Guest Writers

Alexandra João Martins

Alexandra João Martins has a degree in Communication Sciences and a master’s in Art Studies, both from Universidade do Porto, and a PhD in Art Studies from FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, with a scholarship from FCT. She has written for a range of publications and has been a member of the selection committees for the festivals Curtas Vila do Conde and Porto/Post/Doc. In 2017, she was selected by the Talent Press Rio programme and, in 2018, she commissioned the exhibition Como o Sol/Como a Noite, with support from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, as part of the retrospective dedicated to António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro within Porto/Post/Doc.

Álvaro Domingues
Álvaro Domingues is a geographer, professor and researcher at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto and the Centre for Architecture and Urbanism Studies (CEAU-FAUP). Among other works, he is the author of Portugal Possível (2022, with Duarte Belo), Paisagem Portuguesa (2022, with Duarte Belo), Paisagens Transgénicas (2021), Volta a Portugal (2017), Território Casa Comum (2015, with N. Travasso), A Rua da Estrada (2010), Vida no Campo (2012), Políticas Urbanas I e II (with N. Portas and J. Cabral, 2003 and 2011), and Cidade e Democracia (2006). He is a corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. He writes regularly for the Público newspaper.

André Tecedeiro
André Tecedeiro is a poet, playwright and visual artist. He has a degree in Painting (FBAUL) and Psychology (FPUL) and a master's degree in Fine Arts and in Labour Psychology. He has published eight books of poetry in Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and Spain, including A Axila de Egon Schiele (Porto Editora, 2020), recommended by the National Reading Plan. His poems are represented in more than twenty literary magazines and anthologies. For the theatre, he wrote Joyeux Anniversaire (2021), Undoing (2021) and The Rehearsal (2023).

Catarina Alves Costa
Catarina Alves Costa is a film director and anthropologist with a PhD from Universidade Nova de Lisboa with her thesis “Camponeses do Cinema. Representações da Cultura Popular no Cinema Português”. She has directed, among other films, Margot (2022), Pedra e Cal (2016), Falamos de António Campos (2010), Nacional 206 (2009), O Arquiteto e a Cidade Velha (2004) and co-directed Um Ramadão em Lisboa (2019). She is an Assistant Professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Coordinator of the Master's Degree in Anthropology — Visual Cultures and LAV — Audiovisual Laboratory of the Anthropology Network Centre (CRIA). She is the author of the book Cinema e Povo (2022, Edições 70).

Cristina Fernandes
Cristina Fernandes (Porto, 1966) is an independent researcher in the field of cinema. Since 2004, she has been writing about films and literature on several platforms, currently on the blog Bicho Ruim. She has published articles in magazines and editorial projects dedicated to cinema, as well as translations of authors such as Emil Cioran, Chantal Akerman and Marguerite Duras, with publishers such as Edições 70, BCF and Contracapa. Her career combines criticism, translation and research, reflecting an interest in the dialogue between the arts, thought and moving images.

Ece Canlı
Ece Canlı is a researcher, artist, and musician whose work intersects material regimes, body politics, and performativity. She holds a PhD in Design from the University of Porto and is currently a researcher at CECS at the University of Minho where she investigates the spatial, material, and technological conditions of the criminal justice system, queer incarceration, penal design, and abolition feminism. As an artist, she employs extended vocal techniques and electronics to create sound for staged performances, exhibitions, and films, both collaboratively and as a soloist.

Fernando José Pereira
Fernando José Pereira (Porto, 1961) has a degree in Painting from the University of Porto and a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Vigo. Since the 1990s, he has been developing an artistic practice involving the use of video. As a member of the experimental electronic music collective Haarvöl, he has recently been exploring the relationship between video and music. His work is included in the collections of the Serralves Foundation, the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, among others.

Isadora Neves Marques
Isadora Neves Marques is a film director, visual artist, and writer. Her films have premiered at festivals such as Cannes (Critics’ Week), Toronto, and Rotterdam. In 2022, she was awarded the Ammodo Tiger Short Award. In the same year, she was the Official Portuguese Representative at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and received the Special Prize from the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize, among other awards. She is co-founder of the film production company Foi Bonita a Festa and the poetry publisher Livros do Pântano. She is a regular contributor to the e-flux Journal and is the author of the poetry books A Campa de Marx (2025) and Sex as Care and Other Viral Poems (2020), the short story collection Morrer na América (2017) and several anthologies of thought. She is a PhD candidate at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.

