12° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
European Perspectives 19994 - Portugal

Três Palmeiras

THREE PALM TREES

by João Botelho

Country: Portugal

Year: 1994

Duration: 68'

Lisbon, a day in the winter 1994, between 6:am and 2:pm. A forty yearold woman in despair ("Being my age and not knowing anything about children") during the eight hours before the birth of her son. Amidst laughs and tears, her companion, a much younger man that she is, tell her stories corresponding to the hours and relieves her from her pain. Tragic, comic, chaotic, hallucinated stories. At the very moment, at the beginning of the afternoon when the corpse of one of the characters of these stories is taken out the river the newborn child lets his first dramatic and emotional screams of life out. This is the way Lisbon is in the morning...

"There are three beautiful, strong centuryold palm trees in front of the windows of my house. Intolerably indifferent to the street confusion, to the little tragedies in the home, to the happiness of occasional love affairs, they stand in line, inhuman, divine. But when the strong wind tears the clouds up, makes the branches bend and their trunks creak, our insatiable curiosity could lead us to torment, terror and finally to discover the true question of our fate. In their frenzied agitation, most people do not even look at the three palm trees but here they are, one hundred years old, like the cinema, in front of my eyes, everyday. How could I not film them?" (João Botelho).

FILM DIRECTOR

CAST & CREDITS

Biography

film director

João Botelho

João Botelho (Lamego, Portogallo, 1949) enrolled at the Film School at Lisbon's National Conservatory in 1974, and in 1976 founded the film magazine "M." He worked as a graphic artist for a number of publishers and as a film critic for several newspapers and magazines. In 1981 his short film Conversa acabada was presented in Cannes Film Festival and made him one of the leading figures of Portuguese cinema. He received international critical acclaim for his following films, Tempos difíceis (1988), Aqui na terra (1993), Tráfico (1998), Que és tu? (2001). His last film O Fatalista (2005) has been presented in competition at the last Mostra di Venezia.

FILMOGRAFIA

O alto do cobre (1976), Alexandre e Rosa (cm, 1978), Conversa acabada (1980), Um adeus português (1985), Tempos difíceis (1988), No dia dos meus anos - O ar (1992), Aqui na terra (1993), Três palmeiras (1994), Tráfico (1998), Se a memória existe (cm, 1999), Quem és tu? (2001), As mãos e as pedras (2002), Viagem ao coração do Douro, a terra onde nasci (doc., 2002), A mulher que screditava ser presidente dos Estados Unidos da America (2002), O Fatalista (2005), A luz na Ria Formosa (doc., 2005).

Cast

& Credits

Director and screenplay: João Botelho.
Director of photography: Olivier Gueneau.
Art director: Fernanda Morais.
Editor: Carla Bogalheiro.
Music: Antonio Vitorino de Almeida.
Sound: Francisco Veloso.
Cast: Teresa Roby, Pedro Hestnes, Rita Lopes Alves, Alexandra Lencastro, Diego Infante, Inês de Medeiros, Ana Nave, Herculano Cunha, Jessica Weiss, Stephen Jonston.
Produzione e vendita all'estero: Madragoa Filmes, Av. D. Manuel I, 4, 2890, Alcochete, Portugal, tel. +35112342233, fax +3511-2342202.