Sound recordist Phillip Winter receives an urgent telegram: he must travel to Lisbon to help his old friend Friedrich Monroe in shooting a film in the city.
With a foot in plaster, Winter crosses Europe from North to South until he reaches the Portuguese capital, but it’s a bit too late: Friedrich’s gone. At the large house where he lived, the director left little else apart from an unfinished film, soundless images gathered along the streets of Lisbon with an old fashioned hand cranked camera (like the one in Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman). Patiently, Winter decides to record sound for those images: delighted with the city, he wanders about the streets with a microphone in hand, following his friend’s footage.
_
It was at the Tivoli Cinema, Lisbon, in December 1994 that Wim Wenders first showed his film Lisbon Story, created at the request of Lisboa 94 – European City of Culture. Almost 25 years after its world premiere, this year’s edition of LEFFEST presents a restored version of the film, programming a special session with the presence of Wenders, who will be in Lisbon as a guest of the festival on the 23rd and 24th November.
In honor of the German director, this year’s poster is dedicated to Lisbon Story and to his other award-winning film also set in Portugal, The State of Things (1982).
Lisbon Story is, as the title suggests, a meeting with Lisbon. But discovering the city, little by little, happens mainly through sounds that give a new meaning to the images, as Wenders stated 24 years ago. The sound in Lisbon Story is also, besides the sounds that inhabit the daily life of the city, marked by the presence of the group Madredeus. Teresa Salgueiro, the group’s singer, had a big impact on Wenders and her success grew with the participation in the film.
- Duration: 100
- Production year: 1994
- Country: Germany, Spain, France, Portugal
- Subtitles: min Subtitles PT and EN