Step forward John Salaviza is given. Mountain , the first feature film by young filmmaker Portuguese, snatched audiences in Venice, Montpellier, Saint Petersburg and Lisbon. In week national debut – distributed by Midas, the film will reach 14 cities from north to south – talked with the director to meet their distress, working methods and attitude towards the current state of the Portuguese culture
<. p> You felt you during
On the contrary, because I filmed a lot more than we used. This idea of trying to capture the intimacy and realize what everyday gestures of a family – particularly the David – can say about themselves imply a focus and an enormous attention to everything they do, especially being in a movie where the idea was to film the body in transformation. I had to give a huge importance to everything he says and does not say. I liked to make a twenty-hour movie. In a perfect world, it would have made a much bigger movie.
videotaped something arrependesses you have not used?
Nor. The assembly is a work that goes precisely shape the film so that it can return to its origins, to its starting point. There are guys scenes that did not appear in the film; there are scenes that have a great intrinsic and autonomous value that also did not go, but if they were needed would be there.
More room for the detail in the feature film?
I think not. The duration of a short and a long does not only have larger or smaller films, but mostly more time working and living with people with whom you work. This makes the relationship between stronger and lighter people. The attention to details, details and stories that the bodies have has much to do with the time I spent with people I filmed. Somehow, one feature film, did not want to get away from the premise that was in short. Having a one hour and a half movie lets you create a relationship of affection with kid’m filming – and that is eventually shared by the viewer – in which every gesture ends up winning a lot more so than its practical dimension. When the kid bathes, is that the scene is only about the kid bathe or more layers beneath this apparent superficiality?
All of this is related to the logic of watching without intervening and let the camera shoot?
The scenes are constructed according to dramaturgical ideas are mine, but are heavily contaminated by kids, particularly in the latter film. I never try to shoot things that go against their nature or that you think do not make sense. Since larger things – like a declaration of love or the fact that David hide the mother the fact that his grandfather had died – even simpler things, such as the plan of David to eat a sandwich at the hospital door. The scenes are built for me and for them a very close relationship. Not so much part of the logic of documentaries, in which you leave the power on and is expected to develop the scene. We are together to build a scene so that after she suggests this apparent naturalness.
How do you build an architectural and aesthetic reality – starting from details such as the home or outside the neighborhood – that nothing has to do with those guys
It has to do, again, with the time we spent together. The interior of the house was built for the film for us, but it was important that all objects and clothes tell a story. We feel that this t-shirt that couch or have a history, which are not movie objects. On the other hand, this occupation that the kids have space in most scenes meant that we spent months inside the house, not necessarily to rehearse, but to live. We saw television, we talked … I did not mean that the days of shooting were special days; would have to be days like everyone else, where the only difference was the camera pointed to the actors.
You felt you some lost so during the recording?
Completely. The first week of shooting was catastrophic because it was still shoot with a kind of fidelity to the script, which was a mistake. I quickly realized that the film would have to be done in a much more intuitive registration; I would have to go after intuitions about what the kids were telling me and the things that were happening in parallel with the shooting. On the other hand, there is only this anguish of David – which is very present throughout the whole movie – as well as the anguish of a director making his first film. I felt as lost as any of the guys, but I think I’ll always feel it in any of the films that will do in the future. It will always be difficult to make movies.
The failure has become a closer reality?
I do not see the film as an act of hit or miss . I think one person makes the movies he wants and he can. Movies are a consequence of people who are in front of the camera and what a director wants to shoot. Ideally, if I an implies me in the movie I’m doing, it will always be a consequence of the way I see things that I am shooting.
The question of the fact of being considered by many moviegoers as a cult director. Felt that this time you could not even make mistakes?
No, because to me filming the anguish of have to see first of all with myself and secondly with the feeling that respected the nature of people I filmed. For me, the only responsibility is with me and them. From there, I have full awareness that the fate of a movie – when confronted with reality and with the people who will see – it is absolutely unclear and mysterious. I shall not guarantee that the film would run and has gone, but there was not much he could do about it. I have no personal anguish, I have professional anguish; are anguish from a pragmatic point of view of who is doing a movie, but that resolve in a narrow universe and reserved for people who make the film.
Do you feel that you stayed conditioning to a work scheme similar for your team be the same that made the short films?
