5th to 7th June

During the Festival, Foyer | Image and video

BÁRBARA VIRGÍNIA – FIRST PORTUGUESE DIRECTOR 

Curators Ana Mafalda Reis and Matilde Carmo, Olhares do Mediterrâneo

The exhibition Bárbara Virgínia – First Portuguese Director features, for the first time, documents and depositions of Bárbara Virgínia, in image and video, as a director and an artist. Bárbara Virgínia (1923 – 2015) was the first Portuguese director and the first Portuguese woman to present a film in Cannes. She passed away on the 7th of March, with 91 years old, in São Paulo, Brazil.

The exhibition is part of a tribute made to the director, as part of the programme of Olhares do Mediterrâneo 2015, and is complemented with an open talk À Conversa Sobre Bárbara Virgínia. Having started her career in the 40s, this multitalented artist did radio shows, song and poetry recitals, and acted both in theatre and cinema. When she was merely 22, in 1946, she directed and presented her first film  Três Dias Sem Deus [Three Godless Days], a feature selected to represent Portugal in the very first edition of Cannes Festival.

Três Dias Sem Deus is an important issue in the History of Portuguese Cinema, not only because it was the first feature film directed by a woman in our country, but also because it was the only cinematographic production made by a woman in Portugal until 1976, already after The April Revolution.

Free entrance

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