Follow the Carnation

Catarina de Sousa & Lui Avallos / Isadora Pedro Neves Marques & Rodrigo Moreira / Portugal & Brazil

A virtual reality experience that uses archives pre and post Carnation Revolution - which took place on April 25, 1974 - overthrowing the longest dictatorship in Europe, to reflect on the fragility of modern democracy.

“Follow The Carnation” is an immersive experience where democracy’s fragility takes center stage. The experience begins in Mixed Reality, intertwining past and present as the user listens to a heartfelt dialogue between an elderly man and his granddaughter about the Carnation Revolution. Following these characters into what appears to be a red spiral labyrinth, the viewer traverses this maze, encountering various historical and contemporary figures who share their stories about democracy in Portugal. “Follow The Carnation” weaves a vivid tapestry of resistance and resilience, reinterpreting pre- and post-Carnation Revolution archives, reflecting historical and contemporary struggles for justice and equality.

Catarina de Sousa

Director / Producer

Biography

Catarina de Sousa has over 15 years’ experience in cinema and visual arts in different countries such as Brazil, United States and Portugal, and has directed and produced award-winning films, screened at international festivals. As an enthusiastic advocate of the new media revolution, using everyday technology, she has been developing cross-disciplinary documentary/research where she explores the question of temporality emphasizing the issue of memory and the archive as footage for shaping the future and think about new possibilities and utopias, rethinking questions of political history and philosophy of time.

Lui Avallos

Director

Biography

Lui Avallos is a film and VR director. Selected as Berlinale Talents 2023, he developed “Liminal Spaces”, a VR project at the Short Form Station. He was part of the Biennale College Cinema- Virtual Reality program, where he developed the project “Queer Utopia”, funded by MOIN Film Fund, and selected for the 80th Venice International Film Festival. His latest virtual reality project, “Handwritten”, has been shown at DOK Leipzig festival and Open City Documentary London. He is currently a PhD student in Multimedia Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon.

Isadora Pedro Neves Marques

Producer

Biography

Isadora Pedro Neves Marques (they/them) is a producer, filmmaker, visual artist, and writer. They were the Portuguese Official Representation - Portugal Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and were awarded the prestigious Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize in 2021 and the Present Future Generation Art Prize at Artissima in 2018 for their art career. Their film Becoming Male in the Middle Ages was awarded the Ammodo Tiger Short Award at IFFR in 2022, and their film The Bite won best short film awards at Go Short - Nijmegen, Mix Brasil, Sicilia Queer Film Festival, and Short Waves, as well as the Kodak Prize at MIEFF in 2020.

Rodrigo Moreira

Producer

Biography

Rodrigo Moreira is a producer and project manager. He currently manages Mundivagante Studio, a production company that developed “Queer Utopia” (Biennale College Cinema 2022); Liminal Spaces” (Berlinale Talents 2023); “Handwritten” ( Prague International Film Festival 2022, DOK Leipzig, London Open City Documentarty Festival; “Desconexo”, Outfest Los Angeles, Habana International Film Festival, Chéries-Chéris Paris, amongst others.