Miguel Gomes. “More and more, I have no idea what I’m making”
The three volumes of “Arabian Nights” is a portrait of Portugal impoverished, unemployed.
The three volumes of “One Thousand and One Nights” by Miguel Gomes count one year of Portugal grappling with economic and social crisis. “The Restless,” “The Desolate” and “The Enchanted”. Real stories and some not counted by the mythical character of Scheherazade. Today debuts the first part, but there are two more volumes, which follow in the coming weeks. This first, among other things, addresses the redundancies in Viana do Castelo Shipyards, the unemployed in Aveiro, the troika and the story of the rooster in Resende.
The three volumes d ‘”One Thousand and One Nights” by Miguel Gomes count one year of Portugal grappling with economic and social crisis. ‘The Restless’, ‘The Desolate’ and ‘The Enchanted’. Real stories and some not counted by the mythical character of Scheherazade. Today debuts the first part, but there are two more volumes that follow in the coming weeks. This first, among other things, addresses the redundancies in Viana do Castelo Shipyards, the unemployed in Aveiro, the troika and the story of the rooster in Resende.
And the following two?
The history of Palito. A character based on Stick to flight and the GNR after him until the time it is caught and received visor population with applause. The call chronicle of escape Simon gutted. A lawsuit in an outdoor amphitheater with a judge who asks a mother and son accused of selling furniture of a house that was rented. As if the whole Portuguese society was there. A compilation of such absurd crimes as stealing an irrigation system in a football stadium in the countryside. All things that happened in Portugal during the year we were working.
It is called Desolate.
The characters are much more lonely and it seems they are much more desperate. If the main character is Portugal and the community, the Portuguese, the second film gives the impression that we are all screwed, we have no chance. There is nothing to do. It is the darkest volume.
The Enchanted?
There are two major blocks, Scheherazade reacting to the previous volume with the stories of Portugal will you cut off the head. He escapes and ponders whether to return to the palace. That part was filmed in Marseille, a Mediterranean Baghdad, where it intersects with a number of characters. Back to the palace after a series of events and decides to tell a story that is the biggest story of the Arabian Nights: the story of the fowlers. This volume is more documentary, one retracto a collective, a community in Lisbon I did not know. People who capture birds, most of them born in slums in Musgueira in the Boavista district, chelas. Capture and train finches to take the finches singing contest. Birds are fighting the corner. Mark territory. When no other finch foot, make a war songs. The competition is in the old Musgueira now Alta de Lisboa. Right next to the airport, a number of people, the proletariat, the unemployed, with a very tough air that are silent to hear the birds singing. After discussing the corner as if they were football players.
Why this story?
I felt that the story was the draft of the film. Shoot the real world, the material world and tell the story of those neighborhoods in Lisbon, establishing a web of relationships, who is the big winner of the contest, the great hunter, a mythology from there winning almost mythical contours. The opportunity to do something with a surrealist side: a series of very tough guys who are dedicated to birdsong and at the same time addressing something very realistic, neighborhoods that do not talk a lot and shoot as today lives the kind of sub- proletariat.
Was the ground one year. It was a kind of clash with reality?
We filmed from August 2013 to August 2014. We are used to separate the world of journalism, reality, the world of fiction. What is interesting, and can be done in film and care for me especially, is to make passes from one to another. The imagery comes from elsewhere. It is our mental reality. And in times of crisis there is a collective imagination made the experience of living in this time. The fact that most of society has impoverished, as seen in the film, and to live this time of crisis, I think it makes people have fears and desires.
a time elections, these films can influence?
As can be seen, I have no sympathy for this government, now would be innocent to think that the film could have influence. After all, in Portugal people see especially television. Go to the movies, and especially see Portuguese films, it is not part of most habits. The film is not neutral, but also does not indicate a direction. I’m not sure of anything. I have no political ambition – if ever have, I ask the readers who are reading this interview that send me to intern because I not be right in the head. Sometimes it’s difficult to have ideas about what is good for me, let alone others. To portray the reality we have to bring these things, not only meetings of the troika, the testimony of the unemployed of Aveiro, the shipyard workers, but also the fantasy side that is this time caused by our collective experience of the here and now.
