Pedro José-Marcellino aka P.J. Marcellino

(Lisbon, 1978) is a Luso-Cape Verdean-Canadian producer, screenwriter, programmer and curator. He moves between Lisbon, Northern Portugal, Paris, Cabo Verde and the Atlantic space. Co-founder of Cinema Pedrada (Porto) and Anatomy of Restlessness Films (Toronto), he works across documentary, fiction and essay/experimental cinema, with a political, punk, poetic but anti-ornamental gaze on Afro-Atlantic diasporas, identity and memory — perhaps the result of years researching migration. His first feature, When They Awake (2017), earned him the Rigoberta Menchú Social Award (2018) and screened around the world. Since then, he has worked as a producer, essayist and curator. He writes on cinema, culture and contested urban spaces, and curates programmes and residencies such as FUTURE NOW: (Re)Thinking Culture (2020), Tela d’Pano Terra (2022) and TRANSÍSTOR: Expanded Memory (artistic direction of Raquel Da Sailva). He treats cinema as a field of observation and confrontation, more interested in gesture and thought than pose — a cinema that wants to talk with society. (instragram)

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