How do you look at a place while it is changing?
Alfama is a neighbourhood where time does not move in a straight line. Layers of the city accumulate, overlap, disappear and return in new forms. Memory coexists with tourism, homes become temporary accommodation, new communities take shape while others move away. Between what endures and what is inevitably lost, the neighbourhood continues to reinvent itself.
It is within this constant movement that Cinalfama finds its place.
More than a screening platform, we foster a collective act of observation. By bringing independent cinema into the neighbourhood and the city, we interrupt, if only for a moment, the relentless pace of urban life to create a shared space of attention, where audiences, residents and filmmakers experience together the most personal experience we all share: the act of looking.
By placing local stories alongside narratives from around the world, we build our own archive: a living record of the urban, social and emotional transformations taking place in Alfama—transformations that mirror, at the same time, what is happening across the globe.
Because sometimes, you need to step outside the neighbourhood in order to truly see it.
2009
It is on the iconic and high white walls of Alfama's facades that this project, still informal, was born, projecting cinema in hidden streets of the neighborhood.
2016
The Cinalfama Seasonal Screenings and Awards are inaugurated - the festival switches to an international competitive format, screening Portuguese and international independent films in competition in the months of January, April and October.
2020
The Cinalfama Cultural Association was born, formally proclaiming its mission: to promote emerging artists, promoting debate and the creation of a community cinephile spirit in order to contribute to research and safeguarding Alfama's cultural heritage and to the respective socio-cultural dynamism of the neighborhood.
2022
Another step from Alfama to the world – an international outdoor event, in various parts of Alfama, that celebrates independent cinema and the streets that host it – the Cinalfama Lisbon International Film Festival.
2024
Cinalfama fulfills its associative vocation and becomes something much bigger than a festival, mobilizing cinema as a weapon of community cohesion and research through far-reaching projects, including the filmed collection of stories and oralities from Alfama.
2025
We get closer to the school community with the Minuto Lumière project whose first results will be presented at the annual festival – Cinalfama Lisbon Film Festival.