The Frontal Plan Residencies, led by Pedro Sena Nunes, are designed for final-year and recent graduates of higher education in Film, Audiovisual, and Communication. These residencies will take place from July 25 to August 3 and are organized by the AO NORTE association in collaboration with the Municipality of Melgaço, in the district of Viana do Castelo.
“This residency offers a unique opportunity for young filmmakers to develop a documentary project in a real-world context. Four teams, each consisting of three members, will be challenged to produce documentaries on local themes, contributing to the audiovisual archive of Melgaço and enhancing the region’s intangible heritage,” it states.
The Photography Residency invites three young individuals to develop a photography project over ten days in an immersive setting, with support from a dedicated team and direct engagement with the territory.
Applications are open until the 30th of this month, and each selected photographer will receive an individual grant of two thousand euros.
The Cinema Workshop, scheduled from July 28 to 31, will feature guest director Margarida Cardoso, who will “share methods and experiences between documentary and fiction.”
In this learning space, participants will be encouraged to develop film ideas through creative exercises and visual and literary references.
Applications are open until July 15.
The Off-Screen Summer Course involves cultural agents, researchers, artists, and directors and this year features the collaboration of DOCMA, the Spanish Documentary Association, with filmmakers like Sandra Ruesga, Raúl Alaejos, and Alfonso Palazón.
The general coordination is led by José da Silva Ribeiro (Federal University of Pernambuco / AO NORTE) and Alfonso Palazón Meseguer (University Rey Juan Carlos – URJC), with applications open until July 11.
On August 1, the Melgaço House of Culture will host Sandra Ruesga for the masterclass “Exploring the Self: Self-referential Cinema and Identity,” where the Spanish filmmaker “proposes a deep immersion into her creative universe, characterized by the fusion of personal and political, intimate and collective aspects.”
The same venue will host an X-Raydoc session on August 3, offering “a space for reflection and analysis of films essential to the history of documentary.”
Under the coordination of Jorge Campos, this event proposes the viewing and discussion of two classic documentary films: “Lettre de Sibérie” (France, 1957) by Chris Marker, and “À Valparaíso” (Chile/France, 1963) by Joris Ivens.
For the first time in 2025, the MDOC will host a meeting with representatives from documentary festivals “aiming to discuss future pathways.”
This network includes the Majordocs (Mallorca, Spain), Escales Documentaires (La Rochelle, France), Frontdoc (Aosta, Italy), One World Romania (Bucharest, Romania), and MDOC (Melgaço, Portugal) festivals.
The AO NORTE Association also presents the project “Who are we who are here?”, focusing on the parish of Alvaredo, in the municipality of Melgaço.
This initiative “invites attentive listening and watching of the stories of those who live, have lived, or feel Alvaredo as part of their lives through audiovisual registration, collecting and digitizing photographs from family albums, a photo exhibition, and published works.”
The MDOC positions itself as “a festival that crosses authors’ perspectives, promotes critical reflections on the contemporary world, and contributes to the collective memory of the territory.”
