marta almeida

Andrei Tarkovsky is known for his mastery of film creation. Holding a portfolio of seven masterpieces in cinema history, he created films of unique imagery, contemplative shots, and immense beauty. The viewer is easily transported into a spiritual, transcendental, and aesthetically beautiful universe. His cinema is frequently labeled as arthouse due to his formal and thematic experimentation.

He usually created complex narratives that tell life events in a stylized, distorted manner according to his own observations as a director. Without easy-to-understand plots, what truly matters are the characters portrayed and what they represent. Although there is a need to understand their connections or relationships to space, what the film tells us are fragments of actions showing the imperfection of human daily life and its triviality, always in an immensely poetic and beautiful way.

There is an inherent spirituality in all his films that acts almost as a guiding thread for what we observe - constant masterpieces that transcend what is understood as classical cinematic narrative.

Tarkovsky created non-linear narratives, often lost between memory, dream, and reality, using formal differences to intensify this feeling. With this juxtaposition of narrative times, and through long shots of natural landscapes, Tarkovsky crafted his own cinematic language, built upon an immense poetics of life's small moments.

The interest in the face is not only associated with expression, but also with an idea of recognition. Whether to identify with another person, to find beauty or desire in them, or to discover through them a reflection of ourselves, it is through the close-up shot that we gain access to the interiority of the other. This device operates almost like a screen, as described by Jacques Lacan: the site where the observer makes contact with their own subjectivity. For Lacan, this screen is where the observer meets the represented subject, and through this "space of mediation," processes of identification and projection emerge.

I refer to a masterclass example of the close-up: Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Often cited as one of the greatest uses of the close-up, this film tells the story of Joan of Arc and her trial in the moments preceding her execution. The close-up functions as an entry into Joan of Arc's subjective state. The frightened look and tormented expressions captured through tight, intimate close-ups deeply affect the viewer, who accesses and understands the character's internal landscape directly through her face.

The film is set in Taipei, and the city itself becomes a character. Given the narrative's slower pacing, which is intensified by long shots creating a sense of stillness, this is juxtaposed against shots of the city where speed is felt through cars, passing pedestrians, and ambient sound. The city manifests itself and heightens the issues of melancholy and solitude - themes inherent to Yi-Yi.

Although this film is directly a domestic family drama, classifying it purely as such would be reductive, since at its core it is a story about life: boring routine, unexpected events, desires, actions, and the will of characters as real as the viewer.

The temporal division of the narrative into two defining moments - the wedding and the funeral - brings forward the idea of an episodic layout, showing how monotonous the characters' lives truly are. By maintaining a near-real dimension of life and drawing a parallel to ourselves, it is possible to identify these two key moments as focal points of a cyclical life, where events repeat over and over again.

A moment that clearly exemplifies this cyclical motion is when Min-Min, facing her bedridden mother, cries and reflects on how empty her life is - a daily repetition of the exact same routines, leaving room for nothing else.

Michelangelo Antonioni is, among the great Italian filmmakers who emerged in the post-war period, the one who stands out most for his filming style, so attentive to the plastic dimension of representation. His films translate complex stories with characters in situations of personal identity crisis or identity crises before the eyes of others.

The way Antonioni translates these character pains is almost like a painting; composing images, using shots, scenography and magical worlds, fabricated to meet what is felt by them.

The values present in his films stem from certain values that were present at the time of the post-war, creating environments of young bourgeois in situations of questioning values and settling blame in a modern world, which only confuses what an individual being is and what function there is in existing. In formal terms, Antonioni created an elegance in the composition of characters, making them more real, turning them into people the audience understood. There is, in all this director's films, a strong deconstruction of characters allied with identity through spatial and scenic elements.

Starting from the observation of three John Cassavetes films, this essay focuses on the desire to understand the importance of the body and what notion of movement exists in his cinema.

John Cassavetes created an ideal of representation, bringing the notion of the body and what it shows us in diverse ways: he created founding gestures, representations almost like performances and happenings, where the body is taken to the extreme and both resists and exists.

Merleau-Ponty was a very important thinker of the 20th century, his thought translating a condition of clear subjectivity that unfolds, finding conditions that transform into bodily movements that portray practical and theoretical situations of life.

He portrays the body as the identity that reflects everything that is historicity - as human beings we exist and live with our body, and this, like us, carries a series of situations and conditions that form into permanent scars.

The body functions as a transmitter, being that through which we can feel and give meaning to bodily events, through which we make decisions and feel the weight of our senses.

The act of writing does not impose an identity. The personality of whoever writes ceases to be relevant from the moment the pen touches paper. Although we start from a theory that the author places a part of themselves on the page, we cannot confuse their reality with the fiction they write; writing does not imply an obligation to the reader - it should suffice in itself without the need to know its author.

I will base myself on Elena Ferrante's case to defend this idea of privacy and identity in writing, since, in my view, this question of anonymity is also latent in her literary works. "The book is everything, and comes before everything, if we really like to read. Outside my books, what am I? A lady no different from so many others. So, leave authors in peace; love - if it's worth it - what they write."

Hot summer nights always call for a family or friends dinner. Fresh drinks, tarts and salads are perfect for spending a great August evening... But how to make them environmentally friendly? Without creating food waste and without using disposable objects. Below we leave our favorite tips.

1. Buy seasonal foods - One of the best things we can do is buy local and seasonal foods. Besides helping the local economy, we're not buying foods that came from places very far from Portugal.

2. If possible, buy other ingredients in bulk - If you have near your house some establishment that sells in bulk, take advantage of it! You're not only saving plastics, cans or glass from products that are usually in larger commercial establishments but you're buying the exact amount you need, not wasting food. With this, you also help the local economy.

