Setting, foreshadowing, metaphor, character — the swimming pool has been used with multiple meanings and purposes throughout the history of cinema, not only for its natural, shining imagery, but mainly for its ability to represent universes and emotions from our collective imagination.

Using public or private pools, full or empty, this series proposes to explore stories that call upon the figure of the pool and place it in the protagonist’s place. What is the charm of these concrete basins, which somehow imprison nature for our pleasure and dreams? How do their interplay of color and light stimulate encounters and separations, also constituting spaces of fantasy, otherness and care, sometimes revealing inequalities and violence?

Presenting a selection of works from the 1930s to the present day and spanning various genres and aesthetics, from artist films to aquatic musicals, we show how swimming pools are used in cinema, discursively and figuratively, becoming vehicles for reflections on body, desire, death, community, class and ecologies.

Curated by Guilherme Blanc and Lídia Queirós, with support from Sofia Lemos Marques