist residency in Vila do Conde between April and May 2026, the exhibition brings together three newly commissioned films, created following an invitation by Galeria Solar and Batalha Centro de Cinema. During my research, I explored the transmission of archaic dances and the traditional métiers of maritime labour, immersing myself in the cultural heritage of north Portugal's Atlantic coast.

Blending fiction and documentary, the works compose a cinematic choreography in which relationships between tradition, memory, and performance reveal how inherited gestures continue to shape contemporary identities. The three films form a meditation on collective memory, embodied knowledge, and the poetic cadence of coastal life.

Underlying the project is a reflection inspired by Serge Daney’s distinction between images that seek to persuade and images that produce a lived experience of time. Rather than pursuing picturesque landscapes or seductive visual compositions, my research on camera resists spectacle. Its ambition is not to aestheticise reality but to suspend it—to create a temporal density in which duration becomes palpable and the viewer gradually loses certainty as to where documentary ends and fiction begins. The films invite an experience of immersion in which truth emerges less as a matter of factual accuracy than as a shared sensory and emotional condition.


Nicole and the Lonely Dories, 23', 2026
Sala-Filme
Set in the Portuguese fishing town of Vila do Conde, the film follows the arrival of Nicole, a hyper-feminine figure from Ecuador whose presence quietly disturbs the rhythms of a close-knit community of fishermen. Having crossed the Atlantic with the hope that following the fishermen might lead to marriage—and with it the possibility of becoming European—Nicole embodies another economy of the sea: one that carries not only fish, but also migrants, desires, and projected futures. Rather than inciting conflict, she becomes a catalyst through which performances of masculinity are revealed—its codes, vulnerabilities, rituals, and latent contradictions.

Inspired by the mythical documentary The Lonely Dorymen, I turn my gaze towards the poetics of maritime labour, where physical endurance, repetition, and collective gestures become forms of choreography. Today, this world is imbued with a quiet melancholy as successive generations increasingly abandon the sea, unwilling to inherit a profession whose dangers remain unrelenting. An important source of inspiration was meeting Abel Coentrão, writer, intellectual and founder of the Bind’ó Peixe association in Caxinas.

Running alongside this narrative is a meditation on childhood and transmission. Elderly women teach ancient Portuguese folk dances to their grandchildren, preserving embodied forms of knowledge that have endured across centuries. These archaic choreographies unfold as living archives, revealing how identity, like tradition, is rehearsed, inherited, and continually reimagined.

Nicole's appearance introduces an unexpected counterpoint of modernity into a community profoundly rooted in ancestral ritual. Her contemporary, overtly stylised, femininity unsettles established codes while her aspirations expose the sea as a space of circulation—not only of labour and commerce, but also of migration, longing, and social mobility. The boats that return to port bring more than their daily catch; they also carry stories, immigrants, romance, hope and dreams. Through this subtle dissonance, humour coexists with longing, gently interrupting the melancholic cadence of a community suspended between the persistence of tradition and the uncertainties of the present.


Moura Encantada, 8', 2026

Sala-Filme

This film unfolds in the fishing port of Póvoa de Varzim, where a chorus of siren-like figures inhabits the threshold between sea and land. Existing in a suspended state of waiting, those who remain on shore anticipate the return of loved ones from the sea. Through dance and song, they perform rituals of invocation, transforming longing into collective gesture. Set within this liminal landscape, the film evokes the mythical figure of the Moura Encantada, weaving folklore, feminine presence, and maritime memory into a poetic meditation on absence, hope, and return.


25 de Abril with Rancho Folclórico da Associação Cultural e Desportiva de Mindelo, 12', 2026
Foyer da Sala 2

Set against the backdrop of Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 25 April, the film reflects on life under dictatorship through the lens of traditional folklore. Ancient folk dances performed by the Rancho Folclorico ACD Mindelos, become both a repository of collective memory and a subtle language of resistance, revealing how cultural rituals endured despite decades of political repression and the instrumentalisation of folklore for the regime’s propaganda.

Through a visual language inspired by the chiaroscuro compositions of Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, light and shadow evoke the tension between silence and liberation, concealment and revelation. The film explores how bodies, gestures, and traditions carry the traces of a nation's past, asking how freedom can be remembered, performed, and transmitted across generations.