Announcing the Sixth Luso World Cinema blogathon

 

We’re still here. Brazil didn’t win its second consecutive Oscar, but our nominated film “The Secret Agent” (above) for sure created a buzz. Meanwhile, our desire to celebrate Luso Pride and the contribution made by Lusophone actors, directors, casts and crews for the world of cinema has not grown any smaller. With this in mind, Beth from Spellbound with Beth Ann and me here at Crítica Retrô are proud to announce that the Luso World Cinema blogathon is back for the sixth time, starting on June 19^th (Brazilian Cinema Day) and going to the 21^st.

If you want to take part, here are the rules:

The Luso World Cinema Blogathon once again accepts posts about films made in Lusophone countries, that is, countries that speak Portuguese – see the list below –, and film stars with Luso heritage, that means, film stars of Portuguese descent. This list includes natives like Carmen Miranda, Rodrigo Santoro, Sônia Braga, Raul Roulien, Maria de Medeiros and also Keanu Reeves, Mary Astor, Louise Fazenda, Tom Hanks, Joe DeRita, James Franco, Daniel Brühl, Auli'i Cravalho, Nestor Paiva, Amy Poehler,  Dorothy DeBorba and many more you can find listed HERE. You can write an overview of those people's lives or careers or focus on a specific film or TV show they made. We also accept the quite rare portraits of Portuguese, Brazilian or other Luso people in film, like in 1937’s “Captain Courageous”, in which Spencer Tracy plays a Portuguese sailor, for instance.

Here are a few lists of movies from Lusophone countries:

List of films from Portugal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Portuguese_films

List of films from Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Brazilian_films

List of films from Cape Verde: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cape_Verdean_films

List of films from Mozambique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mozambican_films

List of films from Angola: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Angolan_films

List of films from Guinea-Bissau:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bissau-Guinean_films

List of films from São Tomé and Príncipe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_S%C3%A3o_Tom%C3%A9_and_Pr%C3%ADncipe

List of films from Equatorial Guinea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Equatoguinean_films

List of films from East Timor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:East_Timorese_films

 

The list of contributions so far:

Crítica Retrô: Alô Alô Carnaval (1936)

Lost & Found Films: The restoration of "Limite" (1931)

A Shroud of Thoughts: Karen Valentine 

Classic Film and TV Corner: Mary Astor in "Dodsworth" (1936)

The Midnite Drive-In: Blame it on Rio (1984)

Sally Silverscreen: The Naked Jungle (1954)

Taking Up Room: Carmen Miranda in "Springtime in the Rockies" (1942)

Moon in Gemini: Desmundo (2002)

You can grab a banner here and spread the news!

Limite (1931)

Maria de Medeiros

Carmen Miranda

Nha Fala (2002)

Cavalo Dinheiro (2014)

Dorothy DeBorba

Barbie Ferreira

Introducing Lost and Found Films

 

I did it! After years of having this idea in my mind, I started a new blog to talk about film preservation and review lost movies.

Wait, WHAT?

Let’s go back in time.

In the far-away year of 2018 I dug deep in Brazilian film magazines, these tell-all publications that didn’t care about spoilers, to reconstruct the plots of some sadly lost movies. I did this for the publication Única, in which I reconstructed the plots of the movies Alfred Hitchcock worked in before becoming a director, back in England. And then I did the same for my blog: I reconstructed the plot for one Holy Grail of lost films: 1919’s “The Miracle Man”. The results: a great book on Hitchcock and a very long but informative blog post, so far the one that gave me the most pride to have written.

And then I thought: what if I could do it again, and more often?

So the seed for “Lost and Found Films” was planted. In the years between the idea and the real debut of the blog, I have researched more about lost films, watched a few films that were once considered lost, and prepared for the big day. As many of you may know, I started taking part in the online version of the Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and two great things happened: I was part of the Zoom Collegium in 2020 and the following year I won the Russell Merritt Prize for best essay writing about a forgotten film: “La Tempesta in un Cranio”, from 1921.

“Lost and Found Films” debuted this past May and is updated monthly. I already amassed a good amount of readers by advertising the blogs on social networks (do you already follow me on BlueSky?). I have a lot of great plans for this new endeavor without, of course, ever abandoning my first and main blog, this Crítica Retrô.

It all started with Lon Chaney, seven years ago. To pay a tribute to him, whose early career is comprised of mostly lost films, I made the banner above, with an image from the unfortunately lost, and much sought after, “London After Midnight”, from 1927. Maybe it will be the focus of a future article in Lost and Found Films? Keep close and we’ll see.