On Edge

The film focuses on daily life in a poor housing estate in Porto and, in particular, on a group of children aged between 8 and 14. It follows their life outdoors always inventing new games. Parents are seldom home and children have space and freedom to create their own rules, games of power many times copying the models they know from home. Sometimes things get really tough, other times there is a feeling of  harmony and melancholy in the neighbourhood.

This is a special summer: people are expecting the European Football Cup and the possible victory of the Portuguese team will raise the morale of a country in full recession. Kids and adults are hypersensitive, feelings go over the top. TVS are put outdoors and the games of the European cup are followed by children and adults as an almost religious ritual.

Rui, one of the characters is a 13 year old boy who unlike all the other kids of his age doesn’t like football and fighting. He prefers to take refuge in a dream like world surrounded by dinosaurs and other animals from the forest.

Statement of the director

The European Cup was taking place in Portugal, everyone was looking at stadiums, players and matches, I decided to deviate my look and watch what was happening a few inches away: kids growing, kids fighting, kids pretending to be adults, adults acting like kids, in a country in full recession waiting for something miraculous to happen to raise their pride……but in the end nothing changed and life went on…..

Catarina Mourão

Born: Lisbon , 17 February 1969

Academic background

2002 - MA dissertation in Film with Commendation, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with W….In search of Women in Portuguese Fascist archive footage of the 30’s and 40’s” supervised by Dr.Jacqueline Mainegard at the Department of Film and Television, University of Bristol.

1993-1995 - Postgraduate Diploma in Film and Television : Film & TV department, University of Bristol, UK The final project consisted of editing a fiction film sponsored by Fuji, for which she won an editing prize.

1987-1992 - BA in Law

Filmography

1994 - Mecca Before I die 5 min, Betacam SP. Prod. by The Bristol University Film & TV Department.

About old women obsessed with Bingo.

1996 -. The port 10 min, Dvcam - a film made for an exhibition about the Port of Lisbon

1997 -Fora de Água 48 min, Betacam Sp. Produced by Laranja Azul, Lda

A documentary about the conflict between the population of a village in Alentejo and the public art of two artists. The film was selected for the Biannual of Young Mediterranean artists in 1998.

1998 - A Dama de Chandor(The Lady of Chandor)- 68 minBetacam Sp. Prod by SP Filmes, A documentary about an old woman who lives alone in a palace in Goa, and who struggles to preserve it as a symbol of a past she has lost with Goa’s independence from Portuguese colonial power.

The film was broadcasted by RTP (Portuguese Public Television) and was selected for the International Film Festival of Cape Verde (June 1999), The International Film Festival of Bahia, Brazil (September, 1999), International Documentary Film Festival of Malaposta, Portugal, (November 1998) the International Ethnographic Film Festival of Belgrade (October 1999), the Torino Film Festival (December 1999) and the Gottingham International Ethnographic Film festival (May 2000), Festival of Women Creators of the two seas (Greece, September 2000); Festival of Ethnographic Film, London (December 2000).Festival du Nouveau Cinema et des Nouveaux Medias, Montréal, October 2002.

The film A Dama de Chandor won the award for Best Documentary in the IX International Documentary Film Festival of Malaposta, Lisbon, November 1998 , the Best Script Award at the VIIIth International Ethnographic Film Festival of Belgrade, September 1999 and the prize for Cinema Revelation by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture, Prémio Aurélio da Paz dos Reis.

2002 - “Next Stop” 15 min, DVCAM The daily life of a bus and its passengers through Porto during its major changes.

2002-2004 - “Restless” (video version) 75 min, Digital Beta ICAM, Porto 2001, RTP

A triptych of life in the city of Porto. This film will take us on a journey through the "house-moving process" following three different characters at different steps of this process. Each story will be interwoven in a kind of chain, allowing at each moment a different point of view in a totally different background.

Best Photography and Best Production at the Festival DOC Lisboa, June 2002

DOC’s Kingdom International Seminar, Serpa, October 2002

Selected for the Rassegna Internazionale de Cinema Documental, Premio Bizzari,July 2002; Les Ecrans Documentaires, Paris, October 2002.

Theatrical Release in 35 mm in two cinemas in Lisbon and Porto, May 2004.

2004– “ Malmequer, Bem-me quer” (“Love me, love me not”) , 60 min DigitalBeta ARTE France, Agat Films, Filmes do Tejo.

2006 – “A minha aldeia já não mora aqui” (“My village doesn’t live here anymore”), 58 min DigitalBeta

2006 – “À Flor da Pele” (“On Edge”), 64 min DigitalBeta, ICAM, RTP, Culturporto; CNC; Procirep Angoa

Together with Catarina Alves Costa, starts up the production company Laranja Azul where they work as Producer/Directors of Creative Documentaries.