"Director: Miguel Gomes"

• Our Beloved Month of August | DVD | (26/09/2011) from £14.49   |  Saving you £-1.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A tantalizing mix of documentary fiction and everything in between Miguel Gomes' multi-award-winning love song to rural Portugal is an intoxicating blend of visuals sound and music. Gorgeously photographed it set one's eyes ablaze and toes tapping but Gomes goes further to work the brain as a narrative slowly sneakily emerges out of the (seeming) documentary melody-making. Summoning up memories of French film-makers such as Eric Rohmer and documentarist Nicolas Philibert and in its deliberate drift from fiction into fact echoes of Pedro Costa and Manoel de Oliviera the film follows a self-created evolutionary path to become something wholly individual and unique.

• Tabu | DVD | (14/01/2013) from £8.98   |  Saving you £9.00 (128.76%)   |  RRP £15.99

  After Our Beloved Month of August, Miguel Gomes returns with Tabu, an engaging, provocative and poetic film set both in Portugal and in an un-named African location. Bearing the same title as F. W. Murnau's classic Tabu (1931), shot in black and white and taking place at least partly in a distant land, Gomes' third feature film is divided in two distinctive yet complementary storylines. Whilst the first part, shot in 35mm and in the present time, portrays a society wallo...

• Tabu | Blu Ray | (14/01/2013) from £8.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  After Our Beloved Month of August, Miguel Gomes returns with Tabu, an engaging, provocative and poetic film set both in Portugal and in an un-named African location. Bearing the same title as F. W. Murnau's classic Tabu (1931), shot in black and white and taking place at least partly in a distant land, Gomes' third feature film is divided in two distinctive yet complementary storylines. Whilst the first part, shot in 35mm and in the present time, portrays a society wallowing in nostalgia, the second part, shot in 16mm, goes back in time and plays with history, sound, the concept of linear narration, as well as the ideas of melodrama, slapstick, passion and tragedy. Both parts feature Aurora at two different stages of her life: an older Aurora regrets a past long gone while a younger Aurora dreams of a more passionate life. A virtuoso film, Tabu also offers a reflection on Europe's colonial past.

• Arabian Nights 1,2,3 | DVD | (22/08/2016) from £9.85   |  Saving you £20.14 (204.47%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The latest from Miguel Gomes (Tabu, Our Beloved Month of August) Arabian Nights (As mil e uma noites) is probably this year's most ambitious cinematic undertaking, and the most talked about film experience of the last Cannes Film Festival. Arabian Nights uses the framing device from the original Arabian Nights of the beautiful young Scheherazade telling tale after tale in order to keep her murderous husband from killing herbut that's where the similarities end. Over three features, Gomes channels the current struggles of economically depressed Portugal through an assortment of tales that range from farcical yarns to grounded accounts of social issues. Volume 1 The Restless One: After opening with overlapping documentary portraits of a shipyard and a wasp-exterminator, the director appears on screen, contemplating his overly ambitious undertaking. From here, Gomes spins a satirical tale about the financial powers-that-be preying on Portugal's vulnerability. Next up is the comic story of the role a rooster plays in a local election, followed by a sobering triptych of interviews with unemployed citizens. Volume 2 The Desolate One: The volume's opening chapter is about a criminal on the run. In The Tears of the Judge, a public trial becomes a mockery, with the testimony implicating everyone in attendance. Finally, The Desolate One ends on an exhilarating note, with a hugely entertaining story about a dog named Dixie who's passed between owners, familiarizing us with the inhabitants of a working-class apartment building. Volume 3 The Enchanted One: Having escaped the palace, Scheherazade explores a seaside landscape where she encounters, among others, a wind genie and a daft suitor. This segues into a documentary-style exploration of the working-class sport of chaffinch singing competitions. Movingly and unexpectedly, the last gesture of Arabian Nights is to scale back its scope and provide a disarmingly modest and poignant grace note on which one of contemporary cinema's new masterpieces can close.' (Vancouver Film Festival Catalogue) Arabian Nights is a joint acquisition of New Wave Films and MUBI.