Opening programme

Portugal’s long-awaited Batalha Centro de Cinema opens on December 9.

With the mission of promoting cultural knowledge and engagement through film and the moving image, the Batalha Centro de Cinema programme will include themed series, retrospectives and focuses on contemporary practices, as well as links between cinema and other arts. The wish to nurture film culture via education, publishing, training, and debate is central to the activities of the new Film Centre.

Dedicated to specific themes and crossing different types of languages of film, the themed series address and debate pressing social, cultural and political issues. Politics of Sci-Fi (curated by Ana David and Guilherme Blanc) opens the film programme on December 9 with The Day the Earth Stood Still, by Robert Wise, accompanied by The New Sun, by Polish artist Agnieszka Polska. Batalha will also present the series Domesticities (curated by Alejandra Rosenberg Navarro and Ana David) in March, El Futuro Ya No Está Aquí (curated by Guilherme Blanc and Virginia Pablos) in May and Counter Flows (curated by Almudena Escobar López and Margarida Mendes) in July.

The programme also includes retrospectives, complete or essential, of national and international filmmakers and artists. The first will be dedicated to Claire Denis, one of the most influential, stimulating and eclectic names in contemporary cinema, in what will be the most complete retrospective of the filmmakers’ work in Portugal. This fundamental axis of the programme—which reflects the vision of formal, thematic, generational and geographical diversity inherent to Batalha—will also feature retrospectives of Melvin Van Peebles, André Gil Mata, Zacharias Kunuk, Luísa Homem, Joanna Hogg, Lorenza Mazzetti, Basil da Cunha, Annemarie Jacir and Mai Zetterling and artist focuses dedicated to Agnieszka Polska, Riar Rizaldi and Fatima Al Qadiri.

Portuguese cinema occupies a central place in the programming of Batalha, namely in the Seleção Nacional (National Pick), weekly screenings with the aim of exploring, appreciating and promoting portuguese film heritage, and Luas Novas (New Moons), which, every month, highlights the emerging filmmakers of Portuguese cinema.

Focused on collective experiences of filmmaking and production, Coletivos (Collectives) presents the work of the indigenous collective COUSIN; Yugantar Film Collective, the first Indian film collective founded and made up exclusively by women; and Zanzibar, formed by young filmmakers in Paris in the late 1960s.

With regard to exhibitions at Batalha, Premium Connect, an installation by French Guyanese artist Tabita Rezaire will be featured at the opening of the venue, with a first season of exhibitions featuring artists Pedro Huet (February-April) and American poet CAConrad with Alice dos Reis and Pedro Neves Marques (May-July).

A highlight of Palavra em Movimento (Words in Motion)—lectures, conversations and debates, associated or independent of the film programmes—will be A Minha História de Cinema (My Own History of Film), a series of lectures with Trinh T. Minh-ha (Vietnam), Manthia Diawara (Mali) and Byung-Chul Han (South Korea), which include films made by these three authors of influential written works.

The premiere of the restoration of Faroleiros (1922), by Maurice Mariaud, with a new soundtrack composition commissioned to Daniel Moreira and performed live by the string quartet The Arditti Quartet—as well as performances by James Richards and Billy Bultheel, in coproduction with WIELS (Brussels), Jonathas de Andrade and Rita Natálio are also some of the proposals in the Música e Performance (Music and Performance) programme.

Meetings, sharing ideas and leisure outside of the cinema are offered in Cinema ao Redor (Neighbouring Cinema) through the invitation to participate in discussion groups (cinephilia, reading and youngsters), courses and workshops (for adults and children). Another highlight is the biannual project Vizinhos (Neighbours), the first edition of which is developed in collaboration with the inhabitants of the surrounding area of Batalha with roots in Bangladesh and results in a three-day series of films to be presented in February.

The Escolas (Schools) programme occupies a central place in Batalha. Proposing a continuous and permanent relationship with the educational community, it includes a film programme, free for schools in Porto, with screenings aimed at preschool to high school education divided into four themes: Ecology, Friendship, Identity and Diaspora.

Batalha also features an editorial project, comprising the publication of in-house editions and the commissioning of new critical and essayistic texts from a group of guest writers, available in collectable programme notes.

The full programme for December and January, as well as a preview of what can be expected from the first season, is available on Batalha’s website: batalhacentrodecinema.pt.

Inside Batalha Centro de Cinema
In addition to two cinemas prepared for the exhibition of digital and analogue formats (Sala 1—299 seats, Sala 2—126 seats), the renovated Batalha also includes Sala-Filme, a space dedicated to film installations, a Library specializing in cinema and the moving image and a Film Library which brings together film heritage related to the city. The Café & Bar is also equipped for screenings and performances.

Cinema Batalha, as it was known then, started to assume its familiar shape in the 1940s. The building housing Novo Salão High Life was demolished to give way to the new cinema, projected by the architect Artur Andrade. This landmark work was, at the time, described as possessing a “radical modernity”. It comprised two theater rooms (one seating 950 people, the other 135), two bars and a restaurant with a terrace.

For most of its years of activity, Batalha was an influential space for generations of cinephiles of Porto.

In 2000, Batalha shut its doors for the first time, mostly due to the competition with large commercial surfaces. The degradation of the building worsened, until in 2006 it was rented by Comércio Vivo for a period of four years. When this period elapsed, it ceased activity again.

In 2012, Cinema Batalha was considered a public monument, a governmental distinction that safeguarded the integrity of the building. In 2017, Câmara Municipal do Porto took over management of Cinema Batalha for a period of 25 years and announced the historic building’s rehabilitation project. This undertaking corresponded to a global investment by the city council of over 5 million euros, and began on November 18, 2019, the architectural project having been assigned to Atelier 15, by Alexandre Alves Costa and Sérgio Fernandez.

In 2021, mayor Rui Moreira announced the restoration of the iconic building to its community, naming Guilherme Blanc as Artistic Director. In December 2022, Batalha Centro de Cinema opens to the public again.