Amateur cinema and experimental cinema are among the most fruitful areas of narrative experimentation in Portuguese cinema. This selection in this “instruction manual” demonstrates the richness with which these cinematic fields ritualise our relationships with the world, sharing an ability to test the limits of the cinematic device. In these films, the film stock itself is also a ritual, the material form of producing knowledge and a ritualisation of our life in society. The selection includes amateur films from the 1960s and more recent examples of experimental works shot on film, for example by Patrick Mendes and a collective of visual artists and filmmakers from Porto.