2 May - 5 June 2026
Long Takes
“It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
For more than two decades, Rita Azevedo Gomes (b. 1952) has quietly forged and reshaped an unmistakable cinema, rooted in literature, theatre, music and art history, and unfolding with a rare attentiveness to language, performance, and the spaces that open between them, and moving always with deliberate strangeness and clarity.
Originally trained in painting at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes in Lisbon, her cinephilia has found home as an assistant director to figures like Manoel de Oliveira on Francisca, Werner Schroeter (whose filmography we have paired with hers in a forthcoming Long Takes), Valeria Sarmiento and the painter-filmmaker Luís Noronha da Costa, as well as work teaching, and at the Cinemateca Portuguesa. These shifting environments have honed a luminous and explorative approach to cinema across artforms — drawing as much from, and adapting, the literature of Agustina Bessa-Luís, André Gide and Robert Musil, among others.
Gomes’ career has to date formed a bold arc, spanning her innovative feature The Sound of the Shaking Earth (1990) about a self-doubting novelist, the quietly spectral Altar (2003), through to the unforgettable melancholy evocation of doomed young love Fragile as the World (2001), and the sumptuous feminist fable The Portuguese Woman (2018).
This latest Long Takes stands as an invitation to rediscover a cinema that continues to illuminate the rich territories between image, text, history and dream. Beginning in May, this retrospective will include the first full presentation of her work in the UK, including rarely-screened shorts, 35mm presentations, guest introductions, and as a centrepiece of the programme, an extended in-person conversation about her artistic process and the evolving trajectory of her work. The season culminates in the Off-Circuit UK-premiere presentation of her newest, collaboratively made feature film Fuck the Polis (2025).
Long Takes
“It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
For more than two decades, Rita Azevedo Gomes (b. 1952) has quietly forged and reshaped an unmistakable cinema, rooted in literature, theatre, music and art history, and unfolding with a rare attentiveness to language, performance, and the spaces that open between them, and moving always with deliberate strangeness and clarity.
Originally trained in painting at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes in Lisbon, her cinephilia has found home as an assistant director to figures like Manoel de Oliveira on Francisca, Werner Schroeter (whose filmography we have paired with hers in a forthcoming Long Takes), Valeria Sarmiento and the painter-filmmaker Luís Noronha da Costa, as well as work teaching, and at the Cinemateca Portuguesa. These shifting environments have honed a luminous and explorative approach to cinema across artforms — drawing as much from, and adapting, the literature of Agustina Bessa-Luís, André Gide and Robert Musil, among others.
Gomes’ career has to date formed a bold arc, spanning her innovative feature The Sound of the Shaking Earth (1990) about a self-doubting novelist, the quietly spectral Altar (2003), through to the unforgettable melancholy evocation of doomed young love Fragile as the World (2001), and the sumptuous feminist fable The Portuguese Woman (2018).
This latest Long Takes stands as an invitation to rediscover a cinema that continues to illuminate the rich territories between image, text, history and dream. Beginning in May, this retrospective will include the first full presentation of her work in the UK, including rarely-screened shorts, 35mm presentations, guest introductions, and as a centrepiece of the programme, an extended in-person conversation about her artistic process and the evolving trajectory of her work. The season culminates in the Off-Circuit UK-premiere presentation of her newest, collaboratively made feature film Fuck the Polis (2025).
Programme
OPENING NIGHT
Saturday 2 May, 6.30pm
The Sound of the Shaking Earth
In Rita Azevedo Gomes’ first feature a writer drifts between solitude and encounter, fiction and experience.
Tuesday 5 May, 6.45pm
Fragile as the World + introduction
A love story suspended between fable and elegy, where the pact of young lovers to never part becomes a choreography of passion and vulnerability against the silent embrace of fields and fog.
Saturday 9 May, 2pm
On Dangerous Ground
An increasingly morose and violent veteran detective is packed off to the snowy countryside to investigate the murder of a young woman in Nicholas Ray and Ida Lupino's bruising mix of noir and melodrama.
Sunday 10 May, 6pm
Altar + introduction
Widowed actor René lives in purposeful isolation, drifting between phone conversations and memories that refuse to settle, as fragments of a distant past resurface.
Tuesday 12 May, 6.30pm
The 15th Stone
Manoel de Oliveira (on whose films Azevedo Gomes worked) and João Bénard da Costa are brought together within the quiet grandeur of Lisbon’s National Museum of Ancient Art. Decades of thought, friendship, and devotion to art.
Saturday 16 May, 4pm
The Invisible Collection & The Conquest of Faro + Introduction
A Rita Azevedo Gomes double bill: an adaption of a medieval Portuguese farce and a contemplation on art and cultivated lives, faltering and fragile.
Saturday 16 May, 6pm
A Girl in Summer
Vitor Gonçalves' debut feature is both a moody and atmospheric portrait of a young woman unable to make the crucial decisions needed to move forward with her life and a fascinating portrait of post-Salazar youth culture.
Thursday 21 May, 6.45pm
A Woman’s Revenge
When a mysterious woman enters Roberto’s life, unfurling as a measured and elegant interrogation of power, gender, and narrative ownership through confession in Azevedo Gomes’ adaptation of Barbey d’Aurevilly.
