2023

In the heart of Bairro Alto, right in the centre of Lisbon, the building of an old printing workshop is demolished to make way for a development of luxury apartments. Seeing this demolition as a perfect image for the death of a certain Lisbon in the wake of the financial crisis and the ensuing real estate and touristic boom, the director proposes to film an urban diary portraying the daily life of the construction site and those who work there. What starts out as a work-centred film turns out to be the story of the director’s relationship with his hometown and with the people who build it, a polyphonic narrative made up of their life stories of labour and immigration, shining a light on the violence and destruction that hide under the progress of our cities.

1973 saw the creation of the MLAC (Movement for Abortion and Contraception Freedom) in France. Some abortive medical procedures that were still illegal and secrete were sometimes filmed for information and training purposes. In The Cervix Pass, actress and director Marie Bottois documents the insertion of an intrauterine device inside her own body. With both humour and aesthetic precision, she follows the lead of militant and feminist films like Y’a qu’à pas baiser (Carole Roussoupolos, 1971). Her film becomes both a piece of evidence and a piece of history, at a time when women’s sexual and reproductive rights are under attack all around the world.