On the contrary. From the moment I’m doing a film about intimacy, I need that intimacy also exists among people who are making the film. The intimacy between two people only because there are two people, not between strangers. In Mountain it was necessary that the boundary between those who make the movie and who is at the front of the camera were fuzzy. The prison would be shooting myself in a group of people who did not have a relationship more than professional. I’m not a boss or have pretensions of being boss. I want you’re all watching the movie with the same desire. Vasco Viana is not just doing cinematography, is making a film; the Aracelli [Fuentes] is not only to do make-up, is making a film. This very corporatist structure and divided into sectors that do not come together – as in novels, in which there are people working on the same project for six months and do not know – it’s completely absurd. The team is together to make the film and each holds this elephant. All look the same and sustemos
You found Rodrigo Perdigão -. Protagonist of Rafa, which is also present in this work – casting off the record. Why make a normal told casting to find another “neighborhood kid”?
David came to be the casting of a very accidentally, because of family in common. He did not want to come. It was the only kid who did not want to make a movie. David got there very angry and upset; that’s what fascinated me. The way I found was different, but what brings the film is somehow similar to what Rodrigo brought, for having a completely anchored experience in public spaces of Lisbon; is a kid who wakes up at ten, eleven in the morning, going to the arcades of his floor building skateboard and, if necessary, only back home the next day.
Until point did you feel obliged to protect the privacy of David or Cheyenne?
Completely thanks. For me there is a distance that cinema can never pass; if I’m doing a film about intimacy and the secrets of adolescence, there are always secrets that do not have the right to know not to shoot. Never film nothing they do not want to be filmed. Even the most intimate scenes with kisses or a stronger emotional charge, are quite worked with the actors.
I take it you have not been able to take advantage of everything they offered to the camera …
No, because they are younger and probably more unconscious than me. Ever video tape nudity or things to bring forth their dignity or the right to privacy. The film builds a fictional mask that allows return to the truth of every person with protection, and that exists here, as in Rafa already existed. They are talking about their lives protected by the cinema. That’s why the movie is great.
You say that the director’s work is not so much for giving advice, but rather to realize how the actor suits the scene. Where is that there comes the input who makes the film?
For me it is very important not to feel a kind of deus ex machina . I do not want to own the reality. I film the desire of discovery, the pleasure of the trip that I and the actors do. In my films, I need to create a space in décor to allow this discovery, even at the risk of the film go in unexpected ways. Sometimes, small miracle confront the reality Sometimes how the tread is in progress. In Arena , a little old lady goes into the plan by the end of the sequence of the bridge, that when the character Carloto Cotta throws the bike. The impulse to another director would have been to say “cut”; but I found it amazing. The way the lady enters the plan reveals the habituation that this neighborhood has to violence. In Rafa , spent the last roll of film when he was filming the final plan in which Rodrigo grabs the baby and looks up. There were other takes it had done before, but that look up was kind of awareness that the kid had that soon everything would be different. In Mountain , the scene in which David appears to ride a wheelchair for the fourth part of his exhaustion the day we shot the sequence of the hospital Santa Maria. Tired of waiting, David stole a chair to the infirmary and the hours he spent waiting learned to balance. Later I decided to film it.
One of the last scenes of the film has an almost voyeuristic side. How do you shoot a sex scene between teens, protecting the innocence of them?
I film the intimacy throughout the movie, but suddenly comes this sequence, in which the point of view there is more physical contact, but that is the most solitary scenes of Mountain . A first sexual experience – regardless of what happens – it can be an experience of a deep loneliness, which is to be alone even accompanied by another person. What am filming is not so much sex, but the loneliness of each at the time. Anyway, it was all done very carefully. It was a much talked about scene. I myself had greater shame than them. The sequence is filmed in close-ups now one now the other, although they have always been together.
The idea of portraying David tense and unhappy after this scene came from you?
The film has a contrast which is the fact that both happiness distress may arise simultaneously. Even after he had been the first time with Paulinha [character of Cheyenne Domingues], there is always the shadow side, which depicts the imminent death of his grandfather. At that moment he leaves the house of Paulinha, almost mystical feeling that he anticipates what will happen last half hour. This is a passage scene that frees us from everything that happened up there, but which already provides what comes next. That’s why he stops and will not be home soon; the first is on the stairs, spits, walk a little and gets to see the dawn. This idea of the body that turns every day can be so crucial that if we think in the beginning of the scene where David is agreed by the mother, there we have a slight, frail body, unprotected – is very much a childhood image. Consequently, the traveling when he leaves the house of Paulinha, one realizes that he grew up; one realizes that it is no longer the same person.
