The 48th edition of Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR) has announced the work of groundbreaking Portuguese filmmaker Edgar Pera as the subject of it’s annual retrospective.

Active since 1984, Pera’s wildly experimental, countercultural style has evolved rapidly and in myriad unpredictable directions throughout his career. Pera’s playful, transgressive films and documentaries have been a fixture of the programming of IFFR across the last decade, creating vital conversation with each appearance. This upcoming retrospective features a mix of Pera’s most significant works, alongside obscurities and no-less-than three world and international premieres.

In LOVECRAFTLAND, Pêra is set to stage an ambitious 3D Cine-concert, inspired by the writing and legacy of H.P. Lovecraft. A lifelong inspiration for Pera, who has previously worked with Lovecraft’s texts in films such as Cinesapiens and Stillness, LOVECRAFTLAND represents Pera’s deepest exploration yet of the author’s timeless landscape of cosmic horror. Portugese musician Randolph Carter (Paulo Furtado, AKA The Legendary Tigerman) will provide a live score, interwoven with live texts from Lovecraft’s ouvre, read by Keith Esher Davis, with further live acts from Iris Cayatte and Paulo Furtado, and a guest appearance from cult French actor, Dominique Pinon. 

In Caminhos Magnéticos (AKA, Magnetik Pathways), Pera’s most recent feature, Pera explores the life of Raymond; a 60-something, Parisian, photographer and comic books author, arriving in Portugal soon after the April 25, 1974 revolution. Raymond’s 21-year-old daughter Catarina is to wed Damião, a rich and corrupt man almost twice her age. Lisbon is in the midsts of civil war and a military authoritarian regime is gaining ground. Magnetick Pathways is a kaleidoscopic journey through the lives of a city on the brink of falling apart.

Pera will also be treating audiences at IFFR to a first-glimpse of Kinorama - Cinema Fora de Órbita (Kinorama - Beyond the Walls of Cinema), an evocative and thought-provoking new work that finds Pera at his most experimental and challenging, combining transfigured images of interviews with filmed 3D sequences, as he breaks down the new ‘Body of Cinema’ to its raw components, dwelling on some of the most vital issues in contemporary art and philosophy.

From Pera’s extended catalogue, screenings include a revisit of O Barão (The Baron), a "neuro-gothic remake of a ghost movie, based on two works by Branquinho da Fonseca and first premiered at the festival in 2011, and 2014’s Lisbon Revisited, a dreamlike tour of Pera’s home city that uses 3D techniques to portray his home city from an alternative angle. Numerous short-films are also screening, offering Pera’s singular take on a historical range of social, political and artistic subjects, from architecture and football, to ceremony and labour.

Edgar Pera will be available for interview throughout the festival.

Beginning on 23rd January and concluding on 3rd February, the 2019 edition of IFFR will in total consist of 23 projects, 6 international premieres, 1 European premiere, 6 feature-length films and 16 shorts.