Rites of Cinema: the Films of António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro

The beautiful, haunting, and highly influential work of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro arrives at BAM in gorgeous new restorations by Cinemateca Portuguesa—after years of being difficult to access. Reis, a collaborator with Portuguese filmmaking legends like Manuel de Oliveira, Paulo Rocha, and practicing psychiatrist Cordeiro, made a small body of singular films focused on life in rural, agrarian north east Portugal, the Trás-os-Montes (literally, “behind the mountains”). Highly regarded by a generation of filmmakers like Pedro Costa, Reis’s student in university, these pieces of pure cinema are widely available in the US for the first time. They screen alongside work Reis contributed to prior to directing, plus a selection of films influenced by the Portuguese director duo’s potent oeuvre.