David and her mother end the movie just like they got it, albeit in a diametrically opposite context. At the beginning we see the character of Maria João protect the child and in the end we have the reverse. The idea was to make it clear that the transition to adulthood is when becomes the child to protect parents
I think there are two experiences I filmed that are very violent: the first Childhood is the radical cut – even at sixteen there is still the last vestiges of this phase present – which comes with the awareness of death. The end of childhood happens – unless there is a trauma – when we start to realize that the people we like after all are not immortal and can also die. On the other hand, there are the consequence of the perception of this reality, which is the time when you feel that we have to protect our country in any way, as has always been the opposite. At the end of the film, giving it the first time when David decides to effectively protect the mother. The Mountain just exactly when we feel he made the first move to another stage any
Both Rafa family like David have some similarities:. There is a sister small to care for a frail mother and absent father. What led you to build the characters without a father figure?
I like to think how within a family each person represents functions other than those to which it was intended. The traditional model of the family “father, mother, daughter, son and dog” also has lots of nuances, of course. The story of a kid standing on a lot of things crossroads. Even within the family, it is not only a child; It becomes almost father’s younger sister; there is a very adolescent side in Maria Joao Pinho that unbalances their relationship and suggests that there is really maternal figure. The Stig Dagerman – a Swedish writer who like bastante- speaks volumes about these dysfunctional families in a Nordic context; what ever I feel that I read is that within each family are never just one thing at a given time; not only are the son or father. These family roles are permanently transformed depending on the circumstances, and me interested me shoot that
initial plan would be filming The Mountain near the area where you grew up. I feel that you would have taken a different approach with the script if geography had been closer to your childhood?
Probably want to have revisited some of the places where I moved a adolescence. On the other hand, what I did was keep working memory idea even outside places he knew. There are many things in the movie that are in fact memories of my adolescence; the disco scene in he sees Paulinha and Rodrigo kissing up refers to a nightclub that was the Rookie – a mythical site of the Bairro Alto in what is an increasingly of fado – where skaters, punk staff, Lisbon hardcore and hip-hop gathered. Not having filmed in the exact location, I tried to turn that atmosphere and update it.
took to build the strong connection we see between David and Rodrigo?
I introduced them a few months before the shooting. From there, they began to build a relationship with each other and with the very Cheyenne, which later permeated the film. When I asked them something, always explained that knew each other better than me. They went out at night on weekends weekend shooting; then returned, told stories and we’d shoot those stories. I heard them even talking about a situation that Rodrigo lived – and spent a lot in the news – which have to do with some kids from the Sintra line that drowned in a quarry. These kids were from the same school of Rodrigo. Later I asked him to tell the same for the film.
Why is the break point between the two is with the bike and not the girl they love?
The strength of this scene has to do with it. They are discussing the bike because David has no courage to take that feel that Rodrigo stole his girl. David has a lot this logic to go for alternative ways to the things you want to understand or discuss. In the previous scene, are the two to ride a bike and he asks her if she had slept with Paulinha; Rodrigo always gives you very evasive answers until he says “let’s burn the bike.” Burn the bike is the only thing is the only thing he can do about Rodrigo, because in relation to Paulinha not know what to do
The woman -. Is the adult, teen or child – has a less bumpy experience in the film; men, whether they Carloto or David, desperate for the love of Cheyenne or Maria João and they ignore us. Was deliberate?
Maybe it’s like in Godard’s films, in which men leave woven by women [laughs]. Interests me not at all to shoot the woman as a narrative crutch of men, as seen in huge movies. The history of cinema is unfortunately a story of men. There are few actresses who have been protagonists, and that transcended their physical beauty. Shoot the Cheyenne this way has to do with the fact that she find – in life and in the film – in a slightly advanced stage of maturity in relation to the kids. They are discovering the girl who grew up to become a woman before they turn into men. That’s why there’s that scene where Paulinha lights a cigarette and David asks: “Now also you smoke? Where do you have been? “. It is felt that there is a life that he can no longer control and which he does not participate. All this we conclude that party house with pool in there older than he types. He leaves fearless at the top of his fifteen years and brings Paulinha home. As she still does not feel comfortable with older men looking for that comfort his friend.
There is also the opposite. The figure of Alice appears only to be used …
Then there is a purely teenage thing, which is the fortuitous kiss with the girl who is on our side; You do not really realize who wants to kiss anyone. But it also reinforces the more the idea of David being alone, because when we see it in the next scene, he’s even sadder than it was before and tries to trick Rodrigo on the bus, telling him he will visit Alice. Then we have the same conversation with Paulinha; pretends he is glad to have met a girl, but the more he talks about it, the more we realize he wants is to Paulinha, although he himself did not even have realized that.
