The best Crista Alfaiate’s movies

Between February and July 1858, in the Massabielle cave, the Virgin appeared eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous, a miserable little girl from Lourdes. A true revolution in the heart of the Second Empire that shakes the established order by his universal message of love and prayer.

A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.

The start of Luís Rovisco’s old age isn’t exactly cheerful. Already in his sixties, he’s still roaming the country by himself, carrying out his tasks — increasingly less real — as sales director for the company SegurVale. Sadness, resignation? Not with the songs Luís makes up behind the wheel, and that take over this film from start to finish.

In which Scheherazade tells of how desolation invaded men : “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad ! The residents of a tower block in the suburbs will save parrots and piss inside lifts while surrounded by dead people and ghosts; including in fact a dog that…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.

Rita is fifteen and spends the summer between warm afternoons of teenage love and party nights with her friend Sara. From Portugal to the South Pacific, the pleasures of this routine will take a turn when the young girl visits the art show of a new neighbor in the local community.

In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells king Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. These are stories based on whatever will be happening in Portugal during the production time of the film. As in the book, these stories will be tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events. This film will be about the reality of a disgraced country, Portugal, under the effects of a global economic crisis.

Crista, Carloto and João are building an airy greenhouse for butterflies in the garden. The three of them share household routines, day after day… And they are not the only ones.

Diana is a young man about to enter adulthood. She lives with her father, Gabriel, a game machine dealer, and Magdalene, the stepmother, alongside those working in a hair salon in a shopping center. One day, Diana discovers that Magdalene not only keeps a secret relationship with Michael, the security center and instructor in the gym of the neighborhood, as resumed his old habit of playing. Not to allow the stepmother to his father do the same as her mother had done to her, Diana decides to intervene, approaching the Magdalene lover.

One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organize to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.

Manuel bids farewell to his routine and boards a 15th century vessel under pirate law. Treason on board triggers a series of terrible events our protagonist overcomes while keeping his moral principles intact.

We stare at mirrors as if 'image' was a weapon of self-defense. At night, I hide in actors' dressing rooms for a working class experience. By day, I face an old theatre being razed to the ground, making way for a parking lot. Graffitis have curtains, the nose cap of an umbrella arises from a mount of sand. Oh, Happy Days! No need to stage anything! The bulldozer is a dinosaur whose teeth and gracious neck swings by a EU flag. In the boxes, we await the audience. Sometimes, nobody comes. Lost in a symbolic show of reality, I can only watch the world's end because all the endangered species perform and a reflecting labyrinth of life stories breaks through the glass of the Economic Eating Machine. Even when the sky is falling, theatre will always happen. So, choose the right place.

A chronology of the Avenue Almirante Reis in Lisbon. Its past and present. A portrait of those that inhabit it.

There's a film subtitler. There's a film she must urgently subtitle. There's the plot of that film, with which she relates on a level that will remain enigmatic to us. And in that film within the film there's a main character, whose dreams are being devoured, and other characters, interested in dreams as well, but far more practical. And there¹s music, and a promise of music. Timelessly wandering through the world.