SEMIBREVE 2023 – 27 outubro

Main Room 9:30 PM 

Maybe there really is nothing new under the sun, as Maya Shenfeld says and is preached in scripture, but at the same time, in our insignificant scale, everything seems to crumble in super slow motion — climate change and other civilizational crises show us a complicated era to solve together. Maya Shenfeld feels these urgencies on her own skin, but on stage we see Pedro Maia’s hypnotic images collected from the deep entrails of the Vila Viçosa quarries, symbolising the apparent impassiveness of the planet which we so want to save. It is before the sanguine textures of the Alentejo marble and its gigantic blocks, like funeral urns, that we understand the cycles of this and other worlds — some perishable, some symbolically eternal, some destroyed by Humanity. Synths, brass, choral voices and field recordings make up Maya’s transcendental soundtrack, which radiates like a beam of sunlight reflected in the deep, turning chaos into a spectacle of dramatic and almost impossible landscapes and scenery.

Main Room 10:50 PM 

If we understand awards as symbolic of success in cinema, then 2021 was a great year for Ryūsuke Hamaguchi: his “Drive My Car” brought a golden statue back from Hollywood and three other prizes from Cannes. And if the adapted screenplay and direction were especially graced, its soundtrack, written by Eiko Ishibashi, was universally cherished. But out of all the compliments we can give her music, it was Hamaguchi’s opinion which counted the most and brought us to “Gift”, a cinematic project made from the subject of his new film “Evil Does Not Exist” — distinguished with the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice film festival this year. The Japanese director confessed once that music was never an important part of his work, but everything changed when he met Eiko Ishibashi. “Gift” is also for that reason, a unique occasion for his resumé, as it’s a live presentation, with film and music, on a small tour that greatly honours the Semibreve festival.

Full program at www.festivalsemibreve.com