This film has won awards abroad. For us this reality is close, but as they saw off Portugal?
In France, in a dialogue with the audience, there was one that told me to have been in Lisbon and had not seen any of it. Probably not the best way to notice that there is a crisis, being in a hotel in Lisbon. I feel there is ignorance. Everybody talks about Greece, but Portugal is the shy crisis, almost invisible. Europe managed to sell the image that Portugal had its problems, but it was a success.
could not have been just a movie?
Power could. If put aside stories that had filmed, made a sort of best of, but I thought this was not the way because the film had the ambition to make the picture of the state of mind of a country for one year. It was like every new story could fix it, change the look we have of the country. There is only one way of looking at the country and the crisis. There is always a new character who comes to question the previous history. And then the film has this title based on an extensive book on a wealth of endless stories. They could be the two thousand and two nights.
read it?
I was reading. I never ended. I guess no one ever read it until the end. It is a book to go reading. I wanted the stories were always changing, introducing new characters. It was almost baroque in narrative terms. Several ways to count, multiple records, that’s why I worked with actors and non-actors. I wanted it to scale and space to host a lot of difference and diversity, which gives richness to the film. . Although the decision to make three films has been taken during assembly
were easy contacts with non – actors
?
We contacted with hundreds if not thousands of people, most to the process of investigation, which was conducted by journalists, but many of them were invited to make their own. I think there is a desire to participate in the film which will come from childhood, the child’s play, to play a role, a character. Of those contacted were five or six that they said no.
The project was difficult to accomplish?
This film had a fairly high budget of 3.7 million euros, of which 60% money from Germany, France and Switzerland. The previous film, “Tabu” went very well. I made films that had international exposure and have been sold to other countries. I am fortunate to already have this recognition and access to foreign investment.
There are more people to see Portuguese films?
Right now there is a phenomenon, “The Courtyard of Songs” which is beating all records of the internal market. A film that pays for itself at the box office is an exception, a rarity. The Cinema and Audiovisual Institute (ICA) has a table with the biggest box office hits in Portugal. I think whether to propose to the ICA another list in which contabilizassem the box office results of a Portuguese film also internationally. I think were going to have big surprises. The “Taboo” was sold to over 50 countries with over half a million spectators. These viewers are less important? Here the film had around 25,000. The Manoel de Oliveira does not come on that list ICA. The most commercial films, comedies, fail to debut outside. I’m remembering the “Crime of Father Amaro”, now “The Courtyard of the Cantigas” dethroned, a kind of Portuguese softcore erotic. Other countries have these movies, comedies, popular, erotic, the kick. They do not need the Portuguese films for nothing. The passing boundary is that it has some uniqueness. What Luis Urbano producer likes to call delicatessen, which is a little bourgeois. But it’s almost craftsmanship. Movies that look only with themselves. This arouses the curiosity of those who love cinema. Since 60 years ago, when Fernando Lopes and Paulo Rocha started making films, to date there has always rejected generations here in and defended outside. And many of them are considered masters such as Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro.
Is there something Italian neorealism and French New Wave?
Labels for me are not worth it. Increasingly I have no idea what we’ve been doing. I do not know if it’s defective, but I’m being honest. When I cast her into a movie it’s like to start over. I know the possibilities available to me in professional actors, arguments, but often will inventing. In the first film there is a punk song called “Chaos” which I thought appropriate for the film and also for us. I and closest collaborators we’re doing movies for a long time and feel it is more interesting to be open, even though it causes huge headaches for producers, it is unable to calculate the budget because they have no idea that you will ask during the week Next. In this film we hired almost a troupe of actors telling them we wanted to know the availability for that year because they could, or not, in the movie, since the stories were born of what was happening in the country and were interested over the 12 months. They are in that or not? They said yes.
All open?
It’s like a blank sheet and it is a very chaotic experience. But I have no idea that this chaos can more easily grasp what is coming and enter it in the movie than I’m sentadinho a desk in my home, only what I know in my head. It’s closed, isolated. For me it is a poorer experience than I can give it is in contact with the world. In this sense, my work method may have to do with neorealism and nouvelle vague because they had availability to grab the here and now.
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