In 1975, after the Carnation Revolution, many foreigners came from all over Europe to Portugal to assist in newly formed rural co-ops. They tended the animals, worked the land and held family planning clinics and sexual education classes. Their libertarian views often clashed with local mores, but at night everybody took part in traditional dances together. Today, the now aging generation returns to the site of their wild youth to re-enact past experiences of sexual freedom and hedonistic utopia. Entirely based on the testimony of the people who lived this intense period in history, A Pleasure, Comrades! witnesses these memories in the present tense—with the carefree hippies now in their late 60s. With humour and playfulness, José Filipe Costa and his subjects construct a fabled narrative that reinvents storytelling and suggests that the act of remembering is just as much about considering the present. Charlotte Selb
The Changing Face of Europe program presented in partnership with
MEDIA COVERAGE