Scenery, foreshadowing, metaphor, protagonist — the swimming pool has been used with a multiplicity of premises and purposes in the history of cinema, not only for its natural shimmering imagery, but above all for its ability to represent universes and emotions from our collective imagination.

Through public or private pools, full or empty, this programme explores stories that call on the figure of the pool and place it in the leading role. What is the charm of these concrete basins, which somehow imprison nature for our pleasure and dreams? How do their games of colour and light stimulate encounters and separations, also constituting spaces of fantasy, otherness and care, sometimes revealing inequalities and violence?

Presenting a selection of works from the 1930s to the present day and crossing various genres and aesthetics, from the artist's film to the aquatic musical, we show how swimming pools are used in cinema, discursively and figuratively, becoming vehicles for reflections on the body, desire, death, community, class and ecologies.

Curated by Guilherme Blanc and Lídia Queirós, with support from Sofia Lemos Marques