Visiting Artists and Professors · 2026/27 (next academic year)

Gabriel Abrantes (1984, USA) is an artist and filmmaker based in Lisbon. His practice encompasses interactive digital performance, multi-channel animation, digitally assisted painting, and cinema. He has several short films to his credit and two feature films: Amelia’s Children (2023) and Diamantino (2018), which have been screened at major film festivals.

Claire Atherton is a film editor born in 1963 in San Francisco. Attracted by Taoist philosophy and visual ideograms, she turned to studies of Chinese language and civilisation, and then she enrolled in the professional branch of the Ecole Louis Lumière in Paris. She was interested in sound, and she also worked as a cinematographer. But it’s in the editing that she found her way. She is known for her long collaboration with filmmaker Chantal Akerman, but she also works as editor with a wide range of filmmakers and artists, including Eric Baudelaire and Wang Bing.

Mariana Gaivão is a director and editor born in Lisbon, with a degree in Photography from AR.CO and Film Directing from the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. She has had a long career as an editor, collaborating with filmmakers such as Marco Martins, João Pedro Rodrigues, and João Salaviza, among others. She has directed several award-winning short films, such as Solo, First Light and Ruby.

Filipa Reis (1977, Lisbon) has been a director and producer since 2000. In 2008, she founded the film production company Uma Pedra no Sapato, one of Portugal's leading film production companies. She has directed several documentaries and has two feature films to her name: Djon África (2018, co-directed with João Miller Guerra) and Légua (2023).

Beatriz Batarda has a degree in Acting from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In 1986, she made her film debut in a film by João Botelho, and since then she has worked with directors Manoel de Oliveira, José Álvaro de Morais, Marco Martins, João Canijo, Ivo Ferreira, Margarida Cardoso, João Mário Grilo, Teresa Villaverde, Bille August and Stan Douglas. In 1994, she made her theatre debut in a production by Luís Miguel Cintra and has worked with directors such as Carlos Pimenta, Ana Tamen, Rui Mendes, Carlos Aladro, Cristopher Morahan, Steven Unwin and Joseph Blatchley. Her work in acting, both in film and theatre, has been awarded and recognised throughout her artistic career.

Erika Balsom is a scholar and critic based in London, working on cinema, art, and their intersection. She is Reader in Film and Media Studies at King’s College London and holds a PhD in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University. She is one of the most influential voices in contemporary film criticism, writing for various publications and working as a film and contemporary art curator.

Leonor Teles is a film director and cinematographer based in Lisbon. She began her career with Balada de um Batráquio (2016), winner of the Golden Bear for best short film at the Berlinale. She has a feature-length documentary, Terra Franca (2018), and a fiction film, Baan, which premiered at the Locarno Festival. As a cinematographer, Leonor Teles has worked with several directors, notably João Canijo (as in Mal Viver, 2023, which won the Silver Bear in Berlin).

Marco Martins is a Portuguese artist and filmmaker who has developed a diverse work that goes beyond classic cinema, to television and theatre, performance, and installation. Among his films, Alice (2005), his first feature, was one of the most celebrated works of the decade, and São Jorge (2016) showed the hidden face of the great crisis of 2008-2012. Dealing with endangered characters, the filmmaker examines the most intimate side of our society.

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Visiting Artists · 2025/26

Tutor of the second year: Marco Martins
Tutors of the first year: Margarida Cardoso and Diogo Costa Amarante

In the last academic years, the workshops integrated into Project I and II CUs are taught by: Leonor Teles, Vasco Viana (Cinematography), Laetitia Morais (16mm Film), João Rosas (Screenwriting), Filipa Reis (Production), José Vasco Carvalho (Sound Design), José Alberto Gomes (Soundtrack), Mariana Gaivão (Editing), Andreia Bertini (Color Grading).

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Past visiting artists and scholars

Rodrigo Areias
Born in Guimarães in 1978, Rodrigo Areias is a Portuguese director and producer.   Areias has built a unique career in Portuguese cinema, both as a director and producer, notably through the production company Bando à Parte, based in Guimarães and founded by him, which has more than a hundred titles to its name, including feature films, short films, documentaries and animated shorts.

Ben Rivers
The English filmmaker Ben Rivers is one of the most relevant contemporary artists/directors, with work ranging from fictional documentary to experimental cinema. Rivers has made over 30 films, including five feature films. 

Ana Vaz
Born in the central Brazilian plateau inhabited by ghosts buried by the modernist federal capital Brasília. Originally from Cerratense and a wanderer by choice, Ana has lived in the arid lands of central Brazil and southern Australia, in the marshes of northern France and on the eastern shores of the North Atlantic in Portugal. She currently divides her time between Paris and Brasília. 

Filipa César
Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. She studied at the University of Porto and Lisbon, the Academy of Arts in Munich and the University of Arts in Berlin. She is interested in the fictional aspects of documentary, in the tenuous boundaries between cinema and its reception, and in the politics and poetics inherent to the moving image.

João Canijo
Portuguese filmmaker who started his apprenticeship as an assistant director on films by Manoel de Oliveira, Wim Wenders, Paulo Rocha or Alain Tanner. He has directed several feature films, such as “Sapatos Pretos”. “Ganhar a Vida”, “Noite Escura”, “Sangue do Meu Sangue”, “É o Amor” and “Fátima”. His latest films have been deepening a method of reconstructing the real and questioning Portuguese identity, through prolonged immersion in specific communities of the actors who embody his characters.

Luiz Camillo Osorio is Professor at the Department of Philosophy at PUC-Rio, researcher at CNPQ and curator at the PIPA Institute. Between 2009 and 2015, he was Curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. In 2015, he curated the Brazilian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. 

Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and critic, dividing her time between Berlin and Vienna. She is Professor of Modern and Postmodern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Together with Helmut Draxler, Clemens Krümmel and Susanne Leeb, she co-edits “PoLYpeN”, a collection on art criticism and political theory, published by b_books (Berlin). He also has several publications on art-related topics: “Art After Conceptual Art” (2006), “Produktion – Technologie – Subjektivität bei Sol LeWitt, Yvonne Rainer und Hélio Oiticica” (2007), “Film, Avantgarde und Biopolitik” (2009) ) and “Hélio Oiticica, Neville D'Almeida and others: Block-Experiments in Cosmococa” (2013).