Joana Rafael
Joana Rafael is an architect and researcher. She focusses on (questions of) ecology, human geography and natural sciences, encompassing contemporary culture, media studies, art and technology, and reflecting on the limits of infrastructure in relation to the functioning of terrestrial systems. She completed a PhD in Visual Culture and a master’s in Research Architecture, both at Goldsmiths (London), and a master’s in Urban Architecture and Culture, from the partnership between Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. She provides consultancy to architecture firms and teaches at Escola Superior Artística do Porto.

João Araújo
With a degree in Economics from the Porto School of Economics, João Araújo writes about cinema for À Pala de Walsh (of which he has been co-editor since 2017). He has been collaborating with the Curtas de Vila do Conde Festival since 2016, on the selection committee, moderating talks with filmmakers and coordinating the editorial process. He has been the director and programmer of Cineclube Octopus since 2003. In 2010, he presented a film-concert based on the filmography of Yasujiro Ozu in various parts of the country. In 2015, he collaborated with Porto/Post/Doc in the programming of a series dedicated to Lionel Rogosin.

Kitty Furtado
Ana Cristina Pereira (Kitty Furtado) is a cultural critic whose work brings down the boundaries between academic and public spheres. She has curated screenings of (post)colonial films and promoted the public discussion of Memory, Racism and Reparations. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Universidade do Minho, is a researcher at CECS, coordinates the Working Group on Visual Culture at SOPCOM and co-edits VISTA, a magazine about visual culture. With Rosa Cabecinhas, she published the book Abrir os gomos do tempo: conversas sobre cinema em Moçambique (2022).

Lendl Barcelos
Lendl Barcelos is a sound artist, “kataphysician” and DJ, interested in exploring the vibrating matters, often of the aural dimension, even when these occur beyond normative human limits. Alongside Tarek Atoui, Allison O'Daniel, Myriam Lefkowitz & Valentina Desideri, he was part of the Council's Infinite Ear project, based on the premise that deafness constitutes a specialisation in sound. His work has been presented at Biennale Architettura XVIII (Venice), Centrocentro (Madrid), Garage (Moscow), Inkonskt (Malmo), Q-O₂ (Brussels), Pedreira (Porto), and has been published by Urbanomic, re:press, MIT and Norient.

Manuel Loff
Manuel Loff holds a PhD in History and Civilisation from the European University Institute (Florence. He is a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Porto and a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History-NOVA FCSH/IN2PAST and at the Centre d'Estudis sobre Dictadures i Democràcies (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) in the areas of 20th-century political, ideological and social history, particularly in the study of fascism and neo-fascism, revolutions and processes of authoritarian and democratic transition, and collective memory studies. He writes for the daily newspaper Público since 2011.

Marcos Cruz
Marcos Cruz graduated from the Escola Superior de Jornalismo do Porto with a degree in Communication before joining the editing team at Diário de Notícias. For most of his 16 years there, he was responsible for the Culture section for the North of Portugal. He has worked with the Correio da Manhã  and Norte Desportivo newspapers, and as a theatre, music and film critic, having sat on juries for various film festivals across the country. He is the author of the book Os pés pelas mãos (Coolbooks, 2018). Currently, he works as a copywriter at Casa da Música and organises and moderates a cycle of debates at Coliseu do Porto.

Maria João Castro
Maria João Castro is a professor at ESMAE, where she lectures in History of Culture, Theatre and Cinema, Contemporary Political Thought, and Culture and Ideology. She completed her PhD in Contemporary Political History at FLUP and is currently a researcher at CITCEM in the fields of Cultural History and Contemporary Political Thought. She is a member of parliament and an official and councillor for the Socialist Party in Porto. Since 2020, she has been part of the Directorate of the Members Association of the Coliseu do Porto, the managing body of the Coliseu do Porto.

miguel bonneville
miguel bonneville introduces us to autofictional stories, centred on the deconstruction and reconstruction of identity, through works that cross multiple artistic areas. He has directed films such as Traça (2016), Um medo com duas grandes faces (2022), and Camera obscura (2023). He has published the books Ensaios de santidade (Sr. Teste, 2021), O pessoal é político (Douda Correria, 2021), as well as the artist’s editions Jérôme, Olivier et moi (Homesession, 2008), Notas de um primata suicida (2017), and, through the Teatro do Silêncio, Dissecação de um cisne (2018), Lamento do ciborgue (2021), Recuperar o corpo (2021) and Camera escura (2022).

