Cockfighter
Fantas Classic3 de Março

Cockfighter

By Fevereiro 19th, 2024No Comments
Comprar bilhete • 3 de Março • 15h00 • Sala 2

Cockfighter – Monte Hellman, 83’ (E.U.A.) – 1974 – 50 ANOS

3 de Março • 15h00 • Sala 2

No Sul profundo, um treinador de galos de combate faz voto de silêncio e joga os seus amores e bens numa aposta para vencer um campeonato. Este filme de Monte Hellman é o nono filme da sua carreira, ele que pertenceu ao grupo de talentos descoberto por Roger Corman. É uma adaptação do romance de Charles Willeford.

Com o muito popular Warren Oates (de “The Wild Bunch” de Sam Peckinpah e de “Badlands” de Terrence Malick) e Harry Dean Stanton, com mais de 200 filmes e que faria o seu melhor papel em “Paris Texas” de Wim Wenders.

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When I worked on my first film, Monte Hellman’s “Cockfighter,” in 1974, I could never imagine that 50 years later history would repeat itself so clearly and completely.

“Cockfighter” was a small American indie film shot on location in Georgia, USA, studying an American subculture (cockfighting) produced by legendary filmmaker Roger Corman and while intended for commercial release, it was made by a very distinctive American auteur who hired the (soon to be) Oscar-winning French cinematographer Nestor Almendros.
As a production assistant, I watched an action movie become art and vice versa.
“Heart Strings,” now having its world premiere in Porto in 2024, is a small American indie film shot on location in Louisville, Kentucky, studying an American subculture (country music) produced by Ellis Goodman, the executive producer of the Oscar-winning film “Judy,” and it is intended for commercial release. It is made by a very distinctive European auteur, Ate de Jong.
As co-producer, and co-writer of both the screenplay and half of the songs, I have watched a “backstage musical” become art and vice versa.
In 1974, Lynda Myles at Edinburgh Film Festival made sure that “Cockfighter” was seen for its aspirations as well as its reality.
In 2024, the team at Porto Film Festival are making sure you see “Heart Strings” for its aspirations as well as its reality.
In the 1970s-1980s, filmmakers like Jerry Schatzberg, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, Daryl Duke, Bruce Beresford made films like “Nashville,” “Songwriter,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Tender Mercies” and “Payday” to explore the ways that the culture of American country music reflected current impulses and hidden dreams of the United States and they shined a critical light on the American Dream, opened our eyes to truths that perhaps had not yet been uncovered or discussed.
Here we are today, 50 years later, humbly walking in the steps of those independent film artists who proved that genre movies are a canvas that can be made personal and provocative and wholly original.
We are a little sly and a little spry, a stubbornly unconventional take on the conventional, a political subversion of expectations, made for general audiences, yes, but made very much in the spirit of the defiance and hope of our filmmaking ancestors, for cinema lovers today in Portugal, in Europe, and the whole world!
Steven Gaydos
administrator and editor chief of Variety

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