Richard Zenith

The best way to discover a city is through its people. 'Show Me Lisbon' reveals the city as seen by thirteen locals, or lisboetas - who were either born there or moved there by choice and who are of different generations, areas and backgrounds. The result is a dynamic, relaxed and realistic portrait of Lisbon that looks at themes such as what it means "to be a lisboeta", the light, the river, the food, the sounds, the history, the ethnic mixes, fado and the city's facades. The artist Joana Vasconcelos, the musician Rodrigo Leao, the writer Richard Zenith, the fado singer Carminho, the street artist Vhils and the historian Jose Sarmento Matos, alongside the knife sharpeners, fishwives, old ladies of Alfama and the festival singers who show the city as it is lived in its traditional quarters. Show me Lisbon is the follow-up to Show me Rio and the second film in the Show me Cities series.

In the Summer of 2004, I traveled across Portugal to shoot my project: a road-movie about a country that can be crossed in six hours from north to south and just one hour and a half from east to west. The landscape I passed through was the post-Euro 2004 Portugal, with the provisional government of Santana Lopes about to take office. It is a country that still seems like the idea we all have of "our homeland", but which actually no longer corresponds to reality and is becoming almost unrecognizable, as in a postcard.