Pedro João Santos
Journalist, radio broadcaster and film programmer (b. 2001). He writes about pop music for Ípsilon, Público newspaper and other publications (The Guardian, The Quietus, Bandcamp Daily). He works at Antena 1 radio station, for which he created the documentary Madonna: A Lei da Reinvenção. After defending a dissertation on music videos by António Variações and Lena d'Água, he obtained a master's degree in Ethnomusicology from the NOVA University of Lisbon — School of Social Sciences and Humanities. He founded the film club of the Albardeira cultural association, producing and moderating screenings at the Municipal Theatre of Ourém.

Raquel Schefer
Raquel Schefer is a researcher, director, programmer and professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris). She completed her PhD in Cinematographic Studies at the same institution — with a thesis dedicated to the revolutionary cinema of Mozambique — and holds a master’s degree in Documentary Cinema from the Universidad del Cine (Argentina). She is the author of the book El Autorretrato en el Documental (Ediciones Universidad del Cine, 2008) and co-editor of Resistência Visual Generalizada: Livros de Fotografia e Movimentos de Libertação (Atlas Projectos, 2025). She has taught at various universities in France, Spain Argentina and Mexico and is a visiting researcher at UCLA. She was an FCT-funded post-doctoral researcher and is co-editor of the film theory and history journal La Furia Umana.

Ricardo Braun
Ricardo Braun graduated from UCP with a degree in Sound and Image, before working as dramaturgical and staging assistant to Nuno Cardoso, Rogério de Carvalho and João Pedro Vaz. In 2012, he founded OTTO and co-staged Katzelmacher, based on the play and film by R. W. Fassbinder. He led the amateur company Ao Cabo Theatre, directing them in plays based on the writing of Jean Anouilh and Ben Jonson/Stefan Zweig. He has also translated the work of Marius von Mayenburg, Lars Norén and Ödön von Horváth. Currently, he is a bookseller at Livraria Aberta.

Rosa Maria Martelo
Rosa Maria Martelo is an essayist, a researcher at Instituto de Literatura Comparada Margarida Losa and a full professor in the Faculty of Letters at Universidade do Porto. She holds a PhD in Portuguese Literature, with a focus on the study of Portuguese poetry and modern and contemporary poetics. In the field of Comparative Literature and Inter-art Studies, she studies the inter-media and trans-media relations between modern and contemporary poetry and visual arts and cinema. She has published O Cinema da Poesia (2012), Devagar, a Poesia (2022) and Matérias Difusas, Poderosas Coisas (2022). She co-organised the anthology Poemas com Cinema (2010) and organised the Antologia Dialogante de Poesia Portuguesa (2021).

Saguenail
Serge Abramovici (Saguenail) holds a PhD in Cinema and Pedagogy from Université de Provence (France) and has taught French, pedagogy, literature and cinema at UM, ESMAE, ESAP and FLUP. He is the author of over 50 books (poetry, fiction, essays) and has a vast filmography (more than 40 titles, some in partnership with Regina Guimarães). He founded the magazine A Grande Ilusão and the association Os Filhos de Lumière. He programmed the series "O Sabor do Cinema" at Museu de Serralves (2002—2013). Currently, he runs the programme Literama e Cinetura. He is a founding member of Centro Mário Dionísio/Casa da Achada.

Sofia Victorino
Sofia Victorino is an FCT-funded doctoral researcher in Contemporary History at FCSH and has a master’s degree in Contemporary Cultural Processes from Goldsmiths (London). Between 2011 and 2021, she was Director of Education and Public Programmes at the Whitechapel Gallery (London), including roles in artistic programming and curation. Previously, she was Coordinator of the Educational Service at Museu de Serralves (2002–2011). She lectures on the master’s programme in Curating Art and Public Programmes at London South Bank University, and is a member of the advisory board for Documents of Contemporary Art, co-published by the Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press.