Waking Life

Enter and get lost in the motion capture wilderness of cinematographic experiences. Past The Nest, still on the lake’s lip, the new amphitheatrical home for the moonscreen rises so buckle up for a hallucinatory audiovisual ride.

Thursday

22:00 - 23:00 Opening Concert ‘From Salt to Soil’ (live)
Léna Lewis-King

A polyphonic journey through Portugal’s landscapes from coast to Crato. We'll drive and drift through the sounds of Zarya and Usof, the words and lines of Joana Coelho and Madalena Anjos and imagery through the lens of Léna Lewis-King.

23:15 - 00:15 Curated by Curtas: Experimental Portuguese Shorts
Portuguese Shorts Agência

Rooted in northern Portugal, this film festival has been featuring a broad spectrum of Portuguese experimental cinema and its emerging talents for over 30 years.

Shrooms by Jorge Jácome
O Jardim em Movimento by Inês Lima
Ruby by Mariana Gaivão

00:15 - 01:15 Curated by DokuFest: Experimental Kosovan Shorts

The largest film festival in Kosovo. Each year DokuFest fills cinemas and improvised screening venues around the historic center of Prizren with a selection of 200 hand-picked films from around the world.

Workers Wings by Ilir Hasanaj
Rrugës / On the Way by Samir Karahoda
Like a Sick Yellow by Norika Sefa

01:30 - 02:10 Neither on the Ground nor in the Sky
Sarah Saleh & Noise Diva

In this live audiovisual performance, multidisciplinary artists Yara Said (1991, Syria) and Sarah Saleh (1996, Lebanon) explore themes of home, displacement, and belonging through the interplay of archival footage, field recordings, and poetry.

02:25 - 03:15 Curated by Tiny Man Festival: Experimental Animated Shorts

Tiny Man is a festival, challenge, and celebration of animated stories. We feature a selection of films from their last two editions in Porto.

03:15 - 04:00 The Screens of Blue Nothingness
Selected shorts by Cinematheque

Your screen turns blue — the infamous Blue Screen of Death. A critical error in the virtual realm where zeros and ones crash predictably before seamlessly returning to what was.

The Screens of Blue Nothingness is a series of five shorts, originally curated by Martyna Ratnik (1999, Lithuania).

sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars by Tomonari Nishikawa
No Foe Can Scare Us by Edmundas Zubavičius
May You Live in Interesting Times by Martyna Ratnik
CASTOROCENE by George Finlay Ramsay
to forget by Lydia Nsiah

Friday

22:00 - 23:00 Curated by HERITALES
International Heritage Film Festival

A selection of films from this year’s festival HERITALES in Évora, Portugal, which promotes cultural anthropological inquiry through cinema.

Our Forest, Our Resources by Veasna Nham
The Price of Regulation by Fedawak Gemechu Boru
Journey to the End of Life by Yevangelina Kovalchuk
The crane dance by Maxence Lamoureux

23:00 - 00:30 Tonbo Project (live)
AnaRosa & Nico Trompe

A sensory journey to Japan seeking the Ainu indigenous Mukkuri mouth harp. Artists Nico Trompe and AnaRosa capture landscapes and urban spaces through acoustic details and visual textures in this multiscreen, stereophonic installation documenting encounters in Japan and Hokkaido.

00:45 - 01:45 Curated by Monstra: Experimental Animated Shorts
Monstra – Festival de Animação de Lisboa

MONSTRA festival takes over our moonscreen with a diverse and quirky program of animated short films that celebrate human and artistic transversality.

02:00 - 02:45 d.O.U.S.T.i (live)

This experimental audiovisual performance reflects on the transformative journey of Saghi and Parsa, two friends, through gender identity, immigration, and oppression-trauma. This 45-minute ambient piece blends Saghi's compressed visuals with Parsa's ‘LangoBit’ music, featuring breaky rhythms. d.O.U.S.T.i celebrates resilience, friendship and a mutual passion for improvised audiovisual storytelling.

03:00 - 04:00 Phase Space: Drift
Gwenan & Danimation

Gwenan Spearing and Daniel Ellwood work with modular synthesis - in the audio and visual domains respectively – to weave an abstract narrative that glides through the space of possibilities. Recorded in one shot, the music reflects a mind in slow motion, drifting in free improvisation from a chosen starting point towards an unknown end. The video moves in tandem through orthogonal dimensions: colour, shape, place and mood.

Saturday

22:00 - 23:00 Distorting the Clocks: Time Traveling through Utopias and Black Holes (live)
e/tape & Vattica

A hypnotic journey through temporal dimensions where e/tape's anthropological soundscapes meet Vattica's reality-bending visuals. Together they explore ancient measuring instruments, cosmic distortions, and parallel utopias – warping our perception of time while suspended between movement and contemplation.

23:00 - 00:00 MoonSuna Season
Moonscreen & SUNA

We got sun, moon and monsoon. Get wet. In Avózinha they trippin', over here we drippin'. Erotic tales brought to you during this solstice. Make it count.

00:00 - 01:30 Curated by Curtas: 20 Years of Solar Gallery
Portuguese Shorts Agência

A vibrant celebration of Solar Art Gallery's 20th anniversary in Vila Do Conde, this showcase features films by pioneering artists who've exhibited in this experimental space where cinema collides with other art forms.

Undisclosed Recipients by Sandro Aguilar
Strokkur by João Salaviza
After the Law by Jonathan Uliel Saldanha
Stop - Salas De Ensaio Para Um Materialismo Histórico by Jorge Quintela

02:00 - 04:00 This is Not a Different Era (live AV)
notbinarycode (bee barros ~ ndr0n ~ quendera ~ violeta)

Founded in 2022, NotBinaryCode creates safe spaces for Lisbon's Algorave and AudioVisual communities. Embracing queerness through weird music, scrappy code, and rejected identities, they'll perform a 2-hour interactive concert where participants influence video and music in real-time. Visible code serves as intimate communication, decoding artists' thoughts amid the performance.

Sunday

22:00 - 23:00 Curated by EICTV – Cuban Film School
Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión

EICTV was founded in 1986 by prominent Latin American intellectuals Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Argentinean poet Fernando Birri and Cuban filmmaker Julio Garcia Espinosa. Don't miss these electric student works from what many consider one the world's most special film academies.

Huellas by Diego Borda
Compañía by María Salafranca
Brujo Amor by Orlando Mora
Los caballos no se acuestan by Kwon Jiyong
Cuando llegue la noche by Feguenson Hermogène
Palomar by José Luis Jiménez Gómez

23:15 - 00:15 Stories Never Ending (live)
Otto Oscar Hernández Ruiz

Otto conceives this performance as an act of painting made with poems of his choosing. Musicalising texts and contextualising them biographically, each verse, interrupted to emphasise the desired oral rhythms. The grammatical body introduces us to a space in constant metamorphosis.

00:30 - 01:45 In Dreams

As the festival journey nears its end, sync into an hour of dreamlike shorts. These luminous works create a gentle space for processing wtf just happened in the past week.

02:00 - 02:45 Voice Actor (live)

STROOM's Voice Actor closes this year's Moonscreen with a mesmeric audiovisual journey, inviting those still present to remember having forgotten — a poetic trip where music transforms into dreams before your eyes.