Producer and director Catarina de Sousa occupies a unique place in the field of artist’s cinema in Portugal. She has a master’s degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Minho and trained at the Ateliers Varan Documentary Workshops in France. As a journalist, she has worked for Lusa, Rádio Clube Português and Barcelona Televisió, and has also collaborated with Mídia Ninja (Independent Narratives, Journalism and Action) in Brazil. She was a resident artist at UnionDocs — Center for Documentary Art, where she directed the short film Tracing Utopia, with Nick Tyson, which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

In 2021, she created the film production company Foi Bonita a Festa, with Isadora Neves Marques, an artist whose entire filmography she produced, including Tornar-se um Homem na Idade Média, winner of a Tiger Short Award in Rotterdam. In the same year, she founded Casa do Xisto, an artistic residency in the municipality of Barcelos that aims to promote a community spirit of artistic practice in cinema and the visual arts. She currently produces and represents films by Alice dos Reis, Salomé Lamas, Mariana Bártolo, Mariana Silva and Janaina Wagner.

At Batalha, we will show the cinema that she has created, produced and promoted, including some films from the 16mm Immersive Laboratory at Casa do Xisto.

Screening followed by talk with Catarina de Sousa and Hilda de Paulo (artist and curator)