Gabriel Abrantes

Date: 22 October 2011 | Season: London Film Festival 2011 | Tags:

GABRIEL ABRANTES
Saturday 22 October 2011, at 7pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3

Gabriel Abrantes & Benjamin Crotty, Liberdade, Portugal-Angola, 2011, 16 min
Liberdade sketches episodes in the relationship between a domineering Chinese immigrant and her Angolan boyfriend with lavishly cinematic panache. Travelling through spectacular locations in and around Luanda, they navigate the complications of their burgeoning identities and the different cultures they represent.

Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt, Palácios de Pena (Palaces of Pity), Portugal, 2011, 56 min
Gabriel Abrantes and his collaborators use the tropes of mainstream cinema to make works that are by turns comical, thought-provoking and transgressive. In a parable on guilt and oppression, which alludes to aspects of Portuguese colonial history, two cousins are potential heirs to their grandmother’s fortune. A new generation may be oblivious to the past, but inherits it nonetheless.

Gabriel Abrantes & Katie Widloski, Olympia I & II, Portugal-USA, 2008, 7 min
Mimicking the composition of Manet’s notorious painting, the artists play out two possible scenarios: between a prostitute and her gay brother, and between a wealthy transsexual and his devoted maid.

Also Screening: Tuesday 25 October 2011, at 1:15pm, NFT2

PROGRAMME NOTES