Serralves gives to know Miguel Gomes' route in show

O director Miguel Gomes is preparing a new film called “Cantiga” and some of the documents related to the new creation are part of the exhibition that is inaugurated today in Serralves, Porto.

In statements to the journalists today, the curator of the exhibition and director of the Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira, António Preto, pointed out that this is a “particularly significant moment, in which Miguel Gomes’s cinema has been increasingly the subject of a deserved international recognition”.

Miguel Gomes, in addition to the film “Selvajaria”, from “Os Sertões”, by Euclides da Cunha, whose filming ended recently, still has in preparation a new film called “Cantiga” that will have exposed documentation in Porto.

“Cantiga” is based on a graphic novel by French illustrator Blexbolex.

The exhibition that is inaugurated today at Casa do Cinema Manoel Oliveira is an integral retrospective of the Portuguese director's path, gathering arguments, photographs, notebooks, notes, unpublished sequences and a great diversity of working documents, “providing a rare opportunity to explore the extent of the artistic practice of the director and the imaginative universe that make him one of the most unique voices of contemporary cinema”, reads in the press dossier.

For António Preto, this is a “balance-sheet moment” for Miguel Gomes’s work, presenting all film production and focusing on the filmmaker’s working methods, “which are very different and have varied greatly over time”.

The exhibition is accompanied by a ‘white letter’ to Miguel Gomes, which means that the retrospective of the film director of “Tabu” will be crossed with films selected by the filmmaker.

“It’s truly an integral retrospective and letter-white with a constellation format and then we can see a picture where Miguel Gomes outlined precisely what this film program is,” added António Preto.

In the exhibition, the visitor can observe excerpts from all Gomes films, including short films such as “Entreto” (1999), “Inventário de Natal” (2000) and “31” (2001), presented in full, as well as excerpts from feature films such as “The Face You Deserve” (2004), “That Dear Month of August” (2008) and “Grand Tour” (2024), the film that earned the director the award for Best Accomplishment at the Cannes Festival.

The exhibition, organized by Fundação de Serralves – Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira, curated by António Preto and coordinated by Carla Almeida, is public until May 30, 2027.