At the Cinemateca we watched Ernesto de Sousa Programme – 1.
A screening centered on two events that brought together collectives of Portuguese artists in the late 1960s and 1970s, both of which had Ernesto de Sousa (1921–1988) behind their organization. A decisive figure in the visual arts and cinema of this period, his work is divided across the two parts of this programme.
In ALTERNATIVA ZERO, Fernando Curado Matos documented on Super 8 the important exhibition organized by Ernesto de Sousa in 1977 at the Galeria de Belém, focused on the “Polemical Tendencies in Contemporary Portuguese Art.”
The Encontro do Guincho was an important gathering organized by Ernesto de Sousa in collaboration with Noronha da Costa and the Oficina Experimental. Several people filmed it, among them Carlos Calvet, Manuel Torres, and Joaquim Barata, who on April 3, 1969 went to Guincho for the destruction of an object by Noronha da Costa, carried out by an actor (João Luís Gomes) dressed in a tailcoat and bowler hat, who pointed a pistol at the object. This “meeting as art,” as Ernesto de Sousa called it, was followed by a convivial gathering at his house in Rinchoa. Art, celebration, life. A meeting of artists/friends/students, in which we see Ernesto de Sousa, Noronha da Costa, Helena Almeida, Artur Rosa, Jorge Peixinho, Ana Hatherly, Melo e Castro, Fernando Pernes, among many others.
