João Rui Guerra da Mata was born in Lourenço Marques, Mozambique and spent his formative years in Macao, China. He studied and trained in Graphic Design and Typography in Lisbon. Since 1995, he has been working in the cinema field. He teached Art Direction / Production Design at the Lisbon Film School from 2004 to 2011. In 2012, he directed AS THE FLAMES ROSE, his debut solo short, which won the Film und Video Untertitelung Prize at Locarno Film Festival’s Short Film Competition. He has co-directed several shorts and the feature THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO with his lifelong partner and artistic collaborator João Pedro Rodrigues. He worked in several features and shorts as a writer, being the last one, THE ORNITHOLOGIST, directed by Rodrigues. In 2016, he was honored, together with Rodrigues, with a complete retrospective and installation exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, part of the Festival d’ Automne. Other international retrospectives include: two itinerant retrospectives in Japan, Taipei, Rio de Janeiro, Harvard and Madrid. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Portuguese Cinematheque.

FILMOGRAPHY

2014 – Iec Long (co-realizado com João Pedro Rodrigues)

2013 – Mahjong (co-realizado com João Pedro Rodrigues)

2012 – A Última Vez Que Vi Macau (co-realizado com João Pedro Rodrigues)

2012 – O Que Arde Cura (co-realizado com João Pedro Rodrigues)

2011 – Alvorada Vermelha (co-realizado com João Pedro Rodrigues)

2007 – China, China (co-realizado com João Pedro Rodrigues)