Investors are always looking for the best options in the market - whether it's buying cryptocurrencies that no one knows about yet, betting on established giants like Amazon, or finding a new company that could be unique in the Portuguese tech market. Often, the best investments are well-known and right in front of us - like investing in Amazon. The company has been publicly traded for over 20 years and remains a strong place to invest.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the company's stock price, and in 2021, it continues to diversify its business into video streaming and entertainment. In the following article, we'll explore why investing in Amazon in 2021 makes sense, how to invest in Amazon through the best brokers available in the Portuguese market, and the advantages and disadvantages of investing in a global e-commerce giant.

"Nocturnal Animals" tells the story of a successful woman who receives a book written by her ex-husband and becomes consumed by what she perceives as an act of revenge.

The film explores past love and the interpretation of a given gift. Susan (Amy Adams) appears to be a successful figure in the American art scene - a gallery owner married to a charming high-class man. A perfect house, a perfect marriage. But the reality reveals something different. The film serves as both a personal narrative and a social critique of the art-world bourgeoisie, where people conform to social patterns that they believe define their lifestyles.

Despite being artists who should think differently, they indulge in materialism and appearances (best illustrated in a gallery meeting scene with Jena Malone).

Alice and Pedro only see each other for two hours a day. She works nights and he works days. Their marriage is ideal; a mixture of friendship and understanding, without time for fights and resentment. Alice works at the hospital and when she comes home, around 4:30 AM, Pedro is sleeping.

She lies down and they sleep together. But that's not being together. In the morning, at 7:00, while Pedro showers, Alice sits on the toilet, next to the bathtub, telling him about the night's adventures. Pedro isn't interested, but it's their routine.

He gets dressed and they have breakfast together: a bowl of cereal and yogurt, a grapefruit and coffee. They exchange small details about their lives and Pedro talks about his students. Alice isn't interested, but it's their routine. He leaves for work, bag and apple in hand, gives her a kiss and she goes back to bed. They only see each other again the next morning.

I left my parents' room unable to forget the conversation with my mother - everything hit me at once. I didn't want to leave, of course, I didn't want to say goodbye to school and even less did I want to leave my father, but the essential question that wouldn't let me breathe was why we were leaving now.

I entered my room and sat on the bed facing forward, looking at the space that in a few hours I would leave this saddens me; tears began to fill my eyes and quickly had to come out. I tried not to make noise while crying so no one would hear me, ending up burying my head inside my shirt to muffle the sound.

I started by trying to inhibit my crying and with some difficulty, I managed to calm down using some of the breathing techniques that Berner taught me; I drank some of the tea that mom had brought me earlier and felt its bitterness on my tongue since it was already cold, I loved tea like this, the flavor seems stronger.

The train must be arriving now he said.
Shall we go?
The sun hit the aluminum table and reflected in the girl's eyes. She looks at the man and nods yes.
It's so hot. says the girl.
You're right, it's terrible. says the man.
He picks up the bags next to the girl and touches her face gently, smiling. The girl smiles back and looks at the ground. In the distance, the train can be heard on the tracks. The man and the girl walk, side by side, with their bags, silent. The train stops and they both get on. The man goes ahead and quickly finds their seats.
Are you okay? he asks the girl.
Yes, I'm just very hot - she says.
Let's put the bags in the car. They enter their compartment and place the bags on the seats.
The space is small and gives a feeling of claustrophobia. The windows are closed and the blinds drawn.

The first time she met him, she was 16. She was with Gonçalo at his party. It was a hot summer day and they were all at the amusement park in the nearest town. Girls in summer outfits and sweaty boys. All the girls seemed immune to sweat, except her. Hair that stuck to her scalp and forehead. She felt flushed, not attractive. Gonçalo had invited her to his brother's birthday, and she didn't understand why. The age difference, although not very noticeable, at that age, was. He was 13. The park was full. It was mid-August, and families filled every corner of the space. Clara asked Gonçalo why a birthday party there, at that time of year. "I don't know, my mom wanted it to be here. My brother doesn't even like this."

June 5, 2017
HER: She already knew what she was going for it had become a routine. It didn't even hurt anymore. She had to make up for lost time. It was just one more. Just one more thing she remembered had been new, different, that had changed her life. Coming for one more? It was like this every time.

May 31, 2015
HIM: S. got a tattoo for each significant moment of his life. He was 25 and there wasn't much space left on his body. That was the ideal night to meet he hadn't gotten a tattoo in 6 months. Events were repetitive, routine was beginning to establish itself and everything was running out.

HER: L. used to spend her weeknight evenings studying and her weekend nights studying even more. Friends constantly called her to go to those college parties where the ritual is: drinking, hooking up, public display of affection and one of the participants' room in said display.

It was another party. Nothing new. Every week there were new parties. Nothing new. Sandra got drunk, Carlos vomited inside the car and Francisca put on three layers of makeup to hide her bad skin. Nothing new.

She wore one of her three favorite dresses - blue, red or grey. Every week was the same but she always went. The house was full. Nothing new. Before entering you can already see the crowd. Out here there are about 10 people. She continues her way, entering through the house. The lights are red and hurt the eyes. The space is quite spacious. There are people everywhere. She moves away from alcohol bottles scattered on the floor. There are also some on tables, on sofas, and even at the bathroom door.

In the distance, she sees Carlos and Francisca sitting on a red sofa in front of a television; they greet each other with quick hugs and without exchanging words. She sits on the arm of the sofa and watches television with them. She's at a party watching television. Nothing new.