Doclisboa unveils its programme dedicated to work and labour

Under the title BODY OF WORK, this new programme includes films from filmmakers such as Harun Farocki, Carole Roussopoulos, Elisa Cepedal and Jonas Heldt. It is a cinematic proposition that promises to pose important questions and stimulate debate on work and labour - a central thematic in our lives.
 
BODY OF WORK is a programme that arises from a partnership between Doclisboa and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), which aims to offer a platform for dialogue, through cinema, of human rights and social issues related to contemporary working conditions and practices – a key arena within our society.
 
The HWFA - Healthy Workplaces Film Award, created 11 years ago, for best work-related documentary film, will be presented within the Doclisboa festival starting from this year. For this award, a selection of ten films featuring contemporary portraits of labour will be screened at Cinema São Jorge, Lisbon, during the first moment of the festival - 22 October to 1 November.
 
On October 28, from 3 pm to 4.30 pm (UTC +0), Doclisboa, in partnership with EU-OSHA, will also hold Thinking Labour Practices Through Film, a discussion on the relationship between cinema, work and its cinematographic representations that will take place online in order to include participants from different contexts and territories.
 
At the same time, and as a complement to this contemporary programme, a set of films will be presented at DAFilms.com, online platform including a historical mapping of the evolution of the presence of work in our lives during the last century and its cinematographic representations. Our aim is to establish new bridges between past and present through a diverse proposal of incisive and poetic cinematographic objects and representations of labour. This programme will also be part of the first moment of Doclisboa, from October 22 and November 3.
 
From the progressive deindustrialisation portrayed in the mining town of Barredos in the Asturias region, in Elisa Cepedal's Work or to Whom Does the World Belong, to the social transformations illuminated in Merry Christmas, Yiwu, in which Mladen Kovačević explores the growing paradox of the Chinese city of Yiwu, where 600 factories dedicated to the production of Christmas ornaments are located and where, beneath the tinsel and lights, workers dream of a more luxurious life, increasingly distant from the communist ideal, we are witnesses of global developments and economic crisis that slowly forge new landscapes and mindsets.
When we talk about work and social rights, we cannot forget the essential working role of women - the subject of cinematographic representation by so many filmmakers. Take for example La Mami, where Laura Herrero Garvin portrays a community of female dancers from a nightclub in Mexico City who, with steady hands, dictate the house rules, in a discreet yet full of nuance gaze, leaving some doubt in the air as to who is actually in control.
But there is also space for resilience and optimism in the faces of the three protagonists of Sarah Colt's The Disrupted, who refuse to be shaken despite America’s economic quakes.
 
We’d like to take the opportunity to remind you that the 18th edition of Doclisboa takes place in six moments, between October and March. The opening session and world premiere of the film Nheengatu - A Língua da Amazónia, by José Barahona, will kick off the first moment of the festival, on October 22, when we will also feature the retrospective Permanent Travel - The Restless Cinema of Georgia, and the Body of Work cycle. The festival’s closing session will take place on March 7, presenting Ulrike Ottinger’s Paris Calligrammes. Doclisboa’20 will end on March 10, 2021.
 
Doclisboa’s Press Conference is scheduled for October 12, when the festival’s full programme will be revealed.