On the occasion of the first Biennial of Art of Alentejo (BIALE), Italian avant-garde filmmaker Gianmarco Donaggio has been invited to present a collection of new works. Operating in a unique manner, Donaggio’s films are fine-crafted cinematic experiences; atmospheres of dancing light, in which the poetic overtakes the conceptual and the literal. Donaggio’s camera transgresses assumptions allocated to cinematic expression by ascending above optical representation and dwelling in the realm of emotions.

Auguries for a Non-Hierarchical Framing and Flourishing pieces together traces of a series of communal experiments undertaken by the anarchist António Gonçalves Correia in southern Portugal: Comuna da Luz (The Commune of Light), in Vale de Santiago/Odemira (1917-18) and Comuna Clarão (The Blaze Commune) in Albarraque/Sintra (1926). The filmmaker writes, “Choral and in the making, the film is a tool for conviviality; it folds and unfolds in bewilderment, guided by the fulgor, or the potential for flourishing in non-hierarchical frames.”

Cinema Parenthèse and iMAL invites the British artist SIMON PAYNE to talk about and show his works. Payne has been making abstract cinema for over twenty years. His videos are predominantly orientated around bold graphic forms and highly structured sequences that produce unexpected color combinations and conflicting planes. Sometimes there are contingent elements in his work, which correspond with incidental indications of the artist’s hand.