Curated by Ana David, Maria Ferreira and Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura.

It has been said that films are machines that generate empathy. The same interpretation can be applied to the experience of listening to music with others. Even more so if we dance together. Science has proven that the boundaries between human beings blur when they move in the same way to the same rhythm, so we know that dancing on a dance floor intensifies our connection with those around us. We would argue that the same is not quite true of the cinema auditorium. Our heartbeats may synchronise during the opening minutes of Saturday Night Fever, as John Travolta walks down the street with forceful masculine confidence — accompanied by the Bee Gees — but our connection to the people seated either side of us is no greater than what we experience in the queue at the supermarket checkout. However, by the time we leave the auditorium, we much better understand and empathise with Tony Manero and his life mission of becoming king of the dance floor.

Dance Music and clubbing culture are intrinsically linked to self-discovery and social change. This programme, which spans various musical subgenres, social environments and geographies, celebrates this interdependence. Films like Saturday Night Fever, purposefully omitted from this programme, have depicted the liberation, self-expression and sense of belonging that nightclubs offer, echoing various counterculture movements and social upheavals from across the decades. More recently, documentaries have also taken a closer look at the global phenomenon of electronic music production and consumption, reflecting on the emancipatory dynamics of clubbing, as well as the hedonistic aspects of rave.

In Young Soul Rebels, by Isaac Julien, worlds collide: Chris and Caz, two young Black DJs, dedicate themselves to establishing a space for soul in a 1977 Great Britain dominated by reggae, disco and punk. Their philanthropic creed is that these musical genres can coexist, that is: Black and white people, gay and straight people, share more life experience than they realise.

The trailblazing Black model Bethann Hardison stated that “the disco beat was created so that white people could dance”. The Last Days of Disco, by Whit Stillman, set at the beginning of the 1980s, shortly after disco’s peak, shows the malaise of privileged youth: recent graduates desperate to discover where and with whom they will find their place in the world. For most, the nightclub was a place of freedom; for Alice and Charlotte, it is a stage set for the characteristic anxiety of yuppies.

Dance music is good at constantly reinventing itself. However, in the words of Jeremy Deller, “electronic music hasn't been given the credit it deserved in terms of forcing social change and being a driver of change and youth culture”. His Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984–1992 frames the rave and acid house phenomenon in 1980s Great Britain as a seismic shift in pop culture, “one of the last big youth movements”, according to the artist.

Dance music was born in and spread through social spaces created by Black, Latino and LGBTQI+ communities. Before Steve Rubell’s world-famous Studio 54, there was Larry Levan’s groundbreaking Paradise Garage and, before that, David Mancuso’s underground The Loft. Shakedown, Leilah Weinraub’s non-fiction debut, is an ode to the possibilities and importance of establishing these pleasure spaces: Shakedown, in L.A., was a secret strip club where, during the 2000s, women could be free, Black and lesbian.

Desire and music are central to Clubbed To Death (Lola), by Yolande Zauberman, a new discovery [JO1] of this programme. Lola’s desire for Emir leads her to the excess of dance and the pleasure of trance, here filmed dizzily in a location familiar to the Portuguese general public — the Convento do Beato, in Lisbon, transformed into a techno cathedral. These characters don’t tell their stories, but they show us their feelings through their sensuality. Their bodies are everything[JO2] that they are.

“It's like we all know way down in our souls that our generation is going to witness the end of everything”, says 18-year-old Dark. The pansexual and wayward teenagers of Nowhere, the cult film by Greg Araki, are governed by a fear of imminent apocalypse, omnipresent sexual desire and the eternal search for love, as they ride a veritable rollercoaster of personal crises, be they manic or melancholic.

The awareness that nothing lasts forever permeates the entire history of dance music. Genres burn out and new ones arise from the ashes. Clubs that once defined a city will one day close their doors. With the act of paying tribute at the heart of this programme, we offer a commemoration of clubbing in the city and country as a whole. The immense film archive of nightlife in Porto built up by Manuela dos Campos over the past 26 years is the basis of a new video by the artist, Cool Strangers in the Night, centred on the many venues that no longer exist. In parallel, Portuguese cinema makes a nocturnal appearance through a new work commissioned from Mariana Gaivão, RPM: Revoluções por Minuto — a journey through clubbing scenes shot in Portugal, with an electronic soundtrack performed live by Violet.

After Hours: Clubbing on Film is an invitation to dance. The right to nightlife is universal, be it on a dance floor or in a cinema auditorium, seated side by side with strangers.