Event Details
Date & Time:
Wed February 21, 2024
7 PM
Location:
The Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Audience:
Open to the public
Details:
Queer Ecology in Portuguese Cinema
FLORES (Jorge Jácome, 2017, 27 min)
WILL-O’-THE-WISP (João Pedro Rodrigues, 2022, 67 min)
Join us for a program of ecologically minded queer cinema from Portugal with two films that revel in the commingling of human desire and ecological concern. An ecstatic recent gem, WILL-O’ -THE-WISP (2022) is an anti-royalist musical fantasy and smoldering romance by acclaimed director João Pedro Rodrigues. From the royal deathbed in the year 2069, his highness King Alfredo looks back to a defiant chapter of his youth in a rapturous adventure of forestry, firefighting, and lust that joyfully embraces pleasure while contending with Portugal’s complicated colonial legacy.
Science fiction, documentary, and fantasy swirl together hypnotically in FLORES (2017), a dreamy short film by experimental filmmaker Jorge Jácome set on the lavender-drenched island of the Azores. The titular flora is the blue-purple hydrangea, once imported for its beauty; now, the invasive flower dominates the archipelago, forcing the local human population off the island. Two soldiers (and lifelong friends) wander their deserted homeland reminiscing about those who fled in a portrait of tenderness and companionship in the midst of environmental disaster.
Introduction by Professor Corey Byrnes, a scholar of Environmental Humanities, who will speak to connection in his current course “Culture in a Changing Climate“ at Northwestern University.
Special thanks to Portugal Film and Strand Releasing for providing the films.
Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu