Entrevista con Pedro Costa: "El cine es un oficio, como ser pedrero"

Quedamos con Pedro Costa en su hotel en un barrio céntrico de Madrid. Cuando llegamos todavía está desayunando, pero se levanta y juntos buscamos un lugar relativamente silencioso para hacer la entrevista.

Parece un hombre tranquilo, calmado, todos sus movimientos tienen un ritmo distinto al de la ciudad que se despereza caótica fuera del hotel. Nos sentamos en una sala y comenzamos a charlar de forma pausada, lentamente, de esa forma que le define a él y define también a sus películas.

Pedro costa (Lisboa, 1959) está considerado como uno de los autores más originales e idiosincrásicos del cine contemporáneo. Uno de los aspectos más llamativos de su obra es su singular manera de combinar cualidades del documental y de la ficción en la construcción de retratos sobre la vida cotidiana de gente que vive la marginalidad y la exclusión social.

Su cine se distingue por su particular construcción y la larga duración de sus planos pero, sobre todo, por su complicidad con los actores, nunca profesionales. Su relación con ellos se construye a base de tiempo a su lado, de ser cómplice y parte de sus propias vivencias. Así, los personajes de Vanda y Ventura (que se repiten en varias películas) construyen con su propia vida un espacio y un tiempo lejano al cine clásico y muy cercano, como el director mismo dice, a la realidad.

Es en el barrio de Fontainhas, a las afueras de Lisboa, donde se han desarrollado varios de sus proyectos (Ossos, No Cuarto da Vanda y Juventude em Marcha), aunque su implicación con el barrio va mucho más allá del mero trabajo documental.

Más recientemente, Pedro Costa ha producido obras que se destinan a espacios expositivos más vinculados con el arte contemporáneo. Aunque se basen en planos realizados para algunas de sus películas, estas obras poseen una identidad específica y una fuerte autonomía estética.


PHE- Estudió en la escuela de cine y trabajó como asistente de director ¿Cómo consiguió meterse de lleno en este mundo y hacer sus propias películas?

Pedro Costa- Fui asistente de muchos directores. Conseguí introducirme en el mundo del cine siguiendo la trayectoria clásica de cualquier persona. Hacía producción e intentaba pedir becas, subvenciones, presentarme a concursos...

PHE- O Sangue fue su primera película, sobre la muerte del padre y dos chicos que se quedan solos ¿Qué ha supuesto esta película para usted, teniendo en cuenta que fue la primera de su carrera?

PC- Es una especie de “prefacio”, una película muy protegida por el cine. Estaba muy dentro del cine, muy cinéfila. Poco a poco me fui liberando un poco más de esa protección del cine. Es la más tradicional en el sentido de que pedía ayuda al cine para todo. No era un film de la vida.

PHE- Ossos, No Quarto da Vanda y Juventude em Marcha son tres películas sobre los habitantes de un poblado de chabolas situado a las afueras de Lisboa ¿Cómo surgió la idea de hacerlas?

PC- No fue una idea, fue una sucesión de acontecimientos. Antes había hecho un film en Cabo Verde (África) y ahí me habían dado unas cartas, unos mensajes para familiares y amigos inmigrantes caboverdianos que habitaban en este barrio de Lisboa. Como hablaba un poco de su dialecto fui a ese barrio a dar las cartas y fui inmediatamente adoptado. Fue muy calurosa la forma como me trataron, entonces me quedé ahí, me quedé ahí, me quedé ahí…

PHE- Estuvo como un año y medio en el barrio antes de comenzar a rodar allí…

PC- No se, es un tiempo que yo no contabilizo. Es un tiempo que no es el tiempo de la profesión del cine. No es el rodaje de 5, 6 ó 7 semanas. Todo es más indefinido. El rodaje es tradicional. Me gusta y creo que es importante un ritual, una ceremonia de alguna intimidad. Es necesaria una responsabilidad, una seriedad a la hora de rodar un plano. No puede ser algo fácil, el cine es muy difícil, muy cansado. Es un oficio, como ser pedrero.

PHE- Normalmente utiliza actores que no son profesionales ¿Cuál es su relación con los actores? ¿Cómo fue, por ejemplo, su relación con Ventura y Vanda?

PC- Eran personas reales. Son los habitantes del barrio. Al principio necesitaba papeles definidos, ahora ya no es así. Son los propios jóvenes los que dicen: “Me gustaría hacer un papel contigo sobre esto”. Son hipótesis infinitas, todos lo pueden hacer.

Mi relación con Vanda fue diferente. Fue la primera con la que tuve una relación más próxima en el barrio. Una de las películas fue hecha completamente en el entorno de su vida, en su propio cuarto. Ella se resistía mucho a las cosas que no le gustaban, es muy rebelde.

Ventura es una especie de “fuerza del pasado”. Es como otra cultura, habla poquísimo. Con él tengo una conversación un poco silenciosa. Es muy imponente, una especie de jefe del barrio. Era inmigrante, como toda la generación mayor de 50 años de este barrio. Venían de toda África, ahora también vienen de países del este de Europa, sobre todo de Ucrania.

PHE- Los vecinos del barrio fueron realojados en un barrio de nueva construcción y usted lo documentó ¿Cómo vivieron este cambio?

PC- Esperaban muchísimo, estaban ansiosos por cambiar. Ahora pasaron 4 años y están muy tristes. No les gusta vivir allí porque están separados. La vida de la calle no es posible, no es posible hacer nada de lo que hacían como por ejemplo los churrascos, asar la carne… la policía no les deja, hay leyes europeas que impiden este tipo de cosas. Perdieron todo el dinero que tenían comprando muebles, televisores para reproducir los modelos de las casas de las personas de dinero en las que limpian. Es una especie de decoración al vivo.

Es todo un poco violento, pero no hablo de una violencia física, es una violencia de otro tipo. Antes no era así, eran pobres, miserables, sin condiciones mínimas para vivir… pero tenían el barrio. El barrio es una actitud, a la gente del barrio no les gusta ni mudarse ni salir, se crea una especie de gueto que se va ampliando.

PHE- En No cuarto Da Vanda sólo utilizó un trípode y una cámara ¿Porqué decidió abandonar los juegos técnicos y rodar las películas con una cámara pequeña?

PC- Quería ver si resultaba. Al principio no sabía si era una película. No tenía compromisos ni contratos con productoras. Fue Vanda la que me propuso volver al barrio. Yo había hecho una película antes con ella que no le había gustado y quería hacer algo más sencillo, más calmado. Compré un vídeo pequeño, una cámara compacta, y poco a poco pensé que tal vez pudiera resultar algo.

No se puede esperar riqueza de imágenes ni una gran producción, es otra cosa. Esta manera para mi es más humana, con menos dinero es más fácil conseguirlo. Hay menos confusión.

El problema antes para mi es que detrás de la cámara había demasiada ficción y delante no había ficción, había algo muerto. Se trataba de encontrar un equilibrio a todos los niveles. A Vanda le gustó mucho más este resultado. Prefiero estar cerca de ellos que pensar en hacer cosas lejos del barrio que no van a entender.

PHE- Háblenos de la evolución de su cine. Desde O sangue hasta la última se observan muchos cambios ¿Cómo ha sido esta evolución?

PC- Ahora las películas son mucho más baratas que las del principio. Ahora busco la armonía y no tanto cine comercial, que gasta mucho en todos los sentidos (dinero, energía...). Mis películas se demoran mucho tiempo porque no me gusta actuar deprisa. Nunca escribo guión, no tengo ideas de cine ni tengo imaginación. Creo que no estoy en la familia de los creativos sino en la familia de los que prefieren la realidad y que esa realidad provoque algo.

PHE- ¿En qué proyectos está trabajando actualmente?

PC- Acabo de terminar una película que hice con una amiga francesa que canta con una banda de rock. Pensaba hacer un videoclip y al final se alargó una hora y media de ensayos, repeticiones… por tanto es una película de trabajo musical, un poco diferente de las otras.

PHE- ¿Tiene intención de seguir grabando en el barrio?

PC- En el barrio estoy siempre por otros motivos. Pertenezco a la asociación de vecinos, a la biblioteca, soy padrino de 47 niños, tesorero de otra asociación… mi vida en el barrio no se limita a las películas y sería malo que así fuera. Estoy allí por otras obligaciones, pero estamos pensando en hacer algo próximamente. Vanda aparecerá, pero en pequeños papeles, quiero variar un poco.

PHE- ¿Cómo está siendo la recepción de sus películas en la filmoteca?

PC- Bien. Ayer en la filmoteca estaba lleno. En la filmoteca hay un público que en cierta manera ya conoce mi trabajo. Me gustaría mostrar las películas en otros locales de Madrid o Barcelona. En la filmoteca nunca habrá conflictos, por tanto va bien.

PHE- ¿Hay algún tema en su cabeza sobre el que quiera trabajar?

PC- No, no pienso en nada. Y cuanto menos pienso, mejor. Mucho mejor será la película. No pienso en la intención ni en los temas y cuando parece que no hay nada, en realidad es cuando hay algo.

PHOTOESPAÑA

A Digital Fugitive: Interview with Pedro Costa

by Daniel Kasman

16 Jun. 09

Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s star has been on the ascent for some time now, generally kept as a secret until 2006’s Colossal Youth’s screening at Cannes aggravated a certain kind of audience enough for us to know a new master had suddenly jumped into the limelight. That impression, at least in the US, was confirmed in 2007 when Costa took six of his feature films—including the “Vanda” trilogy of Ossos (1997), In Vanda’s Room (2000), and Colossal Youth (2001)—and several shorts on a tour around the country. It was an eye opening and formative event to discover this director uniquely channeling Jacques Tournuer, Ford, Ozu, Ray, and Straub-Huillet through his own sensibility and setting. It was not just a discovery, but also an important moment for internet criticism; bloggers, particularly a younger generation, gathered around the Costa and Jacques Rivette retrospectives that toured that year, showcasing a new form of engagement and awareness of cinema in entirely new, quasi-collective, highly personal, and absolutely invigorating ways.

We all waited to see what these filmmakers would do next, after the discovery. Costa’s path, less established, is also less certain. Since his “purer” documentary works—many would argue his masterpieces—In Vanda’s Room and Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (2001), his video on Straub-Huillet doing post-production on Sicilia!, Costa has re-invested fictional elements into his recent films. Colossal Youth, and the two shorts that followed it, Tarrafal and The Rabbit Hunters (both 2007) take the same setting as the Vanda films—the Fontaínha slum of Lisbon—but move in more allusive directions, suggesting fantasy. So we were considerably caught off guard to discover that Costa’s next film was another documentary, his first in black and white since his debut O Sangue (1989), and on a French actress’ singing career to boot. Ne change rien played in the 2009 Director’s Fortnight in Cannes, where both David Phelps and I wrote about it. I had a chance to sit down with Costa the day after his film premiered, on the rooftop of the Palais Stéphanie. The filmmaker already seemed weary of the festival atmosphere and process, and finishing cigarettes and espressos while squinting at a beautiful day in the French seaside town, seemed to talk of the film, shot long ago and only recently finished, as one would about a poignant but receding dream.

***

DANIEL KASMAN: What was the difference between making Ne change rien—which is about working to make music—and Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? , which is about making a movie?

PEDRO COSTA: I could answer it another way. For the film about Danièle [Huillet] and Jean-Marie [Straub], that began as a request from Cinéma, de notre temps, and that began as a 60 minute film for the TV series in a certain format that I should more or less respect. When I prepared myself to shoot the thing, we really prepared. There was a film [Sicilia! ], there was a declaration of film production, and I was a bit afraid because I had this idea that I couldn’t to shoot Danièle and Jean-Marie shooting their film or being on a set because you can't see anything. We either had to see the work with the actors—you could probably see something there—or the editing. So I chose the editing, knowing it would be very difficult technically, just because it takes place in a dark room, and the concentration involved. And, above all, Jean-Marie and Danièle, who I knew a little bit before, but I had an image of what it could be. So I had sometimes two cameras, I had someone assisting me with the cameras; we were there always, always from 9-7, so we ended up with 100 hours or more of footage, just because I wanted to have it all. I was afraid of missing that moment.

For this project, it was a bit different, there was no film, and there is no film still.

KASMAN: There is an album.

COSTA: There's an album, but there's never a moment I said to Jeanne [Balibar] or the musicians "I'm doing this to make a feature, I'm doing a documentary." It began because I knew Jeanne, apart from the fact that she's certainly the actress today I most admire. She kept inviting me to things, to a theater play, or "come see this, even if you don't like theater," that she was going to be in the studio and come spend some days; simple things. There was a moment when I said "yeah okay I'll come;" probably I didn't even say I'll bring my camera, I just arrived with my friend who does the sound and the musicians weren't surprised. And we were there as the other musicians were, the technicians. So there's this formality with Danièle and Jean-Marie that was not here. I don't want to say the work with Jeanne was lighter or more superficial, but it's a bit different than the work done from the editing of the film and especially Jean-Marie and Danièle’s methods. First, in this film, there's much more people around, even if you don't see it on screen, there's a lot of intrusion. You can feel it a bit in some moments, there's guys testing, some rock sounds, even some dispersion.

KASMAN: The way the soundtrack works, you are never quite sure what the audio source is, whether it's coming from what's live on camera, or if it’s a playback loop, or if it’s off-camera.

COSTA: Exactly, there's friends visiting, there's people just sitting around. If the shots were wider or if my camera moved like in One Plus One, you could see the same thing, guys sitting around in funny hats. Of course, Jeanne and Rodolphe [Burger]—the corpus of the thing—were as concentrated and anxious as Jean-Marie and Danièle were, and for me that felt familiar. I saw the same protection. What I like about this film, and what related to Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, is the generosity they share. "If you fail, I'll fail"—very simple. Even if I don't like the projection here [in Cannes], if you see the film with a good print and good sound in a smaller theater, you'll see the eyes, which are very important. Small things in Rodolphe's attention and protection, that's very obvious. There's a link, a bond between him and the other guy, the bass guy, that's very close, almost an out-of-time bond. There's something very touching about that.

KASMAN: The interaction between Jean-Marie and Danièle in Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? is conversation. It's about the making of Sicilia! , but it goes far beyond that, whereas in this film, all dialog is strictly about the sound and getting the right sound, finding that tenor in construction and repetition.

COSTA: I was present for all the moments when you see Jeanne practicing the Offenbach opera, and that is probably the part of the film where I have more rushes. There you can see the same thing as between Jean-Marie and Danièle, the same severity, strictness, some very funny light tones, some erudition, there's more moments like "think of this Mozart piece," but then building the film, putting the pieces together, one part I was afraid of was charging these scenes so much, too much. It's a film about a form, I think, and it's Jeanne's form—tempo—and if I would put more of the opera or the rehearsals, it would just become…I don't know if I had the material to be that kind of film. Jeanne says it's more like Party Girl, but the gang, you know in They Live By Night when they go to the cabin in the forest and stay for four days? It's Nick Ray, it's [Robert] Siodmark. They're runaways, one has a guitar...they are running from something. It could be called The Fugitives.

KASMAN: Can you talk about your visual approach to the project? You shot it yourself on digital in color, and then printed it on film. I've seen digitally shot videos projected here in Cannes digitally, but I've never seen one of your digital films projected that way.

COSTA: I've done four or five films like this, and now I'm doing video, color—not HD, just regular digital—and then I do the transfer to 35mm. The problem with this film was that I wanted real 35mm, not color stock, but the real black and white negative, the silver nitrate. It's pretty expensive; five years ago you had Agfa, Kodak, Fuji, now you only have Kodak. The lab in Paris told me that in two years you couldn't do this, it's over, it's too expensive, it's too dangerous.

KASMAN: It's a beautiful effect though, it reminds me of the black and white version of that high contrast digital in Godard's In Praise of Love, the vibrancy of the highs and lows. Did you light it yourself?

COSTA: I did some things, but I brought no equipment, really. I just improvised again, more like I did in In Vanda's Room, with some aluminum foil or light boards off-camera. That's one funny thing, sometimes the light is sun, you think it's a lamp but it's the sun, it's real, bright sun. That's Hollywood; I mean the good Hollywood. And sometimes it's night and you think it's the sun...so I just helped a little bit. The shine in the eyes, things like that, very, very small things. I was worried, actually, because I often have the tendency to pull back...

KASMAN: But some of the close-ups are incredible, the shot that's also in the shorter version of this film, that profile of Jeanne that looks like Dietrich-Sternberg lighting...I don't know if that was the lighting of the club she was singing at or if it was your lighting.

COSTA: That was the club lighting plus a little bit—maybe—of manipulation, but just little things, density, contrast. That's a funny shot.

KASMAN: Is it sync sound or was the soundtrack remixed?

COSTA: Everything's direct. There's only one shot—the one in Japan—where the sound is from elsewhere. The image is something I did in Japan, I went to a cafe in the morning where we shot the concert in Japan. I went with Nobuhiro Suwa to Naruse's grave, and this cafe faces the cemetery. The door in this shot, you can see it in the window...there's a moment where you can almost see the gate of the cemetery. I went there and saw the grave and then I went for coffee and these two women were there, and they looked at me and I looked at them. And I set the camera simply on the table, I had no tripod, they smiled, I smile—Japan! But I had to add sound in the end, so when I mixed the film, I added this very tiny, tender sound. Every time I see this shot it reminds me of Jacques Tati, I don't know why. But there's a lot to be said about this shot. I would like to do a whole film like that—not silent—but there's something there.

KASMAN: Naruse's favorite actress, Hideko Takamine, once said that Naruse told her that his ideal film would be one where she stars against blank white backdrops. In a way, Ne change rien reminds me of this project, bodies hanging against a minimalist abstraction.

COSTA: We tried to find something that's under the surface of this film, not even a story, there's more than that, something about fear, the light and blackness. I’m sure it's not a documentary in that sense, a documentary about work, it's just about trying to get somewhere. But that comes from Jeanne's fragility, she's a bit misplaced at the opera, she's a bit misplaced in tempo with the guys, the pros.

KASMAN: Did you complete this film a while ago? Because I first saw footage from it two years ago.

COSTA: We shot it a long, long time ago. The first time was a concert in 2005, I believe. And then every year I shot more, in the way I told you, I came and went. The last time I shot was late 2007. I stopped for a while, I had a short film to do, and then I came back to this, sat down with the editor. From November until March I was editing and handling the lab things.

KASMAN: Was Ne change rien the same as with In Vanda's Room and Colossal Youth where you had to sift through hundreds of hours of footage?

COSTA: No, we had much less. I had something like 80 hours for this film, because all the concerts are just an hour and I did not want to make a concert film where you go backstage or in the bus. I just shot the moments. Even the tiny small things that are in the film when the practice is over and the team goes to prepare food or whatever, really the rush just ends there. It's like Warhol, an experimental thing where you go to the end of the tape. I had much less material.

KASMAN: Was there much interaction between you and the musicians? If I remember correctly, you talk to Jean-Marie in Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?.

COSTA: Yes, with Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? the beginning was difficult, I was a bit lost in how to do it, and I found the door very, very late. But in this one, no, sometimes I told Jeanne something, but she's an actress so she knows what to do, she slightly turns a bit more to the light—but just for the light, not for the mise-en-scene like "let's do a scene like this"—I just served the thing, just being there, like a public service. [laughs]

KASMAN: Are you working on something now? The two shorts came after this was shot.

COSTA: The shorts came in between.

KASMAN: I love those shorts especially because of their length. When you were in New York for your retrospective, you talked about wanting to set up a television station in Fontaínha and these shorts felt like episodes in a potential television series.

COSTA: I would love to do that, but it's impossible. Every day it's more impossible. But to see this idea more and more contemplated from here in Cannes it makes so much sense. I'll do another short, more a museum thing, and then I'll go back to Japan to do another short film, I don't know the idea, but it will be a film with other directors, probably Godard and Sokurov.

KASMAN: From In Vanda's Room to Colossal Youth there’s a move towards more...I want to say fictional elements, but not really fictional, just a move away from specific documentary that allowed for room of mystery. The two shorts definitely continued in this vein.

COSTA: The films with my gang in Fontaínha—it's not only me—they need that "fiction," or what we call fiction, they need it badly. That's very obvious and natural, this necessity, and it explains everything. We know each other very well now, it's been a long time–Vanda, Ventura, all the boys...well they're not boys anymore. At the beginning it was like "let's do the cop," and "let's do the chase," and "okay another boring one," and finally they are proposing—as in Tarrafal. I said I have this money, what shall we do? The second day this guy came with this letter about being expelled from the country, so let's do something around that, he said let's do that story, his story. I said where should we do it and he said "not here," "let's find a place." That was the first time they said let's imagine something, let's imagine our territory. The problem is they don't have a territory; they are between the new neighborhood, a no-man's-land, and a freeway.

KASMAN: But there's that amazing sequence in the forest in those two shorts, where is that?

COSTA: [Laughs] That forest is...[indicates a small square]

KASMAN: Oh, so just outside the frame there's nothing?

COSTA: It's ridiculous! But they needed that, and they wanted that. So now I think I should work on that, hear them much more, and go that direction. I think it will get closer to something..."purer" is not the word, but something verbal I'm sure. They want to tell the story with four or five elements, I don't know what they are…I don't want to talk about abstraction or minimalism but we'll probably go that way. So you are right; when I started, even with Ossos, I really wanted to see something, find out, put things in relation to find out about them. But now it's free. We don't care any more about a statement.

There used to be even a critique in what we were doing, and they say we should show a bit more, about how the other half live, and I said "no, this is just me looking at you." Now I don't care and they don't care, and it's about something else. It's freer. I hope the form will be freer. The monster is that it relates much more to the past than the present. They don't care much about the present, that's just it. They don't think a second about the future, they are completely numb, and violent, and much more violent than before. They are turning their backs and it's all about the past. It's all about missing people and missing the land. That's why I want to go back now.

KASMAN: That sounds like a much more integrated approach to collaboration than what you are doing in Ne change rien or the Straub-Huillet film.

COSTA: Yes, and it's also much wider, more vast. In the beginning it was Vanda, it was a girl, then it was her sister and her friend. Now everybody is Vanda.

KASMAN: Does that make Ne change rien, this kind of film, more manageable than your work in Fontaínha?

COSTA: These are really prototypes, all of them, and this was unique in that it comes from no declaration of film, for the first time, not even a "let's see" attitude. It was strange, every time I went to see Jeanne, coming with a camera. I just read a Variety critique of my film, it says it all—"Arty fans will be enchanted" or something, "normal people, run away!" It's funny, because I know when "normal" people and Variety walk out of this film—it's when people start working. It's like Godard says, when people see a tiny bit of someone working in a film, it's dead.

http://www.theauteurs.com/

Ainda há milagres em cinema. Como? Através desse poder mágico de alguns filmes confirmarem a existência do mundo à nossa volta, fazendo-nos ver também que o nosso olhar é sempre escasso, está sempre em situação de perda. Ne Change Rien, de Pedro Costa, é um desses filmes.
Ne Change Rien pode definir-se como um exercício de aproximação documental da actriz Jeanne Balibar (vimo-la, por exemplo, em Sabe-se Lá!, de Jacques Rivette). Pedro Costa regista momentos do seu trabalho musical, cantando, ensaiando, procurando as formas precisas para as suas canções. Dir-se-ia que estamos perante uma cerimónia de que o cinema é, de uma só vez, a testemunha, o mecanismo indutor e o altar. Ne Change Rien é um filme de pura maravilha: assistimos à duração das coisas, à respiração (literal e metafórica) que faz nascer as formas artísticas.

Face ao fulgor de Ne Change Rien, tudo o resto parece desvanecer-se numa pequenez sem recurso.

João Lopes, Cannes 2009, 15 de Maio, Sound+Vision

Ne Change Rien, de Pedro Costa (Portugal/França, 2009) – Quinzena dos Realizadores

por Eduardo Valente, Maio de 2009

Existe uma pergunta que volta e meia aparece em textos críticos: o que é o essencial do cinema (ou por outra, o que é o cinema)? Claro que uma pergunta genérica e abrangente como esta permite inúmeras respostas “certas”, ao gosto do freguês, mas o fato é que (pelo menos após a inserção do cinema sonoro), ninguém poderá discordar que o essencial do cinema é: luz e som. Pois parece mesmo que, neste filme, Pedro Costa (alguém cujo cinema já não é nada estranho à associação com a palavra “essencial”) se dedica a exatamente esta missão: filmar a luz e o som, quase em estado bruto. E é para cumprir com essa missão tão simples quanto impossível, que ele se utilizará (por mais que ele prefira dizer, como hoje na entrevista depois da sessão, que o seu cinema é que está sempre a serviço de algo) da atriz Jeanne Balibar, no exercício de sua ocupação paralela como cantora.

Para ir mais adiante no filme, é interessante voltar à entrevista de Costa dois anos atrás, quando perguntando sobre outros filmes que o inspiravam ou obras que gostaria de realizar falou que gostaria de adaptar para o cinema o disco “Innervisions”, de Stevie Wonder. Bem entendido: mais do que um desejo real ou um projeto, Costa brincava para dizer que algumas das obras que mais o inspiram nada têm a ver com cinema nem com a literatura (fonte comum de adaptações para o cinema). Pois Ne Change Rien fecha com essa afirmação de Costa de maneira marcante, porque se há algo que fica claro no filme é o quanto de admiração pelo ato de produzir música existe por trás do realizador. Mais do que isso, poderíamos até dizer que há uma sensação sincera do filme ser feito por alguém que gostaria de ser, ele mesmo, músico, tal a devoção exibida frente ao ofício de alguém como Balibar ou como Rodolphe Burger, parceiro desta na carreira musical.

O que Costa faz aqui é acompanhar ao longo de alguns anos (embora essa informação entendida como tal não faça parte do filme – assim como nenhuma outra, aliás) a relação de Balibar com a música: ensaiando e gravando com Burger e os outros membros de sua banda; cantando e tocando num show; ensaiando e cantando numa encenação de ópera. Este mesmo material, que usualmente termina em inúmeros formatos repetitivos de DVD (seja o do show ou o dos “bastidores” de realização de algo), vira nas mãos de Costa a motivação para um trabalho que parece equidistante da abstração completa (algo de que, afinal, a música se aproxima com naturalidade) e da mais física e concreta matéria (pois a música precisa ser produzida por instrumentos, cordas vocais, do esforço de pessoas através de inúmeras repetições).

No campo da imagem, Costa aproveita-se dos meios absolutamente restritos de sua realização (como ele disse na entrevista, este é um filme feito por quatro pessoas: ele, Balibar, Burger e um técnico de som) para trabalhar com uma iluminação mínima que se torna, como de hábito nos filmes dele, sofisticadíssima pela maneira de enquadrar e posicioná-la. É através deste trabalho que o filme vira um dos mais incríveis exercícios de claro-escuro da história do cinema (vale a hipérbole), emprestando a cada imagem um elemento de mistério e de relação com algo desconhecido ou invisível que acaba sendo uma representação precisa do que realizam em cena os músicos. Dessa maneira, Costa acaba realizando aquele que é, sem dúvida e em todos os sentidos do termo, um dos mais belos filmes sobre música jamais realizados. Não é pouco.

Revista Cinética

A música de Jeanne é o cinema de Pedro ou no sótão com Jeanne

15.05.2009 - Vasco Câmara

Desde 2005 que Pedro Costa vem filmando a actriz Jeanne Balibar na sua faceta de cantora: ensaios, concertos, gravações de discos. Retrato de Jeanne? Retrato de um cinema, o dele, Pedro.

Ela é uma Nico da Rive Gauche, uma Marlene do rock da distorção, é cantora de opereta, tortura-se com as "torch songs" e com o "blues", a voz vai de Offenbach a "Johnny Guitar", eis Jeanne Balibar, também actriz. Desde 2005 que Pedro Costa a vem filmando, depois de se terem encontrado num júri de um festival de documentários em Marselha, onde ela lhe terá confidenciado que cada vez mais gostava dos filmes em que os actores que representavam não eram actores. Depois do encontro dele com a música do primeiro álbum dela, "Paramour", houve uma pequena ajuda de um amigo comum, Philippe Morel: engenheiro de som dos filmes dele e de filmes com ela, foi ele que lançou a ideia de um fazer algo com a música do outro.

Desde Novembro que Costa vem, então, montando essas imagens e sons que recolheu ao longo destes anos, em concertos (aproveitando, por exemplo, a estreia de um dos seus filmes em Tóquio para filmar o espectáculo que Balibar apresentou na cidade japonesa), ensaios, gravações (já para o segundo álbum de Balibar), uma opereta, tudo produto de paciente artesanato, feito entre amigos, com poucos meios -"é assim que me convém", dizia o cineasta ontem na apresentação do filme.

O resultado chama-se "Ne Change Rien" (Quinzena dos Realizadores), e aí Balibar metamorfoseia-se. (Ela diz que foi um encontro ideal: esteve ali, actriz sem o ser, como nos filmes de que cada vez mais gosta, aqueles que têm actores que não pertencem ao "métier"). Os rostos são esculpidos com a ajuda da luz e da sombra, em sotãos e espaços exíguos de ensaios que certamente escondem segredos, um cenário expressionista atravessado por um gato preto - saído, naturalmente, de um filme de Jacques Tourneur.

Não há forma, e julgamos que não há intenção, de o retrato se fixar. Retrato de Jeanne? No mesmo sentido em que "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968), em que Godard testemunhou o nascimento de uma canção, (não) era um retrato dos Rolling Stones... O que se mantém, isso não muda, é o trabalho, o esforço, a repetição, a obsessão. E a matéria daí resultante, som, a música. Costa diz que filma para "servir" quem tem à frente, ou quem tem ao lado a trabalhar com ele ("só assim é que o cinema é belo"). Mas sabemos também como, sobretudo, cria as condições para se encontrar com as suas sombras, fixar-se nelas e nelas esconder segredos - ou acenar-nos com eles. Em "Ne Change Rien", ou "No estúdio com Jeanne", a música dela é o cinema dele. Não por causa do negrume - ou não fundamentalmente por causa disso. Mas porque através dos ensaios, da repetição, desta obsessão em filigrana no estúdio, nos ensaios o tempo faz-se matéria densa, revela-se a tensão dramática de um planos fixo. Com "Ne Change Rien" a música encontrou um seu obsessivo Sternberg. É um retrato do cinema de Pedro.

Ípsilon, 15.05.2009

"Ne change rien", 2009

El arte en una prisión

ENTREVISTA PEDRO COSTA

CARLOS REVIRIEGO

De su experiencia como ayudante de dirección, suele decir que aprendió algo muy valioso, que "lo importante no es cómo haces las películas, sino cómo las vives". ¿Es ésta la causa profunda de que abandonara los sistemas de producción convencionales a partir de No quarto da Vanda?

Varias cosas decidieron mi salida del cine convencional. Una tal vez es que al principio, cuando tenía 25 años, estaba atrapado entre la música y el cine. Son dos experiencias completamente
diferentes de cómo se vive el trabajo en equipo. Nunca entendí por qué los técnicos de un grupo de rock sienten una mayor implicación y pasión por su trabajo que los técnicos de un equipo
de cine. Es algo extraño, pero totalmente cierto. Fui asistente de producción, de dirección... y fueron unas experiencias para mí...no digo traumáticas, pero sí muy penosas. Tenía muchos problemas con los tiempos, con los productores, con los actores, con los técnicos... en fin, una serie de cataclismos. Mi horizonte para hacer una película era entrar en un mundo que no me gusta nada, que además lo considero algo sucio, en el que tenía que encontrar financiación. Pero, en fin, conseguí hacer mi primer film con amigos, luego hice un segundo y un tercero..., todos con equipos grandes, coproductores, con Paulo Branco, etc. Pero siempre que acababa pensaba cómo podría cambiar las cosas. Sólo haciendo el tercero, Ossos, tuve una idea por lo menos de cómo hacerlo, de que el cine tenía que ver realmente con las personas y los lugares en que se filma. Había descubierto el barrio, y eran las personas las que me iban a permitir pensar los rodajes y su organización de otra manera. La aparición de las cámaras de vídeo DV también me abrió el camino. Por tanto, son varias cosas, es esta idea de intentar que el cine sea una experiencia más normal, de todos los días, más constante, más dedicada, teniendo una correspondencia con la realidad. Yo sentía siempre que había demasiada ficción en los rodajes, pero detrás de la cámara, entre los técnicos, los actores, los directores... la ficción era cómo intentaban que creyera en algunas cosas que son una pura invención.

¿Es realmente el descubrimiento del vídeo lo que le posibilita hacer realidad su convencimiento de que el cine no debe ser un lujo?

El vídeo me da una serie de cosas que no tiene el 35mm, pero sobre todo me da la posibilidad del tiempo, de ser más paciente, de estar disponible para los otros en cualquier momento, lo que es imposible en un cine corriente. Jean Renoir decía siempre que sus filmes americanos son los peores que hizo, que son películas fallidas porque no tuvo tiempo para pensar. El film que dirigió
después fue El río, que hizo en la India con mucho más tiempo. Para él fue una especie de confirmación de que el lujo del cine es una mentira. Los cineastas, los técnicos y los productores perpetuaron esa mentira para que el cine no estuviera al alcance de la gente. Quizá es más difícil y arriesgado hacer cine con una pequeña cámara. Yo me siento con mi cámara de vídeo mucho más en peligro, mucho más expuesto y mucho más desprotegido que con una cámara de 35 mm. Con una cámara de vídeo es preciso resistir mucho la primera idea, la primera imagen,
hay que probar una segunda, una tercera... La práctica de las personas cuando hacen cine, incluso cuando dicen que son artesanales, está envuelta en una maquinaria tan sofisticada, hoy en día, que no es comparable a la disponibilidad y el riesgo de aceptar la luz tal cual es. Muy pocos cineastas están dispuestos a ello, aparte de Straub y algunos jóvenes. Debe haber mucha
paciencia, la disponibilidad y la organización, y el cine normal no da esa posibilidad. Los cineastas no aceptan esa situación porque probablemente es gratuita. Las personas que filmé revelaron su misterio, se abrieron muchísimo, y esto no tiene precio, no se puede pagar en dinero, no es posible.

Respecto a ese misterio, es manifiesto su gusto por filmar a los vivos-muertos. Ha comentado que durante el rodaje de No quarto da Vanda sintió que en muchas escenas la luz provenía directamente del rostro de los actores. Esto despierta una analogía muy directa con Las uvas de la ira...Me gustaría que hablara un poco de este tema, que decididamente está en todas sus películas...

Sí, la verdad es que sí. Está en todas. Quizá de una forma más profunda cuando estoy en contacto con las personas del barrio de Fontainhas, y creo que responde a que las personas que me
iba encontrando son personas muy desarmadas. En cierto modo sólo tienen su cuerpo y su alma, poco más. Llevan una extraña energía, una luz que no siempre es la misma, pero de la que ellos
mismos dependen mucho. Cualquier cosa se queda en ellos... y o hablo sólo de las películas, estoy hablando de la realidad. Son personas que me recuerdan mucho a ciertos personajes de las
películas de Dreyer, y por supuesto de Tourneur, de Ford, del elemento católico, religioso, irlandés, digamos místico, y sobre todo Las uvas de la ira, como ha dicho, a esa lindísima mezcla de mostrar el espacio social a través de los individuos. Prácticamente percibimos la historia de Estados Unidos en ellos. También tienen un lado muy misterioso. Sus películas tienen por lo tanto una dimensión muy material, pero también una dimensión muy inmaterial. Lo encuentro útil, me siento cercano a su mundo. Yo no puedo ignorar esos dos lados un poco contradictorios, pero coherentes en términos de espacio y tiempo... No se puede hacer un film materialista sin que sea también sensiblemente místico. Ellos me dieron la oportunidad de volver a creer, de tener alguna convicción en cosas invisibles, en la presencia y ausencia de las personas en el espacio, en la energía luminosa... es un encuentro entre mi sensibilidad, que tiene muchas influencias del cine, de la pintura y los libros, y la sensibilidad de ellos.

Es necesario partir de una fe para lanzarse a hacer películas como No quarto da Vanda o Juventude em marcha...

Fe, no sé, es una palabra que no me gusta mucho. Creo que es otra palabra para aquello de lo que hablaba Straub en el film que hice sobre él. Straub hablaba de la "idea" para hacer un film. El contacto con la materia se va a transformar en forma. No existiendo esa ¡dea, no puede haber film. Esa idea no son las ideas de cine de las que los malos cineastas hablan todo el rato, porque eso son ideas de raccord, son trucos, son casi gags, ocurrencias, son ideas dictadoras... Creo que las ideas de las que habla Straub son casi una convicción... Convicción en el sentido de convicciones políticas muy fuertes. Godard es el lado opuesto en este aspecto. Por lo menos el Godard más clásico. Incluso en el sentido político, Godard disparó en muchas direcciones, y creo que esas convicciones en el caso de Straub se acercaron más a un concepto de cine clásico, narrativo, rígido... Al contrario, como todos sabemos, Godard no comienza por la idea, sino por
la forma. Esa búsqueda de la idea mediante la forma es complicada, es muy difícil, no siempre da buenos resultados. Creo que eso puede verse claramente en determinados tipos de cine. Por ejemplo, algunas películas de los años setenta, francesas, húngaras, españolas... eran para mí espantosas, porque sólo tenían forma. Decían que eran formalistas, pero para mí eran débiles,
muy metafóricas... porque ninguna de ellas tenía el talento de Godard. Quizá Philippe Garrel era el único que lo tenía.

¿Cómo y dónde encontró la forma para su idea?

Creo que en la realidad del barrio de Fontainhas, de esas personas..., allí encontré un movimiento muy próximo a mi idea. Empecé a pensar que un barrio y sus vecinos puede convertirse
en un estudio de rodaje y sus actores. Intenté comprender la realidad compleja y múltiple, pero tenía una base muy sólida, y esa base no me dejaba idealizar lo que veía, no conseguía apagar
todas las ideas que tenía. Por eso me propongo volver y probar la idea que tengo. Pero para llevar esto a la práctica necesito tiempo, necesito una vida, no es propiamente hacer un film, es una vida que pasa por el compromiso de no abandonar... Es una especie de valorización del trabajo artístico. Es una labor invisible. A veces el trabajo no parece trabajo, es sólo estar en una mesa alrededor de las personas del barrio, pasar un día con ellos... Ahora hago las películas con mucha esperanza, siento que hay un horizonte de posibilidades mucho mayor de lo que
hay en mi cabeza... la realidad que yo vivo es tan rica que parece casi infinita, y es muy asustador.

¿Cuáles son los riesgos y temores a los que se enfrenta un cineasta con una concepción tan exigente sobre el cine?

Es una pregunta difícil. Tengo miedo de quedar demasiado prisionero de algunas cosas, prisionero en el sentido de cómo Straub es prisionero, por ejemplo. Es una persona que se limitó mucho, vive en una prisión, en una prisión impuesta, pero... Yo también siento que he escogido una prisión, un gueto real, el gueto del cine. Es difícil ver mis películas, hay que hacer un gran esfuerzo, se han visto en Madrid y Barcelona, pero es difícil, las personas que las quieren mostrar también tienen que hacer un esfuerzo... financiero o no financiero. En fin, el arte en una prisión... pero muchas obras de arte se han escrito en prisiones...

¿Qué responsabilidades conlleva filmar a personas tan aparentemente desprotegidas como Ventura o Vanda?

Son personas muy creyentes en Dios, creen en la Reencarnación, en el Paraíso... Tanto Vanda como Ventura, cada uno a su manera, son personas profundamente creyentes. Esa creencia debo decir que me ha ayudado. Creo que es una creencia en una especie de pobreza, realmente. Yo tengo la suerte de no robarles nada, pero también de no darles mucho. No puedo robar y no puedo dar. Creo que este es el contrato que establecemos. No prometo nada, ningún cambio. Un film como los que hago tiene lugar en un espacio de sufrimiento, de falta de todo, de medios y de dinero...Y he tenido la suerte de que me ofrezcan cosas que son muy útiles. Primero es útil para mí, que me ha permitido continuar. Yo no sé si hubiera continuado haciendo películas con actores
y con ficciones escritas, con argumentistas y todo eso. No creo que hubiera tenido la fuerza y la energía suficientes para hacerlo. Creo que tengo una especie de lucidez próxima a Rossellini, que
Truffaut analizaba diciendo que era un tipo que partía de algo muy particular. Sus filmes pasaron de tratar de una aldea, a tratar de una isla, luego de un país, después de un continente, y acabó
haciendo películas sobre ideas, sobre Sócrates. Y Truffaut, muy bien como siempre, decía que Rossellini no tenía una cosa que era esencial tener en el cine, una especie de ingenuidad, de naïvité, para creer aquello que ves... Evidentemente, Rossellini no tiene esa convicción... Truffaut dice que Rossellini no era idiota, que el idiota era él, "tengo que ser idiota para hacer las películas que hago", decía. Hay una especie de estupidez en la base del cine que, si no está ahí, vas a encaminarte hacia un cine bastante complicado, vas a terminar haciendo cosas relativamente abstractas. Creo que yo comparto la sensibilidad de Rossellini... Siempre que paso por el rodaje de un colega me entran ganas de reírme. Creo que es una cosa muy ridicula, muy patética, tan patética que llega a ser conmovedor: el esfuerzo de un grupo de personas por perpetuar esta ingenuidad. Pronto entendí que las películas que hago deben partir de una realidad y esa realidad va a instruir, va a incitar. No sólo soy yo el iniciador en el principio del film, son siempre ellos, la realidad y ese misterio que observo en Ventura, que me conmueve, lo que adivino en Ventura de su pasado, y por tanto su mundo, y todo el resto que no consigo y que jamás conseguiré comprender, que es la gran parte del misterio.

Usted ha dicho que filmando a las mujeres se siente más cerca de hacer teatro, y filmando a los hombres más cerca del cine...

Sí. Bueno, es una sensación que tengo no durante el rodaje de No quarto da Vanda, sino después, en el montaje. Tuve un pequeño descubrimiento. La casa de la familia de Vanda tiene un lado de
teatro amateur, popular; las mujeres hablan muy alto, proyectan mucho la voz, hay un drama, un estruendo, eso tiene también un marcado lado de vodevil... Nada comparado a los chicos. Yo sentía que con los hombres hacía más cine. En sus escenas siempre había más silencios, un cambio constante de miradas, de complicidades, son también más... Los chicos de No quarto da Vanda se parecen mucho a los chicos de las películas de Nicholas Ray. Hay un sufrimiento que los carcome, una piedad que los inspira...Vanda no inspira piedad. Es un lado más Renoir. Para las mujeres sería Renoir, para los hombres, Nicholas Ray. Yo filmé esas dos partes de una forma totalmente diferente. La parte de los hombres está más editada, es más cinematográfica... y la parte de Vanda es mucho más... es realmente como el teatro, con las tres paredes y el patio de butacas... Esto en el montaje me resultó muy útil para descubrir el camino de la película.

En su cine encontramos un gran rigor, pero también hay una enorme libertad. Tenemos por un lado el rigor del plano fijo, de las estructuras de repetición de escenarios y escenas, y por otro lado hay una libertad en marcha todo el rato. Es una combinación muy productiva...

Abandoné muchas fantasías de hacer cosas originales, de intentar algo un poco distinto. Hay una cierta libertad que corresponde al cine del pasado. Había una libertad en las películas de
Tati que yo hoy no siento que exista en el cine. Los filmes de Tati también están construidos en planos fijos, y aún así realizaba películas deslumbrantes y complejas, y con enorme libertad. Yo
intento ir a la caza de esa libertad que ocurre dentro del plano fijo. Todos los cineastas que me gustan trabajaron mucho sin mover la cámara, pero en el fondo son los que más movimiento
ofrecen. Las películas americanas contemporáneas, de gran acción, están llenas de puntos de vista y perspectivas cruzadas y contradictorias en el mismo plano, pero no hay más movimiento
en estos filmes que en los de Tati, compuestos de planos fijos. Ni hay más velocidad en ellas que en los filmes de Buster Keaton y de Chaplin. Y en el caso de Ozu, por ejemplo, es también muy
claro, porque son las películas más vacilantes que existen, en ellas la cámara se estremece. En No quarto de Vanda tuve varias veces la sensación de que aquellas paredes se transformaban en
materia viviente. Cuando comienzo a sentir cosas de este tipo, creo que soy cada vez más fiel a esos cineastas, a esa libertad que ostentaron. Tal vez sería más fácil dar una vuelta sobre las
personalidades de Ventura o Vanda, intentar hacer cosas más psicológicas, más pulidas, más variadas, pero siento que para encontrar la libertad a la que aspiro, la libertad que siento que el
cine puede ofrecer, tengo que ser fiel a algunos principios. No sé si son principios realmente, porque después no los tengo en el rodaje como dogma, sino que las cosas también se imponen de
una forma muy simple. En No quarto da Vanda yo no podía girar la cámara, no había espacio. Aunque hubiera querido, no habría podido. Tenía que encontrar dos o tres posiciones de cámara que fuesen más eficaces. Vanda dice claramente "aquí es donde vivo y mi mundo ahora es esto". Lo mismo para mí.

¿Tiene alguna intención de volver a rodar en 35mm?

Me gustaría experimentar, hacer cosas con las mismas personas en otros ambientes. Ellos mismos lo proponen. No sienten ganas de seguir en el barrio, no les gusta. Ellos dijeron: vamos a hacer un film fuera del barrio... Pero una cámara de vídeo no puede filmar un bosque, no puede filmar una montaña. Ciertas cosas tienen que hacerse en 35 mm, si no, no se le hace justicia a las
hojas de los árboles, al sol... No hay nada que esté fuera de mi horizonte. Tal vez pueda conseguir una cámara de 35 mm, pero los técnicos es más difícil. Necesitaría al menos cuatro personas,
y no creo que estuvieran dispuestas a rodar como yo hago...

¿Ha visto Honor de cavallería, de Albert Serra? Lo menciono por el modo en que captura la naturaleza en vídeo.

Esa es precisamene la dificultad que tengo con la película. Aparte de que es un film que aprecio bastante, y que Serra está en una categoría superior en el manejo del vídeo, tengo la sensación
de que el film hubiera sido más interesante rodado en 35 mm. Tendría otra fuerza. Creo que el celuloide se hubiera ocupado de las debilidades que tiene.

Viendo sus películas en orden cronológico tuve la sensación de que el humor va penetrando cada vez más en su cine. No sé si esto se traduce en una suerte de optimismo hacia lo que filma...

Puede que sea una forma de optimismo, en el sentido de que cada vez estoy más cerca de pensar que es posible hacer películas. Creo que desde No quarto da Vanda ese humor está ahí. Poca
gente me ha hablado de ello. Creo, de hecho, que la única persona que me habló de ello fue Didac Aparicio, de Intermedio. Si estas películas se hubiesen hecho con menos tiempo, con más medios
y con mayor sofisticación, yo no hubiera tenido la posibilidad de conseguir esos momentos de humor junto a otros momentos de gran lamento. Los sentimientos de los personajes pasan de un
extremo a otro. Todos ellos llevan una vida de extremos y lleva tiempo aceptar y comprender eso... Porque en el camino para hacer estas películas tuve que pasar varias etapas. Lo primero es
comprender que no comprendemos. En este mundo es muy fácil, no es tan extraño, que las personas se transformen en animales...Y llegar a percibir y aceptar eso exige mucho tiempo. Hay que atravesar todas las fases. •


Declaraciones recogidas en Madrid el 10 de mayo de 2008

Cahiers du Cinema, España, número 14 / Julio-Agosto 2008

Pedro Costa the trembling moment

Pedro Costa interviewed

by Kenichi Eguchi

April 2, 2008

Shibuya Image Forum


The internationally acclaimed, Portuguese film director, Pedro Costa was back in Japan with his new film Colossal Youth (Juventude em Marcha). He continues to make independent films with the people in the poor ghetto neighborhood of Fontainhas (mainly immigrants from Cabo Verde) outside Lisbon, which area he situated both his two previous films Bones (Ossos) and In Vanda's Room (No quarto da Vanda). In Colossal Youth, he follows Ventura who wanders the deserted and half demolished town like a half ghost after the residents have been moved to a spiffy project the city prepared for them. The director has a calm air and speaks quite casually about his work.


What are your plans for this trip?

I went to Osaka for a screening and to speak to an audience. And still have some interviews and another screening at a strange sound thing. I think it is In Vanda's Room with DJ's at some strange festival, with some strange sounds at a club somewhere.

How do you feel your film being shown in a club instead of a cinema?

Why not? (laughs) As long as people come.

After Colossal Youth, what are you working on now?

Well, now I am editing a film I made, actually, a little bit here. The last time I was here, I was with Jeanne Balibar, the French actress. She came to play and sing here, so I shot her at some concerts, and we are editing now.

Was there anything between Tarrafal (short film after Vanda's Room) and Colossal Youth?

Yes, I made two films. Tarrafal, and I made another one for a Korean production, for Cheongju Film Festival. Every year they make 3 short films so I made one last year.

Can we start from the question of why you decided to make Colossal Youth continuing with what you've done with your two films prior to that?

Well, after I made In Vanda's Room, there was a strange situation for the people there. They were suddenly being removed to this housing complex, these social houses, social projects and plus that, my desire to, it's started as an old idea to make a film about the foundation of the place, the Fontainhas neighborhood; about the first men there, the first shack, the first barrack, and making something around that. This all came about, because they were moving to a new place. They were a bit lost. They were feeling a bit lost. So we filmed the right, ideal moment to do this project.

Is this new area they moved to far from Fontainhas?

No, it's not very far. But the city council did everything possible to make the access difficult. It's not very far but they have to take two buses. It's really on top of a hill. No, it's not really a hill, but it used to be a dump before, so they built houses there. Of course, they had no buses. No transportation. So they made special buses but it's not really easy to get there. It's not far, but it's tricky (laugh).

That was done on purpose?

On purpose, yes, but that's the history of mankind. (laugh) People who've had these kinds of difficulties will always have these difficulties. If it's not money, it's transportation. If it's not transportation, it's something else. Nothing is easy for the people in Fontainhas.

Then, Fontainhas is completely gone, demolished now?

Yes, last time I was there, it was last week, actually. They are starting to build the foundations for a sort of speedway and an enormous shopping mall. So it took a long time for them to start building, or to start doing something on that place because it has been a jungle for 4, 5 years.

Does this film complete the string of common subjects you have been following on Fontainhas?

No, not really. Because, of course I have three films. Well, I made three, and three is a magic number. (laugh)

And people say it´s a trilogy.

What if I make a fourth film? What would you call that? A quatrology? (laugh) I don't even know the name. No, actually, I've already made two films. Tarrafal and the other one so, we'll continue and I want to actually. I already have a project with the same guy, Ventura. Probably, Ventura and some young guys from the neighborhood. Well, children almost. It's not yet totally solid in my head, but I will do it.

So, after Colossal Youth, were you asked to do these short films, because you had chosen the subjects, or did you have ideas to eventually make them into feature length films?

Well, I made Tarrafal, 3, 4 months after editing Colossal Youth was finished. I got a call first from this foundation in Lisbon, saying they were planning on producing and financing some short films for what they call an omnibus. 6 films, 6 directors, all gathered under the same title, the State of the World. So they asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. I knew at least three of the directors. I'm close friends with them. One was Wang Bing, one was Apichatpong Weerasethaku from Thailand and the other was Chantal Ackerman. And I said yes, I like them and yes, the State of the World, we'll do the state of Fontainhas, so you already know what I will make, and they said sure, and then I got this call from Cheongju, Korea. And they thought of me for another short film. So we began with the short film on the state of the world, and went a little bit more with things we had started with the other short film.

Do they connect?

Sure, actually they do, we started with this small idea for one of them, and the other short we got some more ideas and we thought, oh, this could be a feature. And actually, now, I have this idea of bringing the short films, plus, making some more things, and doing it together as a feature film.

So it's a complete film, yet it's also a study?

Yes, it's a little bit like all the work we do. They are in some way finished but every film is a beginning of a new one, so yes, they are connected, it's the same people, it's the same place, it's the same memory, it's almost the same script. Because our script is that memory. A memory of the place, a memory of the people. So it's very easy that a film can show us the secret key to open the next one.

Before, I asked you why you started filming. But again, why do you continue to follow these people?

Well, I don't really ask that question myself. But a lot of people do ask me, and the only answer I have is, why not? (laugh) Of course, this is not enough. (sigh) Because I have no desire really to move anywhere else to make films. Unless somebody asked me to do something completely different. But now, I feel we've made this road together now. Three pictures and the shorts. It is beginning to have this, stupid perhaps, responsibility to be there with them. Especially now, because it is a moment where big changes are coming from all sides in their lives. They feel they are losing something. And I feel that I should try to help them see what it is that they are losing. Try to make that uncertain feeling into a film. And so, you could say they are essays. Essays on, a sort of research of what they are losing, what they expect from the future, the probable horizon for them, and for me also, because it's the work that I do.

And you must also share those memories by now.

I begin to share. Well, even if I can't be like them, from a completely different background. I'm not from their social class. I'm not “black”. But we have this common past now, yes. Well, ten years, something like that is already something, I'm also engaged in a lot of other things with them. I mean, I belong to the association there.

Anything political?

Well yes, everything is. But yes, there are 2 meeting points there. There are a lot of meeting points in the neighborhood. Every street corner, and there's the café, the bar and then there's the association place. So people talk a lot, about everything. Politics. Just about simple daily life problems. Housing problems, problems with schools, problems with drugs and all sorts of things. And sometimes I feel I have to do some things also. I try to organize this sort of cinematheque, videotheque for the young kids. Because I have communications I try to ask all the DVD editors to get me whatever, not only cartoons or films, like Chaplin films, Buster Keaton or whatever. It's quite important because it's a tough job. They start seeing films with guns and stuff very early so if you try to show them some Chaplin films, it probably changes something when they encounter something they are not used to. And all sorts of things. I'm of course, there, if there's a marriage and I will be there filming the marriage.

After Vanda's room, although you work in a similar vein or approach, the structure is different. What was your intention?

In Vanda's Room was a project that was almost done alone. The shooting, the production and sometimes I had a friend helping me with the sound. Sometimes I had a friend helping me with small things which we call production, which just involves a car. And with this one, we actually got a little more money, here and there, in Switzerland and Germany. So before we started Colossal Youth, we had this small budget and were allowed to have a small crew. We were four, so I managed to put one year, with almost 2 years of shooting with four guys and plus, we could pay the actors for all the shooting, and that changed a lot because it creates a normal film crew schedule and routine, so we tried to keep a very disciplined schedule, from Monday to Saturday. And Sunday we didn't shoot. This went on for a year and a half, so it's very different. But I wanted to try and see if we could do it. Because when you do a film, it's generally five, six or seven weeks at the most. We had the ambition to do it for a year and a half, and that changes a lot of things and we were not in the same state of mind. You don't see the end so near. What you talk about, what you live during this long period is not the same as when you're doing a shoot in five weeks. In five weeks, you talk about everything except the film. You talk about girls, cars and money (laugh) like in every shooting and you just hope it's over soon. When you spend a year and half with the film, you are just there and life is much more together. You have lots of other things. You have people who are born, people who die (laugh) and seasons change. So the film becomes, really, almost organic. You don't really think about the film. Or you think about the film and life at the same time. So it's good. It's because it brings down the importance of cinema (suspiciously). The balance is more correct, I think. In what you live, that a film should not be the main thing in your life. Perhaps it's one of the things. It's your work. It's like the guy in the office, or the guy who makes food, or the guy who makes shoes. They do it everyday, from 9-7. It should be the same thing. Photography too. This idea that you're making film, that you?fre making art, is a special moment or aspect, or a thing for the special kind of people, was never for me. It's like the idea of trying to make it all your life, because I like it, it's what I chose, and make it day to day, everyday. Just very simple, very simple, but very tough and very boring sometimes. (laugh) Sometimes it takes a lot of work. Taking a photograph can be very boring and making a film is not always wonderful. If you think there's always a wonderful moment and you meet beautiful people, no it's not. It's not! (laugh) It could be tough, a tough job. But, it's also a privilege to do it, because, it's something that I chose. I wanted to do it, and I can do it well. And with this small budget crew and in this place where people are very generous. We can do it on a very daily basis. We're not doing art. Even if the actor, the film you see is something mystic or beautiful or good.

The audience who see your film, see them as art films. But how do you see your audience?

When we make this kind of film (pause/laugh) we have so much confidence in our audience, we trust the audience so much, that at the same time, we don't care about them at all. It's very ambiguous. We don't think about them. And at the same time, we do things for them, of course, because it's very human. They are very human films. We don't talk about possible strange worlds. They do not talk about things that do not exist. They do not tell stories. They don't tell fantasy stories. I think what we are talking about is something that can touch people here, in Africa, in Argentina. It's about human beings. So we just expect they are just as responsible. If they can't hear about the film, they should be responsible, or as responsible as when we did the film.Because I assure you, we did the best we could. Especially them, they did the best they could. And so I hope the audience will do the best they can. (laugh). The audience should be also very responsible. It's very difficult to see a film. It's so difficult to see a film as to make one. As to take a photograph or work in banking. It's difficult as making a film. It's very difficult to go see something. But if you're not capable of seeing something, you should go away. So I have the highest respect for the audience. At the same time, I don't know who they are. I don't really think about them.

The point of view of this film is Ventura? How did you find him?

He is the force behind the film. With no Ventura, there would have been no film.

Did you have the image of Ventura before you met him?

Well, he existed. He was there. That's the funny part. He was always around that place when I shot the other films. So I cast him in the morning, at night, and he was a strange mysterious guy that I saw sometimes that said, good morning, when I arrived to shoot. Sort of like, hello, and another day, difficult, and say, yes, good luck, see you tonight. This kind of thing. Very gentle, very mysterious. Very dangerous. Dangerous in a sort of?... He's a very tall guy. You know. Very big guy, yes. A man. Really a man. So yes, after two films, when I thought of doing something that could tell a bit of the story of the past about the neighborhood. Some kind of past. The first man, the first shack, the barrack, and how it all started. I thought immediately about him. And so I asked around a little bit and then approached him afterwards. I asked him. When did he come? What is his story? I wanted to know a little bit about the secrets before; the magic. People told me, yes, he was one of the first ones who came. He was 19 years old. He was a very beautiful teenager, this black colossal guy. Always with a knife in his pocket. A lady's man. (laugh) Very tough, very energetic, a sort of young immigrant that would come to work in Lisbon. And then, this was in '71 and then 3 years later, 73 or 74, I think he had this accident; this working accident. He fell from this building he was working. He fell and he was destroyed. His head was not the same after that. His hands lost a bit of movement. He's not totally handicapped, but he was not well, he couldn?ft work anymore, not in construction. It was a tough job. So he became a wanderer who just walked the neighborhood. But I thought this could be the ideal guy who could tell the story about this place. Because he has two sides. He has this pioneer side, this immigrant that comes with nothing, with just some coins, a knife and energy. The pioneering side and the tragic side. It's the tragedy that he is always a part of this immigrant history. I mean, the very dark story, the lonely story, the suffering and the delirious thing in his head.

Is he a victim?

Yes, of course, he is a victim of injustice in our world. They all are. It's totally there, here. Of course they are victims. But I thought I should give him a voice or image or a place in the film because we could show this double side. He could be this attractive, very fascinating man, but at the same time, the sad part of it, almost like, there?fs this side in Ventura, it's lost, things are lost before they become lost, for us, for them. We have no chance. It's been always like that. We had no chance. We thought we could make it. We had dreams of making it, but like I said, everything is very hard for them. Unemployment, police, housing problems or money problems. It's what comes after that, in the head, because it's so difficult.

Is the character Ventura we see in the film, fabricated between you and Ventura?

Yes. It's made by what I think about him and what he probably thinks about me also. So yes, it's probably something between me and them, me and him. I always say that the film is made around the difference that is in the middle of me and him. How should I explain it, it's very simple. Ventura says, when we are shooting everyday, when we were shooting for a year and a half, or two years, which is a long time, it is work. It's tough. It's sometimes difficult. We fight, or I try to do something and he can't, and he tries to do something, and I don't understand, like any working relationship. And he used to say something very simple, sometimes when he was a bit more angry. This is a film but do not for one second think that you can understand me, that you can know what I am, that you can even get inside of me. Just because you have a camera, doesn't mean you can! And this is very true. You can never understand, you can never be with the other. It could be a man and a man, or a man and a woman. You can never be that. You cannot have this fusion. So I think it's better to think that there is a space, that there is a difference, a distance between two human beings. And this is good. This is what creates possibilities. It's possible for us to live together because there is a space here. And this space thinks and works. It's the space that makes you think, that makes you work. So I think the film was made around that. He said, don't think your camera has a magical power, that you can capture all my sufferings, all my past years. Let?fs simply do the film. Let's keep on going. So that calmed me down a little bit. I like to work with people like this because they tell you things like this. An actor would never say this to you. An actor would never say, don't film me like that because you cannot understand me. The actor always says the opposite. I want to try more. I want to express more. I want to reveal more. I like to work with them because they don't reveal enough. They keep things inside. They keep secrets. They keep a mystery. I think that there is a mystery that will never be revealed and that's very good. That's the magic of it. To feel that something has escaped.

As a film director, do you try to go in further?

In this film, we got to places. There was a real collaboration between me and him, for instance, creating something. But creating in a very daily, simple thing. We start with an object. And I said, yes, you could be like that, and play with that, then it's this way of doing something, which is already strange. His movements are strange, his timing is strange. He's thinking about something when he does this and I say, then you should say something, and then he says it in a way I do not expect, so this is a good collaboration. Again, it escapes your direction. I like people that escape my direction. Because I don't think I have that much imagination. (laugh) I depend a lot on the imagination and the collaboration of the other person.

So when you give directions, or when you discuss things, do you ask them, as a director, if it is better to ask the actor/person to do something, than to think a certain way and move with the thought. Which brings out the better result for you?

There's a lot of them, or there's a lot of people in the film. It's very collective, although Ventura is the center of that universe. Well, the story of the film, one of the stories of the film is that he has a lot of children. (laugh) That was a way for us to create a never ending story if he has 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 children, then the film will never end, and there will always be another child coming. We could go on filming forever. (laugh) But it's really a collective thing. With every one of them. What I asked of them was to bring me.., it's almost like accepting cinema, like a letter, like writing a letter to someone. So I said, imagine that you are going to write a letter, read a letter, so you think about to whom you want to address the letter. And that's going to be your part in the film. You will write something for somebody. Take cinema as this message, this medium, and that's what they did. One of them wanted to talk about the mother that she had rejected him a little bit. He wanted to address his mother he hadn't seen for 15 years. So we did two things with him. Just around that. The other was about her child, the other was about the father and the other was about something else. And so we started with that. And they go very deep inside of them, of course, because they are very tough things that they want to say. Very problematic things. So then, we start working. We start at the table like that, and they want to say this, this, this and this, and then I say, okay, let's concentrate just on this. Don't go in other directions, on other roads. Let's keep on this road, so let's take a week rehearsing this scene, then let's start filming this scene for a week or more. We have no deadlines. The only luxury we have is time. We have time to do things.

But having more people on set for this film doesn't get in the way?

More people, but we were four, so it's not really much. We are four here now, so... It was me, a friend of mine with the camera, with mirrors, because we used natural light. So we built this very poor mirror thing. Another friend who did sound and another guy helped us with everything else. So it's not a lot of people. It can be done with four. It's also a film that needs this kind of intimacy. The films have a bit of secret and it's the secret between us, when they come to a talk show or somewhere where there are no secrets anymore. While we were doing it, it was very amongst us.

Would Vandas Room have worked with more people?

No, probably not, because the film is what it is. No, that film needed that kind of network. Vanda's Room was growing off an almost very unconscious or irresponsible desire I had of making something alone against... Because I had done films with 50, 60 people, with this whole street filled with trucks.

Cave of Lava was like that?

Yes, and all the others. Cables everywhere, and police would stop everyone. Assistants saying silence. I was so tired of that that I needed something where cinema could be invisible. The guy with the camera. Like photography. I feel very close to photography because it?'s something you can do, even the world in the streets. Cinema is beginning to be not possible, it's so many stuff, and preparation, and sometimes stupid preparation. Because you see shooting going on, and they would shooting in a corner and would occupy three blocks in American films. It's like a military operation. So cinema lost this very simple way of believing in the streets. That's terrible I think, because if you see it in the film after Colossal Youth. Nothing is like that. You see the films today. The majority of films done today, especially the American films, you see sounds, images, but they are not of this world. It's okay, but I prefer to be in this world. Because, my tradition is still in what I'm telling you about. A very simple image of what exists. That should be cinema. It is the only chance to survive. To keep cinema in the streets, in the small shops, and small houses, with small people.

How do you see the extras in the films, pretending to be bystanders in the background?

We don't have extras in our films because every one of them is already an extra. I mean, they stand in for a lot of people. Ventura is not standing alone by himself. He's standing in for a lot of people. He's there for his friends, for every Ventura who has been a Ventura. Actually, this kind of film is so rewarding for me, because when I show the film, finally when I put the sound and edit it and everything is complete, and the final print comes back from the lab, I do the screening. The first screening of the film is for them, and a lot of people come, of course, and it's amazing. Everything is the same, but first screenings are a bit like what you imagine what films were like in the beginning, and all the people are there, and they are shouting, saying, that's my friend, and my cousin, and they comment. They say, oh yes, you are right, what people used to do in film theaters. (laugh) Stop, stop, oh, no, no, no, yeh, yeh, yeh. They talk. It's very alive. And after the screening, I always like to have a sort of Q&A with them. Well it's not a Q&A because they are friends, but I want to have all the comments I can have from them, and for this film, what I felt, I think, I wasn't wrong. They were very proud of the film. Not artistically. That is something else. The artistic qualities of the film are for us. But just the fact that Ventura stands tall in the film. They were very proud of that. What they said was very funny. “But Ventura, I see you every day in the bar, in the street, and you are always this guy, you're nothing, you're just hanging out, we've known you for years, and you're just a guy like that, but then in the film, you're so tall, so bright. So when they say that, I have the feeling, like you're standing for us, representing us, standing in this beautiful way. And they say thank you. First to Ventura, and not to me, but this is very rewarding. So this is why it's so rewarding for me, more than before. More than the other films I made. I feel so complete. I feel useful. This is a bit stupid. We know that a film, photography or painting is not that useful. It's not going to change anything, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you always have a dream that somebody will see this thing and perhaps it will touch this person. So, I feel more with this film than the others I made.

When you have people talk in your film, this guy says you have different gods speaking. Like a vehicle for the gods.

I never thought that way. (laugh) That is very interesting. You talk about that. Yes, I think we are going back. The way we are doing films. And that's very good for me. We don't think, and we are not thinking like other people, going forward, like let's think of something different, let's think of something original, let's get some more effects. This idea of more and more, that is always in films. Again, the American films are full of that. You have to go beyond something. You make a dinosaur and then you have dinosaurs plus, prehistoric dinosaurs and then warriors. There has to be development. More and more. I think we are going back, back to the origin. Telling a story, or the origin of how it starts. And who do you tell the story. Actually, we go back because it's always about memory. That's our script. It's always about memory, their memory, so we have to go back back back. And somewhere perhaps, we are going somewhere, to very ancient places we are speaking, almost like you say, I'm not sure, but I think it's becoming more simple, we need almost nothing to make a film. It's a very comfortable feeling. Again, there's this kind of freedom to what you could do. I'm very jealous of photography. It's one of the great art forms. I really respect photography, because there's a freedom there. Nobody can steal photography from you. If you have film, it's very easy to be stolen of film. Film is, just like that (clapping his hand). You have the wrong idea, or somebody says, why don't you make something... And it's minutes away. So I'm beginning to have this very nice feeling. I need people to make films. I could not make a film just with images of landscapes. I don?'t think I could do that. But that's my problem. I need people to show us a space, or people to design the space of the film. I have to be inside. Just a girl, boy, a man or almost nothing. As this film, we have no props, I don't think. We bought a card deck for them to play cards with because they didn't have one at the moment. (laugh) And nothing else. It's almost like Ozu. If you are Ozu, a film is four guys drinking at a table. It's amazing.

Can we go further into how you deal with space, about this small universe, this limited space you created?

Well, in this film, it was difficult, but at the same time, that was challenging was, they were moving from one place to another in the real universe. They left one universe, the old place, the old houses, the old streets, and it also means light, and so many things. Space, time. If you are in a certain space, you are in a certain time, they move to this completely different white space, where they are forced to live there forever. And this happens more or less in the beginning of the film. The film started. And they were moving. And I started to move with them. I think it was a very good thing for the film because my idea, my observation of that space was the same as theirs, their time. They looked at the space and I looked at the same space in time. They were the actor and I was the director and we both looked at our set (laugh) in the same way. And the same way was as problematic. For them, how are we going to live here? For me, how was I going to shoot this? It's all white. It's very difficult for me on video. It's everything you should not do. Complete white surfaces. They are black. So it's difficult to have light, to treat light. So we had this common ground, problem, and it was very useful for the film because it was a criticism about the space, as it was their criticism about the space at the same time. It is not cosy. It's not like it used to be, especially. I did not make this space. This was made for me. It's very important for these guys, all of them. 90% of them are cycle immigrants, all over the universe, they are builders, they build tables, houses. People have to build things because they have no money, almost from scraps. And for the first time, everything was brought to them. They had houses made by strangers. Who made this? The people who made this do not know me, so I do not want this kind of house. It's good. There's water, locks, toilets, it's functional, it's perfect, but something is not quite right. And what's not right is that they they realized the space they had built was gone forever, and they will not have the chance of building anything again. That's a very complex idea but I think they understood that. We are becoming a part of society. Really marginal part, we are still poor, we are still down and under, but we are inside society now. They have locks, and we have a shot of a guy opening a door. They never opened doors, at least before. And I do not remember a key. Never. An idea of a key was nonexistent. In Fontainhas, the public space and private space was undetermined. Like you see from this room, a room could be square, and a street could be very mysterious, as well as a house, a corridor, so the old space was very interesting, like a village. It's exactly like the old system of an old African village, maybe an old Japanese village, from the way the space was built. And now they have other problems, they have city problems where they still can't identifiy. They are lost. And I was lost too, during the shooting of the film. So I had to deal with a lot of problems, but at the same time, it was useful for the film.

So in your later short films, you deal with what they had gone through, like Tarrafal?

Yes. What was interesting in that film Tarrafal was, small things we had to do. And they were already moving here, and I arrived and got a phone call from this foundation that wanted to fund the film. For 15 minutes. So let's do something. Let's think of something. So it started, let's think of something, me, Ventura, and this other guy. And one or two days later, they said please, let's not make a film here again. So let's make it somewhere else. I said, but yes, this is where you live now. But yes, we made Colossal Youth about that, this small film we can do it somewhere else. And I understood that they were all a bit fed up already with that place. But where was my problem? Everything we imagine has to do with you, so it would have to do with your space also. So they said, okay, it's very simple, let's just cross the speedway. There's a speedway all around the place. Let's go down and let's go somewhere around there, and we went just across the speedway, and spent two or three weeks there, in this kind of small woods, with small trees, two rocks, and everything was done there, it was this no man's land, like a forest. And I understood that they even lost their space, so if we make films, that's going to be difficult because they have also to invent a new space they like. Within the film. Because in real life, they are forced to live there. In the film, they would probably like to invent a new space. And that new space would be a strange space. A very simple space or a very natural space, under a tree or something. So it's beginning to be like you say, to be like god speaking, like in heaven.

Where does myth enter?

It's already there. It has always been there. We don't think about it. I don't think about that, but it's there, of course, at least. I mean, we need to take myth back to human beings. Myth was taken from us. And we have to get it back to us. I mean, myth was stolen by money and bosses, and it was born, simple people thought of things, and thought of ways of telling things in some very wonderful ways, and that was myth, legend but there was a connection with people that told the story, simply because they told it to young guys, their children, from grandfather to son, and that was the origin of myth and origin of community. And one day, I think it was stolen when another class was born, a social class, because one day on this planet, there were only human beings working on the land and making things, and one day a guy thought, oh, I can make money from them. And mythology became something that we could say was the voice of the gods. But now the gods were commanding and ordering things. They were not generous. They were bosses. So I feel that there are not enough mythologies in the world. Common people lost mythology. Or mythology is made, probably, in the SONY building here, or their brothers in Los Angeles. Things like those places that fabricate mythology today. And video games.Absolutely. They are around us somewhere. (laugh) In high places. So we have to bring it down. It's like using Panasonic. I use Panasonic. It's okay, it's a good machine. It's a good tool. But I will not do what it tells me to do. What they are telling me to do is to move it very fast, to turn it around and use it quickly, and I'm trying to use it very slowly. Take time, so you have to be against everything you're told to do, but yes, we have to reinstall, bring back some mythology, or at least to the common people, and I still know some common people, they exist and they art not so hidden and not so weak. I have a lot of confidence in them. I'm trying to help them.

So you're also helping them to maintain history/myth through coming generations as well, for their story to remain.

It's not easy. It's work. It needs time. It needs patience. A lot of headaches. But you've seen Tarrafal. We didn't know what to do with this 15 minute film. And suddenly, there was this idea of doing something about very simple problems, a problem about this guy being expelled from Portugal, which is happening in Europe. I don't know if it's happening here. You want to get rid of, perhaps Koreans or Chinese. But in Europe, it is the Africans and Ukrainians. Like, enough of them and gangsters. So I have this young guy who came to the association who got this letter from the foreign office saying you have 20 days to pack. He was completely in panic, and I said, let's make something around this. He said, I don't know if I have the head to that, the mindset to make a film, when I'm so worried, and let's try to do it. And the first idea we had was, let's try to make it in 15 minutes, what can I do, could I go around? It's a beautiful idea. I could go around the neighborhood like it was my last day, saying goodbye to my friends and family. I think it was a marvelous idea. 15 minutes. It would be a very nice long film. Let's just make something shorter. Let's say goodbye to your mother, because his mother is a part of his life. So we sat his mother down, and himself, and they started talking and we sat there for a week, everyday, and on the third day, they got to something, the mother thought about the story, you see again folktales and mythology, the story she remembered from her childhood, the devil had his way of passing an evil message. The devil appeared in the village and passed this message. You had to pass the message to somebody else unless otherwise you die. It is common. It probably exists here in another form. So, but what was wonderful was that she connected this evil message to this letter, and that didn't come from me. It was a simple association. It was an evil letter from the foreign office. The evil message. So there it is, a folktale mixing with a very concrete political social problem, made in a very simple way, as this guy saying goodbye to her mother. And that's what we did and I thought it was wonderful. You're talking about today, what is something important and at the same time, you're going back to everything that composes her, their culture. So again, it is really rewarding and it's a collective work where the idea associated, sometimes very nicely associated, actually, can become very solid. Very solid. A small 15 minute film can be very solid for me. And it has everything a film should have. Very human, it's very important in some way, it's very serious, there's something very serious, and especially they say what must be said. I'm not putting words in their mouth and I'm imagining things. I'm just there to guide them. Don't go too far that way, or don't go there lest we lose ourselves. I'm just an outsider. I'm just a spectator. But more than a director. I'm the first audience they have. I'm just there to say, yes, I think it will be nicer that way. Of course, I can be wrong but I still have that power.And then the artistic point of view of your camera positions? What choices do you make with your camera positions?It's not very instinctive. Now it comes with time, comes with... It takes a long time to find a position. It takes time to find the right words. I'm always saying this because it depends, my films depend again on them, human beings, human beings in space, it's not like composing a beautiful frame. It's important to be balanced. If it's beautiful, great. It's important to have some balance, but a long time to achieve. When we start the scene, it is just two guys on the pavement, I move around a little bit. I have 1, 2, 3 weeks to find my place. It can be just moving 3 inches. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is a bit far from what it is supposed to be. Here to here, and I didn't see it before. But I have to see it. He's doing something and the other guy will be acting some other way, so probably I will go like this, but here to here, it takes me one month.

When you look back on it, what do you think you were looking for, although the positions may be vary. What, all in all, were you looking for?

Why do you ask me this questions? (laugh) I'm not Chaplin. (sigh) I don't know. The truth? It's very difficult. Ask him. There's no best way in the world to see something. The only place, the only point in space you can see something, no, when you feel that all your force is inside the frame, it really comes together, you have the microsecond, you think, you have the same place.I also tend to choose, to find, I would like to think that I am finding a place where fragility is something very important. Because I am working a lot in fixed shots. I'm not moving the camera a lot, because we don't have a lot of means. Sometimes I can do some small movements but otherwise I like to keep it simple. This idea that the shot is fixed and it doesn't move, I really don't think it exists. When you think of the films of Ozu, for me, is the biggest. Ozu for me is the guy who trembles a lot. Not only film people are trembling but Ryu Chishu or the girls are trembling. They just do this, and the whole film trembles. That's just my thing, so it moves, it's not fixed, it moves, so there's this really fragile place where your trembling eyes meet. And that frames your frame and it should be fragile, should be human. All the greatest filmmakers and photographers and painters tremble a little bit with this fragility. It's almost a nervous thing. It's not that steady. Actually, when it's steady, it's bad.

Did you feel that way with the Straub-Huillets?

In the Straub-Huillet films, I feel their life, the way they work. It's all about that. Not losing the idea that, with them, it's even more difficult with the rooms, with people like that, they even find the fragility in empty spaces, something I cannot do. In those rooms, you see something, there's no one, but you're moved to tears because someone was there. That's very difficult. It's like the end of Tokyo Story. You see the father and the mother in the beginning and they go visit their daughter in Tokyo. You see the house, and you see the father and mother, and you see their place in space, and at the end of the film, you see the same place but there's only the father. And there's no mother, but there's the space of the mother. And that's so difficult. Capturing the place of the human being in space, what he had left, an echo of his voice, his presence in the shot. That's amazing. That's a wonderful thing, a film. (laugh) It could be.

Well, I look forward to your next film.

If the gods and money help me. Because you need a little bit of money.

How about the difference between video and film?

I use video as I was making film. I don't think there is a difference. If, you are serious. With video, it's stupid to shoot the ocean, the mountains, or nature. It will not be good. There's no definition. All the leaves, are better still in 35, even in photography, in film film not digital. Not yet. Otherwise, I will face a wall, for me it's a good tool, the way we do it, we do it as we have a big 35 camera, the same approach, the same idea, the same attitude, and that's expensive so we have more time. I prefer to have more time, especially with them, because they cannot be rushed. It would be stupid to work with these people and say, come on, come on. Because they don't know how to do certain things, and they have to find a way.

But to work for a period of a year and a half, you need a budget.

I do need a budget. Basically, to pay people. Everybody gets the same. Me, the sound, my friend, Ventura, everybody. Every month. Like in a factory. So basically, that's the money. The rest is tape. The sound is recorded digital. We have no tapes anymore for sound. Even with cameras, I will start with HD, cards, memories, so basically the budget is for people eating and this kind of thing, and post-production, which is an expensive thing, of course, but normally I make some phone calls. I made this so do you want to help me see this? A little bit from here and there, and I can do the sound mix. That's what is still expensive.

What the budget for your short film Tarrafal, for example?

Oh, not much. In Euro, it was 15,000 Euro. It was small. It was just for us. Of course, there's post-production afterwards. And it was supposed to be done in 3, 4 days. I just took the money and we managed to be there for one month. But nowadays, all of them are so used to it that one guy can hold the mirror or hold the mike. And in the short film they act and once they are out of the frame they are holding the microphone.

http://www.outsideintokyo.jp/e/interview/pedrocosta/index.html

Pedro Costa Entretien effectué le 13/03/2001, ARTE

1. Immersion

C'est une question difficile, telle que tu la poses comme ça. C'est difficile. Je ne voulais pas être poétique. Au début, je pensais que c'était un choix, de choisir un monde et pas un autre, certaines couleurs et pas d'autres, même des choses esthétiques avec tous ces dangers, aussi une espèce d'absence de parole chez des gens qui peuvent pas parler, qui sont exploités. Il y avait un danger, une fascination du moins et du vide mais toujours avec une espèce de justice, de choses justes qu'il y a à filmer d'un point de vue juste, qui serait plus juste et en même temps ce serait plus facile de filmer d'un côté que d'un autre. Ca a donné des films que j'ai faits qui peut-être sont trop perdus ou trop…, où je voulais essayer de comprendre ces gens-là, ce monde-là, qui n'est pas le mien, qui est même une autre classe. Avec ce film, moi, je crois que j'ai compris que c'est une classe qui a une langue qui accuse, qui se défend et qui donc a un mouvement complexe et pas seulement les pauses qu'on a vues au cinéma ou à la télé, et qu'en même temps, dans ce monde que je filme [dans ce film] il y a des riches et des pauvres, il n'est pas seulement fait d'une chose mais de plusieurs. Alors, un moment il y a… le social .

2. Comment filmer une petite partie du monde ?

C'est une question complexe, la société ou le monde, comment filmer une petite partie du monde et qu'on voit quand même tous les côtés de la chose dans cette petite partie du monde. C'est pour ça qu'il faut trouver des mondes limités parce que vraiment le monde est limité, il y a comme des frontières entre les classes mais aussi entre les idées des hommes, un moment où on communique plus, du moins un temps où la direction change, de plus en plus petit. Par exemple, au niveau des guerres, on voit ça en Europe, des énormes empires, genre Est-Ouest, ça devient de plus en plus petit, jusqu'à l'état tout petit.

3. Le passage d'"Ossos" à "Dans la chambre de Wanda"

La différence, c'est grandir, je crois. Mais grandir, je pense à ce livre qui est pas mal, "Age d'homme", c'est qu'"Ossos", il y avait un monde choisi, parce qu'il s'accordait bien à mes désirs, à mes choses lointaines d'enfance, qui venaient plus des peurs, plus sombres, d'angoisses de petit garçon. Là, je voyais bien que ça venait de là. Ou bien de films qui m'ont marqué pour ça. Certains films d'horreur ou tous les films allemands, quand je dis horreur, je pense à Tourneur, qui étaient des invitations à entrer dans ce monde. Je prends l'exemple de Tourneur, des mondes où les gens ne savaient pas être au monde, donc il y avait quelque chose dans ce quartier qui était aussi ça, des gens qui savent pas, qui n'ont pas la place, qui n'ont pas les mots, qui sont tellement trompés et exploités et opprimés qu'ils ont dû parler d'une autre façon, parler avec une espèce de langage tellement métissé pour se protéger, parce qu'ils étaient tellement trompés et exploités… Le passage des deux films c'est ça, au début il y avait un regard de détresse cinéphile, quelque chose d'enfantin, qui aime ce qu'il voit mais qui a peur, qui veut se réveiller tout le temps. Il y avait plus de cinéma dans "Ossos" dans ce sens-là et aussi moins de cinéma dans le sens où je commence -j'ai toujours compris le cinéma comme ça mais - où il faut faire des pas, peut-être qu'un film explique l'autre.

4. La vie qui circule dans les sons

Moi, j'aime beaucoup beaucoup travailler le son, mais le travailler vraiment, passer des mois et des mois, et dépenser beaucoup d'argent évidemment parce que c'est cher, à refaire le son à envoyer des gens faire des ambiances. Moi, je crois que c'est une bonne chose quand tu as un copain qui fait le son, qui est déjà engagé dans cette espèce de film avec des gens, tu n'es même pas une petite équipe. Et tu dis : "Va écouter un peu ce monde. Prends un week-end, complètement tout seul, tu verras c'est bien." Et puis, tu vois ce qu'ils disent, dans les films : "Après, on fait une ambiance raccord ou je vais faire un petit son là-haut dans la montagne", c'est pas absolument vrai. C'est toujours entre le moment où la voiture de production va partir, il fait le son avec déjà le coin de l'œil sur la dernière voiture sur le point de partir et il dit "Hé, là, je fais encore un son". Mais ce n'est pas exactement vrai, faire un son, c'est pas ça. C'est parler avec des gens, rentrer dans les maisons, c'est dîner, c'est tout ça. Et ça, j'aime beaucoup, faire beaucoup d'ambiance, ou essayer moi-même, c'est une autre façon de filmer, j'en ai fait moi-même beaucoup pour Wanda. Mais c'est être là avec un micro et une caméra. Essayer de faire parler les gens parfois, dans Wanda, il y a plein de choses comme ça. Dans l'autre aussi. J'étais avec mon DAT, et j'ai fait parler des gens, ils parlaient de tout et de rien, dans Ossos il y a ça, des moments de conversations, de dîner d'une famille, derrière. Après tout ce travail de son, de montage, c'est quelque chose que je trouve nourrit les films d'une façon pas pour faire comme si c'était du direct, parce qu'on voit bien dans ces deux films qu'il y a un travail sonore qui dépasse le son direct, qui serait là, présent, brutal, mais aussi un côté recomposé. Le son installe une espèce de confiance dans la vie, il donne un peu de vie, simplement. Dans le quartier, c'est absolument nécessaire parce que le son du monde, il ne s'arrête jamais. Moi, j'imagine, je sais qu'il y a peut-être seulement une minute ou même moins, de silence dans ce quartier, qui est entre 3 heures du matin et 3h35. parce que les gens vont travailler, ils vont sur les chantiers ou faire le ménage, et ça roule tout le temps. Il y a toujours quelqu'un qui se réveille, qui fait ses petits bruits, donc ça s'arrête jamais jamais.

5. Les pieds sur terre dans le monde

Le son précise l'image. Et si c'est pas fait comme ça, dans l'effet total, dans la musique, dans l'insistance, écouter écouter, passer quelque chose, mais si c'est fait discrètement, tout ce qui vient de la vie, ça précise ton objectif, ça donne la vie, ça peut créer le silence, ce qui n'est pas simple avec le son direct dans le cas des films, des lieux où je tourne. Et oui, ça je me souviens au montage, comment dire qu'il y a aussi le silence, on voit Wanda à l'image et il faudrait un silence bruyant, et ça il faut le recomposer, le refaire mais c'est surtout ne pas tromper mais si le travail est bien fait sérieux, à l'image ou au son, ça va. Ce qu'il ne faut pas faire c'est faire comme si on était là. C'est ça que j'aime aussi avec le son, c'est qu'il te place. A un moment, si le son est bien, tu es là ou ailleurs, ça peut venir simplement du fait que tu as mis un son de nuit sur une scène de jour, toi tu le sais, mais le spectateur il sera peut-être parti, il sera perdu. Moi, j'aime beaucoup les films qui gardent les pieds sur terre mais qui ont la tête complètement dans les nuages. Les pieds, c'est un peu le son, la tête, l'imaginaire ou les yeux… Mais avec le son, tu peux voyager beaucoup mais tu peux pas délirer. Mais ça vient aussi de mon goût pour les sons du début du parlant, du sonore, je ne sais pas comment on dirait cette matière, aujourd'hui, ton ingénieur du son va te dire "J'ai un bruit infernal", mais ce bruit, c'est le monde, parce qu'il ne veut pas entendre, moi et pas le reste. Mais moi, j'ai du mal avec ça et donc j'essaie de faire venir les autres choses, et c'est ça qu'il y avait au début, une âpreté qui venait aussi des acteurs qui étaient beaucoup plus aussi dans le monde et pas dans la société du cinéma. J'ai l'impression qu'un Michel Simon pour les Français ou un Portugais que tu connais pas ou un Allemand comme dans les films de Murnau, ils étaient beaucoup plus dans le cinéma que les acteurs d'aujourd'hui. Même s'ils avaient une vie au bar après, avec leur fiancée, tout ça, ils avaient pas d'autres voix, bien sûr qu'il y a des exceptions, mais là aujourd'hui, il n'a pas un acteur professionnel qui n'a pas une voix pour ton film et une voix pour sa vie. C'est comme je parlais d'une façon au quartier et à Paris d'une autre façon, je trouve ça un peu dommage, ce sont des choses que l'on perd, des choses même techniques et artistiques du cinéma qu'on perd et qui sont belles. Comme la photo qu'on a perdu, le grain, le beau noir et blanc qu'on a perdu, la belle image sans artifices, faite avec soin, vraiment penser la couleur, sans faire des expériences lamentables. Donc, voilà, cet accord qu'il y avait au début, qu'il y a toujours au début des choses, qu'on peut voir peut-être plus clairement dans ce genre de mondes où moi je tourne ou que l'on peut voir dans la rue. Le cinéma, c'était un peu fait pour ça, filmer la rue, le café, filmer chez les gens tout en étant dans la rue, cette idée de ne pas avoir d'intérieur/extérieur, pour moi, ça compte beaucoup. Le cinéma, c'est déjà tellement secret, il y a un secret tellement fort, tellement évident, cette chose que les autres arts n'ont pas, enfin, je crois, ce quelque chose que tu sens mais que ta compagne au cinéma sent d'une autre façon, mais ce n'est pas tout à fait la même chose.

6. Le travail

Ce que j'ai beaucoup aimé dans ce film, c'est que je partais tout seul, - je dis tout seul, enfin, parfois je partais avec cet ami qui faisait le son - on partait au travail tous les jours, le matin, si on avait du retard, on avait du retard, c'est tout. On avait pris trois cafés, c'est tout, il n'y avait pas la pression de faire trois plans aujourd'hui ou des séquences, mais vraiment le goût du travail, pas trouver des solutions - parfois il faut les trouver, comment placer le micro, etc., ça vient après - c'est vraiment aimer cet art modeste, comment dire, vraiment à égalité avec les autres choses, un art terrien, c'était assez beau, on dépendait de chaises, de petites choses. On avait pas de chaise pour placer quelque chose, c'était compliqué. Une chaise, c'est pas grand-chose. C'est pas demander au troisième assistant d'aller chercher n'importe quel truc. Il n'y avait rien non plus à couper, pas de branche d'arbres, tu vois ce que je veux dire. Je parle d'arbre, mais ça aurait pu être un mur à masquer, il n'y avait pas ce genre de problèmes, pour la première fois. Bien sûr, c'est très très difficile de travailler comme ça, mais tu penses plus, tu penses bien, c'est tout, tu es moins dans la théorie, tu es plus précis. Il y a une précision vraiment matérielle des cadres, des plans, comment filmer ce type-là, comment le prendre au son, c'est plus précis, si tu es nu, si tu as moins d'effets. C'est une question de préciser les choses, qui se font au tournage, que l'on va retrouver au montage évidemment. C'est un moment très enthousiasmant, exaltant et en même temps douloureux. C'est un peu avec des hauts et des bas. Chercher cette forme, tu es un peu seul dans ça. si tu as un complice tant mieux. Mais en même temps, cette précision du tournage précisent les choses au montage. Tu vois que c'est là et pas comme avant. Wanda disait une chose merveilleuse à la fin d'"Ossos", et moi je voulais, enfin, je savais pas, c'est l'arbitraire de tout ça… Je savais qu'elle devait se tourner et se placer de telle façon, bouger, etc., il y avait un cadre précis - à un moment elle devait avoir cette expression triste, au bord des larmes. Et donc, j'ai essayé de lui expliquer ça, c'était le malheureux réalisateur, je me voyais, je faisais tous les gestes que je déteste en expliquant : "Tu vois, là, tu dois…", j'avais un peu honte de ça. A la fin, elle m'a dit "Et si je riais à ce moment ?" Et là tout d'un coup, c'était atroce parce que j'étais totalement dans le cliché et elle me disait simplement, "Ca peut être ça ou ça", voilà.

7. Des films vengeurs

Je crois qu'il y a une idée de vengeance au début du cinéma. Venger quelque chose qui ne va pas très bien, il a le pouvoir de ça, il est tellement fort. J'ai vu des choses, toi aussi, Chaplin, c'est quelqu'un qui a vengé beaucoup beaucoup de choses. Dans chaque film, il venge, même sa fin, son passé, l'humanité, il venge des massacres, sans tuer personne, sans faire violence, sans violer. En essayant de ne pas faire la même chose, il y a une possibilité de vengeance, dans la fiction, surtout.

8. Des films pour la vie, contre les massacres

J'avais l'impression que j'avais la matrice des choses. Qu'en filmant une mère, je filmais vraiment une mère, c'était pas quelqu'un qui mimait une mère. Tout était très proche, non seulement de moi, comme d'un début de… Il y avait jamais de… C'est très difficile. Je garde ce regard, plus qu'un regard, un œil sur ce monde et sur le monde et que j'aimerais être extrêmement vaste et en même temps, il faut que je… Je crois que Fritz Lang faisait des films comme ça, il avait ça en tête et ce type était tellement précis. Tous ses films étaient des vrais films humains, pour la vie, contre le massacre, de la sensibilité, des hommes, de la chair, contre la guerre. Voilà quelqu'un qui le faisait avec un œil supérieur, avec cette construction abstraite énorme qui composait et qui donnait une force incroyable au malheur ; Quand quelqu'un tombe dans ses films, il essaie de se venger de ce malheur qui était là avant lui, avant sa naissance, ou un crime mais avec un tel pouvoir que cela devient tout le monde, cela devient une classe, ça devient un pays… Lui, il a ça. Et j'ai ressenti ça. Si je devais organiser après, au montage, tout ce que j'avais filmé, en gardant cette idée de venger ce crime qui se passe et le faire à la manière de Fritz Lang par exemple, c'est à dire avec précision, avec amour du cinéma, avec amour de la coupe, des matières, des sons, recomposer, abandonner, ressayer, ne pas céder à la première chose qui vient, jamais céder aux effets, passer encore un peu plus de temps, patience, patience, travail, travail. Moi, je ne sais pas pourquoi les gens n'aiment pas ce travail, s'épuisent ou abandonnent facilement. Tous les films ont ce côté aujourd'hui de ne pas aller au bout de ce qu'ils veulent dire. Je dis ça de films bien également, ou de films qui ont peut-être quelque chose, mais ils ne vont vraiment pas au fond, parce qu'ils n'ont pas eu la force ou l'argent, le combat a été trop dur contre le producteur ou je ne sais pas qui… Et ça, c'est également une idée de vengeance, si on travaille avec patience, on va venger quelque chose, venger aussi tout le cinéma qui a été fait avant et qu'on essaie de faire oublier.

9. La vengeance de la fiction

Mais dans ce cas-là, je parlais de vengeance dans la fiction parce que c'était le seul pouvoir que j'avais dans ce film, c'était d'organiser tous les blocs que j'avais après, toute cette matière que j'avais filmée, de l'organiser, pour vraiment faire passer l'idée que ces gens-là, sont même plus forts que les gens qui ordonnent le massacre, en sachant que je travaillais d'une façon un peu… comme ça avec une petite caméra vidéo, j'étais proche de ce que les gens disent "documentaire", ou des choses improvisées, que cela se touche. Je vois bien les moments où Fritz Lang touche les lumières, le train ou le bébé, l'arroseur, je vois pas pourquoi M serait pas plus documentaire que… Lumière a parfois beaucoup plus de fiction en une minute. Equilibrer ces deux choses-là peut donner quelque chose d'inespéré, de… Je ne sais pas trop expliquer cette idée de vengeance ou de regard vengeur mais c'est peut-être… mais c'est peut-être trop romantique, mais le côté que le cinéma aujourd'hui doit être vengeur. Un type comme ça, masqué, qui doit venger des crimes, des massacres contre les gens… Et encore, en plus, fait de cette façon-là, je dirais pas en marge, que les gens disent extrêmement pauvre. Et après, confronter les gens avec…

10. La machine à tuer les méchants

Quand on fait un film, c'est par amour évidemment, il n'y a rien d'autre. C'est l'amour fou pour quelque chose, pas une idée, je sens pas le cinéma comme ça, tout d'un coup, je vais dans la rue, j'ai une idée, non. Je crois que c'est quelque chose de l'ordre totalement amoureux qui renvoie à une mémoire, à quelque chose où tu te dis "Tiens, j'ai vu ça à un moment dans ma vie, dans un livre, c'était quoi ?" Là, tu commences une énorme chaîne, qui est encore de l'ordre amoureux, tu essaies de protéger quelque chose avec ce que tu sais faire, avec ce que tu imagines que tu sais faire, tu auras plus de désir et tu seras donc meilleur. On capitalise tellement dans ce moment-là, dans cette espèce d'amour original, sans idée, qu'à la fin, je dirais que je commence le tournage avec ça, et au montage, je serais beaucoup plus vengeur. Là, il y a quelque chose de plus maléfique, même si ce maléfique est positif puisqu'il s'agit de détruire les fascistes, les nazis, la drogue, l'argent, les choses qui ne sont pas bien. Là, au montage, on peut organiser les choses. C'est comme ça que je vois Lang ou Chaplin. Chaplin, c'est très évident, son côté vengeur, - peut-être qu'il voulait se venger de sa vie. La question que ça ne peut pas être comme ça, qu'il faut les tuer, c'est la machine à tuer les méchants, de Rossellini. Voilà, le cinéma, c'est une machine à tuer les méchants. C'est d'ailleurs un très beau titre. J'aime tout ce qui a à voir avec ça, c'est à dire le côté dynamique, dynamo, du cinéma qu'il avait avant, quand il avait encore ce côté collectif, même si les gens étaient… Lang, Brecht, les Russes, les Français et les Italiens, c'était un corps, ils fondaient la théorie sans être lourds, ils voyageaient dans les trains, en filmant, ils développaient la pellicule, ils savaient tout faire, écrire, produire, filmer, boire, vivre avec les gens. J'imagine pas Brecht qui est pas là dans la soupe, mais avec les pauvres. Même à Hollywood, Lang, il était dans la machine, en sachant très bien où il était, minant complètement tout le terrain. Je trouve dommage que des gens qui avaient tellement de talent, de génie, cet héritage absolument incroyables, que nous, on soit pas capable de faire quelque chose du même genre, enfin plus ou moins.

