Welcome to Festival Internacional de Marionetas do Porto 2019!

In 2019, FIMP celebrates three decades of promoting puppetry in its many traditional forms, as well as in its contemporary forms and in its hybridization with other art forms.

This festival is, like any other festival, a celebration, and this year is a special anniversary celebration. This year we are not just celebrating FIMP’s anniversary, we are celebrating everyone. Artists from Portugal and from around the world, technicians, producers, institutional partners, friends and, of course, the public, anyone who at any point in time took part in this Festival. Congratulations everyone! To keep an organization such as this for thirty years requires work, dedication, care, commitment, sensitivity, solidarity, complicity and desire and will… and means.

The best anniversary present FIMP can get is to be visited by those who enjoy the thrill of discovering the shows in this year’s program. This year’s edition includes a very special selection of artists with quite distinct aesthetics. From the virtuoso performance of master puppeteers to the experimental creation of devices through objects and moving image, and even the Portuguese folk heritage, there is a lot to choose from in this year’s Festival. FIMP is no longer a new festival, but it is far from being old, and there is a bright future ahead.

This year’s program is punctuated by a series of themes that reflect the zeitgeist in which common questions facing humanity and the planet, eventually end up having an effect on the construction of subjectivity, either we care about it or not. The puppet, the animated matter (with its many possibilities and capabilities) has always been a wise counsellor. Its irreverence and lightness sooths the restless and unrests the self-indulgent. It has, after all, the moral authority of an object in a world of objects. And yet we’ll smile and even laugh out loud.

Year after year FIMP has been made possible because of the contributions made by many people and organizations. We rely on the structuring support of Teatro Municipal do Porto who coproduces and serves as the venue for a large section of the program; on Teatro Nacional São João, an essential associate in the creation of the national and international program. We also rely on Palácio do Bolhão, home of Teatro do Bolhão, Teatro Helena Sá e Costa, espaço Mira and Teatro de Ferro that will serve as venues for FIMP. Porto’s art schools are also involved in the festival by promoting the program within the school community and having their students participating directly in the festival. Balleteatro Escola Profissional is also celebrating its 30th anniversary and it will be playing a special role in this year’s edition.

To all the associate institutions and to the dedicated men and women on their teams we say thank you very much.

We would like to acknowledge the significance of the role that Câmara Municipal do Porto has had in backing the festival since its first edition, directed at the time by Isabel Alves Costa. This year’s program, as well as the program for the previous FIMP, were only made possible by the extraordinary increase in funding immediately approved by C.M.P. once it was known FIMP had lost its state funding by Direcção-Geral das Artes. We would like to reiterate our gratitude to C.M.P. for believing in this project which is already a part of the cultural identity of our city.

And now, let’s FIMP!