Gabriel Abrantes
Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1984 and lives in Lisbon, Portugal
Gabriel Abrantes is an artist and filmmaker who has produced a significant body of work in film. In 2006 he received his BA in Cinema and Visual Arts at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, in New York. In 2005/2006 he studied at L’Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, in Paris and in 2007 studied at Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing, France.
He often works in 16mm and his films deal with the friction in between idealism and desire, representing melodramas in global conflict zones: Liberdade is about impotence in Angola, Ornithes is an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Birds in Haiti, A History of Mutual Respect (with Daniel Scmidt) follows eugenics obssessed sex tourists in Brasilia, and Visionary Iraq (with Benjamin Crotty) is a camp studio set film about incestuous siblings volunteering for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In 2010, he founded A Mutual Respect Productions, a film production company, with Natxo Checa and ZDB. They have made 7 short films and one feature film together, which have premiered at venues such as Venice Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Toronto film festival, and been exhibited at MIT List Center for Visual Arts, Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Centre Pompidou. His films have won numerous prizes.
Since 2002, he has regular solo exhibitions and his work has been shown in a number of collective exhibitions. In 2012 he taught cinema, at HEAD, Haute École d’ Art et de Design Genève / Geneva University Of Art And Design.