Except for rare exceptions, the film lives only the sounds of the city and the voices of the actors. Feel the music in relation to thy works, most of its absence than its demarcation?
I always used little music in my films, and for the first time now I have some sequences with music, but it’s always music scene, diegetic music. When they are three to read the book, we hear the Puto Portuguese, with a song that is the Male Ta , which probably comes from the equipment of a neighbor. Later, we hear the songs that Norberto Lobo made a very different from the usual recording. I asked him to do the two songs we hear in disco; I suggested they approached the music that Lightning Bolt do only with a guitar and bass. But even this song appears as sound scene. Finally there is the Paranoia , which is a psychedelic trance medium, suggested by David. I like the songs are related to the spaces and the characters and not so much with the idea to comment on the film as are used in other films, where the piano comes to reinforce the sadness. I refuse to do that sort of thing. I like that music comes from the ground and not from above.
Still on the technical side. Seems to come back to be the Mountain – in contrast to the Rafa or Cerro Negro – a return to light (especially in the daytime scenes in the metropolis) as in Arena . Why bring the light back?
I think the Arena is a movie about a guy who lives in confinement and seeking the light, while the – and although there are many scenes in which one feels the presence of summer – there is a sense of seclusion that David looking in the shadows and into the night. Truly key scenes take place at night. The characters may be revealed to themselves in the darkness more than the light. There is almost vampire thing a kid who flees the light to live at night. It’s kind of sleepwalking thing, it never seems to get much sleep. The very scene where he finally discusses with Rodrigo day begins and ends at night, despite being a single plane. At one time a train passes and lampposts light because it is night.
It is curious to David’s reaction to the flames. It is for a long time to do the bike burn. Was your statement?
I asked him to leave when he thought he should leave, but to confirm that the burning bike. There is this very cathartic thing on fire, and I felt the lack of something to give meaning to the title of the film. Missing nature to reach the Mountain . Ali was very important to have the presence of a natural element that is a counterpoint to the urban side of the film. It was important that I had a kind of marvel, of awareness of the presence of fire.
How is it takes stock of the fascination that exists among non-actors and between the actors?
My fascination with actors is of the same order as the fascination with non-actors. What interests me in them are not their talent representation or your resume, but precisely things in their lives. The Carloto knew quite well; there is a side to him that is rough, smooth and distressed to it and I wanted to film. The same happened with Maria Joao Pinho, who has a adolescente- even after anguish of thirty – very strong for the character of a mother, and she is not a mother in real life. I forget when I’m filming of who the actors are and who are not actors.
You were saying you could do this movie is fortunate, given the circumstances. How does a filmmaker awarded in Cannes and Berlin can still be subject to the fate of the times?
There is more fighting than luck in all this, but I am privileged to be able to make my films the way I wanted to here, as Miguel Gomes explains at the beginning of One Thousand and One Nights . But I can not fall in this autoculpabilizante speech, this Christian guilt that a person has to feel guilty and pay the price to do what you believe. Do what I like and I believe also requires fighting a lot against external antagonisms, many of them in have nothing to do with the film, but with the political class, with an absolutely unprepared country for everything that is different.
Do you see yourself more hope after the right-wing government fall? There are many artists who say it was the worst governments to manage culture in Portugal.
It was the worst. It was as deeply ideological government of all that existed in our country. To appoint Minister of Culture – even in this government ten days masquerade – a dame who voted against gay rights … For me it was enough that she was not even Mrs. This thinking is dangerous because it has to do with everything; It has to do with movies, with intimacy, with individual rights. A government that closes the Ministry of Culture is a government that tells us that there is only one way of thinking and looking at things, and that only he knows how is this. They want to control absolutely everything; It is a kind of fascism what these guys are trying to impose. Of course I will not compare these puppets who ruled us with the Islamic State; however, in all places where there were governments that tried to promote the only thought, the first things that were destroyed were education and culture, so it is still paradigmatic that culture has been destroyed and has almost ceased to exist funding for the cinema – with the famous year zero in 2012, when there were not supported movies. If these three parties if they can understand, I am sure that they will re-invest in culture, realizing that it generates a more important wealth, which is the emotional and intellectual wealth.
After Mountain , which closes the chapter of short, there is the nostalgia of what was done and now I can not do more?
No. There is the desire to make the next film [laughs]
Photos:. Guilherme Braz / Shifter
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