Saturday 23 May, 2.15pm
Tosca's Kiss
Casa Verdi, a rambling mansion in the city of Milan that once belonged to the composer Guiseppe Verdi, but is now a home for retired musicians, sits at the centre of Daniel Schmid's tender exploration of aging and the timeless capacity of music to inspire.
Saturday 23 May, 4.15pm
Correspondences
A tapestry of intimate dialogue where voices float free of their sources and images drift away from illustrations. Correspondences is cinema as epistolary form built from letters exchanged between poets Jorge de Sena and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.
Thursday 28 May, 6.30pm
Danses Macabres, Skeletons and other Fantasies
Rita Azevedo Gomes and Pierre Léon’s roaming inquiry into the danse macabre as a turning point in European thought, that draws on Jean Louis Schefer’s writings to trace a quiet shift from medieval worldviews to modernity, moving between Paris and Portugal.
Saturday 30 May, 2.30pm
After the Rehearsal
Originally made for television this sparse chamber piece. set in an empty theatre, returns Ingmar Bergman to one of his perennial themes the permeability of life and art.
Saturday 30 May, 4.30pm
The Portuguese Woman
A luminous contemplation on waiting and interior life reimagined from Robert Musil’s tale.
Wednesday 3 June, 6.30pm
The Kegalstatt Trio
A constellation of meetings between two former lovers, The Kegelstatt Trio unfolds through rehearsals, fragments, and returns, guided by Mozart’s trio.
Thursday 4 June, 6.30pm
UK PREMIERE
Fuck the Polis + Q&A
Fifteen years after the original trip to Greece, with a cancer diagnosis once thought final, a filmmaker retraces her journey through the Greek islands – this time with a group of young friends, filming, reading, singing, and moving from ferry to roadside to ruin.
OPENING NIGHT
Saturday 2 May, 6.30pm
The Sound of the Shaking Earth
In Rita Azevedo Gomes’ first feature a writer drifts between solitude and encounter, fiction and experience.
Tuesday 5 May, 6.45pm
Fragile as the World + introduction
A love story suspended between fable and elegy, where the pact of young lovers to never part becomes a choreography of passion and vulnerability against the silent embrace of fields and fog.
Saturday 9 May, 2pm
On Dangerous Ground
An increasingly morose and violent veteran detective is packed off to the snowy countryside to investigate the murder of a young woman in Nicholas Ray and Ida Lupino's bruising mix of noir and melodrama.
Sunday 10 May, 6pm
Altar + introduction
Widowed actor René lives in purposeful isolation, drifting between phone conversations and memories that refuse to settle, as fragments of a distant past resurface.
Tuesday 12 May, 6.30pm
The 15th Stone
Manoel de Oliveira (on whose films Azevedo Gomes worked) and João Bénard da Costa are brought together within the quiet grandeur of Lisbon’s National Museum of Ancient Art. Decades of thought, friendship, and devotion to art.
Saturday 16 May, 4pm
The Invisible Collection & The Conquest of Faro + Introduction
A Rita Azevedo Gomes double bill: an adaption of a medieval Portuguese farce and a contemplation on art and cultivated lives, faltering and fragile.
Saturday 16 May, 6pm
A Girl in Summer
Vitor Gonçalves' debut feature is both a moody and atmospheric portrait of a young woman unable to make the crucial decisions needed to move forward with her life and a fascinating portrait of post-Salazar youth culture.
Thursday 21 May, 6.45pm
A Woman’s Revenge
When a mysterious woman enters Roberto’s life, unfurling as a measured and elegant interrogation of power, gender, and narrative ownership through confession in Azevedo Gomes’ adaptation of Barbey d’Aurevilly.
Saturday 23 May, 2.15pm
Tosca's Kiss
Casa Verdi, a rambling mansion in the city of Milan that once belonged to the composer Guiseppe Verdi, but is now a home for retired musicians, sits at the centre of Daniel Schmid's tender exploration of aging and the timeless capacity of music to inspire.
Saturday 23 May, 4.15pm
Correspondences
A tapestry of intimate dialogue where voices float free of their sources and images drift away from illustrations. Correspondences is cinema as epistolary form built from letters exchanged between poets Jorge de Sena and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.
Thursday 28 May, 6.30pm
Danses Macabres, Skeletons and other Fantasies
Rita Azevedo Gomes and Pierre Léon’s roaming inquiry into the danse macabre as a turning point in European thought, that draws on Jean Louis Schefer’s writings to trace a quiet shift from medieval worldviews to modernity, moving between Paris and Portugal.
Saturday 30 May, 2.30pm
After the Rehearsal
Originally made for television this sparse chamber piece. set in an empty theatre, returns Ingmar Bergman to one of his perennial themes the permeability of life and art.
Saturday 30 May, 4.30pm
The Portuguese Woman
A luminous contemplation on waiting and interior life reimagined from Robert Musil’s tale.
Wednesday 3 June, 6.30pm
The Kegalstatt Trio
A constellation of meetings between two former lovers, The Kegelstatt Trio unfolds through rehearsals, fragments, and returns, guided by Mozart’s trio.
Thursday 4 June, 6.30pm
UK PREMIERE
Fuck the Polis + Q&A
Fifteen years after the original trip to Greece, with a cancer diagnosis once thought final, a filmmaker retraces her journey through the Greek islands – this time with a group of young friends, filming, reading, singing, and moving from ferry to roadside to ruin.
