Festival MOTELX distinguishes director Solveig Nordlund in the 20th edition

O Lisbon International Terror Festival — MOTELX announced today some of the programming of the “very special 20th edition”, with the award of the Noémia award Delgado to Solveig Nordlund, “one of the women pioneers in fantastic cinema and horror”.

For MOTELX, Solveig Nordlund, 83, is “one of the most innovative figures in Portuguese cinematography, whose authorial universe is deeply contaminated by H. P. Lovecraft and J. G. Ballard”.

Solveig Nordlund, producer, manufacturer, director, screenwriter, already honored by the Portuguese Academy of Cinema and the Porto Femme festival, made fiction, documentary, worked for television, for theater, adapted works by authors such as JG Ballard, Richard Zimler, Luíza Neto Jorge and António Lobo Antunes, and actively participated in militant and collective cinema in the post-25 April 1974.

In the section “Quarto Perdido”, the festival points the focus to director José de Sá Caetano, 92 years old, “who remains, still today, as one of the most forgotten figures of Portuguese cinema and whose surrealistic universe deserves a severe rediscovery”.

MOTELX wants to revisit the films “The Ruins in the Interior” (1977), “Azul Azul” (1986) and “Um S Marginal” (1983) of this author.

José Maria de Sá Caetano was born in 1933, took the Architecture course of the Lisbon School of Fine Arts, and left for London in 1959, where he studied at London Film School and Slade School of Fine Art, having worked for the BBC and international film producers for over a decade.

Already after his return to Lisbon, he was Taylor Hackford’s assistant director in “The Midnight Sun” (1985), Clive Donner’s “To Catch a King” (1984), and Fred Schepisi’s first assistant director of “The House of Russia” (1984), and directed round sequences in Lisbon with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer.

He was part of the Collective of Cinematographic Activity Workers that filmed “The Guns and the People” (1974), a feature film about the days from April 25 to May 1, 1974.

Another highlight of MOTELX is the creation of a new section entitled “Lost in Europe”, to “recover and rediscover forgotten European cinematographies”, dedicating this year to the countries of the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’.

To the Award for the Best Short Film of Terror ten films compete: “amordemoura”, by Tiago Santos; “The Time of Chico”, by João Severo and Rafael Sá Carneiro; “Final da Nite”, by Duarte Gandum and Henrique Gandum; “Tardo”, by Carlos Calika; “Consolatio”, by Pedro M. Afonso; “I am Here”, by Ana Rita Martins; “Spirit Caller”, by Vítor Dutta; “Bruno, o Boneco”, by Diogo dos Santos Oliveira; “consumed”, by [carrozo]; and “Royal”, by Hinata Almeida and Tomás Pascoal.

The present international production includes, among others, “Game”, by John Minton, “AnyMart”, by Yusuke Iwasaki, or “Species”, by Marion Le Correller.

The 20th MOTELX – Lisbon International Terror Festival will take place from 3 to 13 September at the São Jorge cinema and at the Portuguese Cinemateca.

In a press release, the direction of MOTELX recalls that the festival maintains the initial objective: “To promote terror as a space of artistic creation, to bring consecrated authors and new voices of the genre to Cinema São Jorge and, above all, to affirm itself as a place of encounter and consecration for Portuguese creators”.