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Martin Dale Contributor“Where is This Street? or With No Before and After,” co-directed by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, is screening in competition at Locarno.The pic revisits locations and themes from Paulo Rocha’s 1963 film “Os Verdes Anos” (“The Green Years”), a best first film winner at Locarno in 1964 and considered to be a point of departure for Portugal’s Cinema Novo movement.“We believe that the film works at its own level, and also gains further levels of meaning when viewed in conjunction with ‘Os Verdes Anos,’” explains Rodrigues. “By revisiting locations from the 1963 film, but without people, we planned to make an ode to Lisbon, a symphony of the city, working in the tradition of directors such as Walter Ruttman.

In Paulo Rocha’s debut “The Green Years,” he told the story of a young man from rural Portugal who becomes lost in the machinery of a rapidly evolving Lisbon. Pulsing with similar energy to films of the French New Wave, the style was an effective misdirect for a tale of someone unable to carve a meaningful existence in a system that has no quarter for those that can’t adapt.

“Better remember, you were born in a backward village, and you need to learn to hang on.