Ricardo Leite

Time Takes a Cigarette

In the late 70s and early 80s in the city of Porto, concerts by Rock and Punk bands began to appear. April 25, 1974, which put an end to the longest dictatorship in Europe, brought political and creative freedom. Through a series of tableaux vivants based on photos from an era covered with a nostalgic aura, but employing contemporary mannequins, the film revives some loud narrations of those crazy times, which failed to reach our ears.

Lucefece: Where there is no vision, the people will perish

Shot in film and hand processed by the director for over 20 years, Lucefece mixes personal, political and mythical views on reality exorcizing old ghosts. Stories from the director's childhood, together with conversations with his father, that fought in the colonial war in Africa and later was arrested, prepare the scenario for a profound reflexion on today's world. The film spirals like a snake travelling through time, an eternal recurrence, mixing documentary with film essay and autobiographical tones.

Here Where It All Ends

"Here Where It All Ends" is an experimental, poetic short film that moves between documentary and fiction to address an endangered culture, that of indigenous people in the Brazil. It is, in particular, a sharing of knowledge carried out in Aldeia Bugio, at all stages of 16mm filming, botanical development and sound capture in a collective way. It seeks to reactivate the memory of the origins of the Laklãnõ/Xokleng people.

Blue Apples

Edila Gaitonde, born in the Azores, was the first Portuguese woman to marry a Goan of Indian origin during the Salazar dictatorship. Her husband was Pundalik Gaitonde, a freedom fighter who fought for Goa’s independence from Portugal. Edila was a fighter, piano teacher, radio presenter, documentary maker. She left us in 2021 at the age of 100, but it is through her that we will learn stories about an unknown Goa and a forgotten Portugal based on her accounts, photographs and dozens of previously unseen super 8mm films.

Self portrait

In 2012 I started testing a new hydrogen peroxide based bleach with an acid as a stabilizer, citric acid was the first choice, and these were my first positive results with Fomapan R100 on 16mm film.

The Factory

The sound was deafening. The noise of the machines, the steps, the daily hustle of the more than a thousand workers, entering and leaving the shifts. There were 12-hour days, people without holidays, a stolen youth so that the cloth would continue to leave the factory. The revolution came and everything changed. Strikes, picket strikes, worker’s rights. Then the globalisation came. The factory went down to close. We went back to it, with the former workers, the old and the young. The machines continue to work in the empty spaces, the ghosts wander illuminated by traces of light until the walls begin to fall.

Tarrafal

One day almost everything turned into a pile of rubble and bush. There remained ghosts wandering through the fields, the ruins and the fog. Some of these ghosts are alive. They are those who stayed, those who came back, those who roam the difficult memories of the most cursed neighborhood of the city. Only that this Tarrafal, the name of the field of slow death of Salazar's dictatorship, is not in Cape Verde but in Portugal.

Tarrafal

One day almost everything turned into a pile of rubble and bush. There remained ghosts wandering through the fields, the ruins and the fog. Some of these ghosts are alive. They are those who stayed, those who came back, those who roam the difficult memories of the most cursed neighborhood of the city. Only that this Tarrafal, the name of the field of slow death of Salazar's dictatorship, is not in Cape Verde but in Portugal.

Pursuit of Sacredness

This movie was directed in order to homage the poet Sebastião Alba, through Antonin Artaud’s poem “Pursuit of Fecality”. In this movie we can also find poems by Alba, as well as the director, Ricardo Leite.

White Bull

In this film, Ariadne, still a young adolescent, climbs to a mountain in the island of Crete to meditate about a strange dream. The daughter of King Minos, still didn't meet Theseus, and she neither knows about his existence, but in her dream about a bullfight she thinks to recognize the figure of the hero in the strange character of the bullfighter. The music is a result of mixing the eletro acoustic music track from portuguese group BOIAR and a smal excerpt from Ariadne auf Naxos composed by Richard Strauss