11. Le problème des films d'aujourd'hui

Le problème des films aujourd'hui, c'est qu'ils viennent du cinéma. Le désir c'est faire comme quelqu'un ou faire un film, c'est pas filmer quelqu'un, c'est très rare. Quand tu vois ça, tu le sais tout de suite, au premier plan, tu te dis : "Tiens, voilà quelqu'un qui veut filmer cette jeune fille ou ce garçon, cette rencontre. Ils sont tous dans le même genre. On sait qu'on est au cinéma, on est dans un cinéma cinéphile, comme la cinéphilie aujourd'hui, ça veut dire des choses tellement disparates, parce que… parce que les modèles sont des rien du tout, des exercices d'école de cinéma, c'est ouvrir la porte, fermer la porte, sortir… Et donner un certain charme à ça, c'est pas plus que ça. Moi, je crois que pour faire un film aujourd'hui, il faut passer beaucoup plus de temps qu'avant. Pas beaucoup plus, dans le sens où je n'ai pas une idée christique de ça, genre il faut que cela soit un sacrifice, loin de là, mais il faut vraiment bien voir avant de tourner, un deux trois mois, si on peut, mais pas avec une équipe, qui est en discussion dans une salle avec des plannings, ça c'est rien, c'est pas choisir les couleurs du canapé, c'est voir si le film est possible. Et après, le tournage il ne faudrait le faire qu'avec cet amour… qui commence à disparaître parce que les gens sont jeunes maintenant au cinéma, les techniciens, tout le monde, même des gens qui ont des responsabilités disent "Un film des années 30, c'est un vieux film", cette idée de progrès, que le cinéma avance, moi je pense que le cinéma n'avance rien, moi j'ai l'impression de travailler dans la merde par rapport à ce que faisaient les gens dans les années 30, ce qu'on a perdu d'optique de son, d'humanité dans l'optique, dans le son, avec les acteurs, peut-être même dans la profession. J'ai connu de vieux techniciens - peut-être que ça sonne un peu réactionnaire - mais ces gens-là, vraiment, ils avaient un amour des choses… Comme on avait un amour des choses avant, suffit de penser au grand-père qui aime parler des heures et des heures sur un bout de bois, je ne sais pas, c'est la même chose. Mais, voilà, tu retrouves des équipes qui passent d'une chose à l'autre, qui ont quarante films à faire… Donc passer du temps, patience, patience et amour du travail… C'est la même chose pour le montage, c'est un art très complexe. Il y a des gens qui ont… quand tu vois les grands monteurs de l'histoire du cinéma, Eisenstein, Chaplin ou Stroheim, tu vois ce qu'on a perdu… Que le montage, c'était vraiment quelque chose de dialectique - un mot que l'on a perdu -. Un beau mot. Ca veut dire que tu as là une matière qui est forte, qu'il faut savoir où ça se passe, je suis dans une espèce de réalisme bizarre. Cette époque est très réaliste. Tout le monde est dans une espèce de réalisme glacé, fabriqué, mais vraiment informe, il n'y a pas de formes, les films n'ont pas de forme. Mais si le film n'a pas de forme, il n'est pas bon. Ca peut être de beaux paysages mais il sera pas juste, il fera pas justice aux gens qui sont dedans ou aux spectateurs, et on va au bureau.

12. Action, moteur, coupez

Le poids de l'action, moteur, coupez, c'est infernal, j'imagine que c'était pas comme ça avant. Ca faisait pas peur, aujourd'hui ça fait peur. Ca fait peur aux enfants, le clap aujourd'hui.. Moi, quand je passe sur des tournages d'amis, les claps, ce sont des coups de feu, or un clap c'est quelque chose pour certains films utiles, c'était du travail, on commence quelque chose avec des gens, à ce moment-là, précis, mais aujourd'hui, non. On fait des claps, on reproduit, on réinstalle, c'est un peu exagéré mais bon… Non, il y a aussi autre chose mais cela m'est très personnel. C'est mon côté… je commence à penser que je n'arrive pas à imaginer les choses. Enfin, ce n'est pas imaginer, imaginer, oui, respecter mon imagination, c'est difficile je pense. Il faudrait que je respecte mon imagination. Je n'ai pas la capacité ni le goût des conventions, je peux tout imaginer, il n'y a pas de limites, je suis assez généreux, je veux que tout le monde l'imagine mais l'appliquer comme ça au cinéma n'importe comment, là on va faire une petite touche comme ci, on pourrait inventer un geste ou deux trois mots pour sauver la scène, là je vois pas, j'ai perdu ça. Je l'ai vu avec film, je pense que c'est la même chose pour Straub ou Godard, des gens comme ça, qui prennent les choses… Straub, eux, prennent, avec un travail énorme, des textes, qui sont tellement forts et tellement vastes, où il y a une ambition, là ils les prennent, les travaillent, leur donnent une autre forme, ça devient autre chose. Godard, il prend aussi des bouts de choses, des restes. Bon, ça vient aussi des livres, des films, moi je prendrais comme ça parce que je ne vois pas bien comment écrire mieux que Wanda, enfin écrire… Je pourrais passer des heures et des heures et des mois, je n'aurais pas la finesse de certains dialogues, les gestes… Wanda, il y a des gestes qui me rappelle Lubitsch, un petit quelque chose avec une cigarette qui était comme John Wayne, c'est un peu cinéphile mais c'est comme ça. Donc, je me dis pourquoi se tuer la tête contre les murs, dans la chambre, avec le scénariste…

Em vídeo

La mejor entrevista de Letras de cine se quedó sin publicar, es de justicia sacarla a la luz al fin, tras dos años de haberse realizado. Es un complemento ideal al libro-entrevista publicado junto con el extraordinario pack Pedro Costa editado por Intermedio, cuyo texto casi en exclusiva está centrado en No quarto da vanda. La introducción y la entrevista están tal cual pensaban ser editadas.

Fue durante el pasado mes de junio de 2006, cuando gracias a ese trabajo hercúleo que es el Congreso Internacional de Cine Europeo Contemporáneo en su segunda edición -organizado por el no menos hercúleo Doménec Font dentro de la Universidad Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona-, y que consigue hacer lo que no logra buena parte de los festivales españoles, y es traer las películas clave del año y a sus directores (Manoel de Oliveira, Philippe Garrel, Jan Svankmajer, Pedro Costa, Nobuhiro Suwa, etc), cuando conseguimos hablar con Pedro Costa de un modo que difícilmente se puede conseguir durante los festivales de cine por problemas de tiempo; esto es, tranquilamente. De hecho, en un primer momento y tras habernos citado con él, la entrevista parecía que iba a desarrollarse como cualquier otra: veinte minutos a los que si además había que restar las intervenciones del traductor, se iban a quedar en diez. Pero no, aparte de que Costa se hacía entender como buen ibérico en un portuñol admirable, digno de los creadores del esperanto, tras los primeros treinta minutos, dijo que si queríamos podíamos continuar después. Tras un intermedio en el que tuvo que realizar otra entrevista, volvimos a la carga ya frotándonos las manos, pues habíamos oído cierta leyenda negra en festivales acerca del carácter de Costa que se desmintió al menos con nosotros durante las cerca de tres horas que estuvimos con él y que dieron como resultado 90 minutos de grabación. En Letras de cine siempre hemos pensado que una de las labores fundamentales de nuestra función crítica era conversar con los directores el tiempo suficiente como para descubrir su verdadero discurso, el que está más allá de la entrevista periodística y estereotipada, y poder encauzar libremente los temas según vienen gracias a los distintos vericuetos de la conversación. En esencia, dar tiempo a la palabra, aunque en nuestro caso se vio interrumpida durante unos minutos por una cucaracha de colosales dimensiones que apareció mientras comíamos en el bar más castizo que encontramos en esta Barcelona del diseño. Creíamos que lo mejor era buscar un lugar donde se sintiera a gusto, después de haber pasado tantos años en los barrios lisboetas. Como hombre de mundo, no se inmutó por aquella visita y continuó comiendo sus patatas bravas con la misma decisión con que las pidió. Anécdotas aparte, creemos que ha sido la entrevista más jugosa y sobre todo útil, que hemos realizado en estos últimos años.
Entrevista realizada en Barcelona a principios de junio de 2006 por Daniel V. Villamediana, Manuel Yáñez, Carles Marques y Eva Muñoz. Traducida del portugués y editada por Alicia Mendoza.


Nos gustaría que nos hablaras sobre el método de trabajo que empleaste en No quarto da Vanda. Cuando filmas los espacios, se nota que has convivido previamente y durante mucho tiempo con estas personas, hasta lograr que no noten tu presencia, ¿Cómo lograste esta “invisibilidad”?

Pues es muy simple y muy complicado al mismo tiempo: el planteamiento del plano es simple, pero el proceso hasta conseguir dicho plano es muy complicado. La clave está en la confianza; hay que ganarse la confianza de los actores cuando se hace este tipo de película, y para ello no hay que buscar la “invisibilidad” de la que tú hablas, sino un equilibrio entre dos fuerzas que consiste en conseguir que el director no imponga su estilo a los actores, y que estos, a su vez, no caigan en lo psicológico, en la exageración, o en lo excesivo. Es imprescindible para que las cosas sean saludables delante y detrás de la cámara. Por experiencia, sé que para conquistar a las personas se necesita mucho tiempo. El rodaje de No quarto da Vanda duró casi un año y medio, pero antes estuve allí otro año. Además fue un trabajo muy disciplinado: seis días por semana, rodábamos a diario. De esta forma, llegó un punto en el que yo ya no era un realizador de cine y la película tampoco era una película como tal: había un grupo, una comunidad de personas, que estaban haciendo un trabajo en común. También contribuyó en gran medida el ambiente del lugar. Es un barrio muy especial: muy pobre y, a la vez, muy solidario; así que la relación que se daba entre las personas sobrepasaba el límite del vecindario o de la amistad, estaba muy próxima a la relación familiar. Esta circunstancia provocaba que los límites entre lo público y lo privado fueran muy ambiguos y producía un espacio muy interesante para el cine: planteaba problemas esenciales de interior y de exterior. No quarto da Vanda tiene planos de una plaza pública porque pensé que la calle podía añadir otros puntos de partida y, en realidad, era una especie de prolongación de la habitación. El proyecto de No quarto da Vanda, en un principio, estaba pensado exclusivamente para la habitación, pero con el paso del tiempo me di cuenta de que estaba muy limitado. Las personas que pasaban por este cuarto lo hacían con un objetivo: hablar, llorar, esconderse, fumar… Llegó un momento en el que pensé que podía ser interesante filmar en el exterior, por donde la gente pasaba con otra actitud: los jóvenes, los mayores, incluso la propia Vanda. Para poder percibir estos matices, necesité mucho tiempo de trabajo cinematográfico; no soy un genio, creo que nadie lo es, y hay que contar con la dificultad añadida de trabajar sin guión y sin horarios. Conseguí introducirme en el entramado social del barrio: yo era el tipo que hace cine, como otro era el que hace zapatos, sin ninguna diferencia. Ellos sabían que mi trabajo es muy duro físicamente, y lo veían como algo serio. La mayoría de la gente piensa que hacer cine es un lujo que sólo está al alcance de unos pocos, de personas especiales; yo intento que el cine se contemple desde un punto de vista más normal, más cotidiano.

Esta pregunta se ciñe al aspecto puramente estético: ¿cómo configuraste los planos desde un punto de vista pictórico?, ¿tenías referencias previas de cuadros que te interesaba reflejar, o es algo que surgió después? Y en cuanto a la luz, ¿utilizaste algún tipo de iluminación concreto en los espacios interiores?

Sobre todo pensé en cómo filmar; intenté hacerlo de la forma más auténtica posible: prescindiendo de la maquinaria, de manera que sólo tenía un trípode y la cámara. Tampoco podía hacer panorámicas o experimentar con los planos, puesto que las distancias en la habitación son muy reducidas; entre la cama, la puerta y la pared hay un metro y medio. Utilicé el trípode porque necesitaba una cámara fija y sabía que tenía que filmar durante largos espacios de tiempo: no podía hacerlo con la cámara en la mano.

¿Toda la luz era natural?

Para hacer No quarto da Vanda siempre usé luz natural; aunque a veces encendía una lámpara de mesa que tenía Vanda. Sólo una vez, en invierno, tuve que utilizar una luz de proyección porque había mucha oscuridad. En la última película, Juventude em marcha, tuve que recurrir a la luz artificial en tres o cuatro secuencias: una de ellas porque tiene lugar dentro del museo, en las otras era de noche y utilicé una lámpara en la parte baja de la cámara. Normalmente pido a los actores que se sitúen cerca de las ventanas o de las puertas; cuando la luz no tiene suficiente brillo, pongo un espejo o papel de aluminio. Es muy trabajoso porque requiere tiempo y elaboración, pero forma parte de mis principios económicos y estéticos, incluso de mis principios morales. Creo que la luz artificial es muy violenta y los actores se concentran mejor sin la intensidad eléctrica. Como filmo en vídeo, ya hay suficiente electricidad.

Juventude em marcha ha estado compitiendo en Cannes este año, 2006, en la Sección Oficial, y ha tenido muy buena acogida aunque parte de la crítica reaccionó como era de esperar, ¿recuerdas algún comentario que te sorprendiera?

Sí, recuerdo dos en concreto que me llamaron mucho la atención. En relación a la escena del museo, alguien me preguntó que si, para filmar a Ventura, había tomado referencias en el cuadro “Cuatro cabezas negras” de Rubens. Es un cuadro que no conocía, ni había oído hablar de él; cuando regresé de Cannes, lo pude ver, y la verdad es que tiene cierto parecido con las perspectivas que adopte para grabar a Ventura. En otra ocasión un crítico me dijo que creía que Juventude em marcha era así porque tenía una fuerte influencia de Naruse. Descubrí a Naruse hace tres años y, además de ser una personalidad en este ámbito, fue un descubrimiento muy importante para mí; pero nunca pensé en su cine cuando estaba haciendo la película. Después me he dado cuenta de que no es una comparación desafortunada porque hay semejanzas, sobre todo en las relaciones de fraternidad masculina y en la desestructuración de las familias (y en la imposibilidad absoluta para estructurarse). Ozu, por ejemplo, presenta un tipo de familia que, a pesar de los problemas con los hijos o con los padres, tiende a estar unida. Las familias de Naruse son imposibles: la relación entre sus miembros es enfermiza y no quieren estar juntos, buscan la soledad y acaban siempre muy mal.

Está bien traída la referencia a Naruse, también se ha comentado la influencia que los Straub pueden tener en Juventude em marcha. De hecho la película parece el resultado de la agregación de Onde jaz o teu sorriso? a No quarto de Vanda. ¿Hasta qué punto el encuentro con ellos dos, Jean-Marie Straub y Danièle Huillet, ha estado presente en tu método de trabajo?

Creo que esta comparación es más certera, pero la clave está en que en este filme ensayamos mucho: hicimos muchísimas tomas de todos los planos y de todas las escenas. Hacíamos un plano cuarenta, cincuenta, ochenta, hasta cien veces; había ocasiones en las que sólo hacíamos un plano durante una semana. Evidentemente esta concentración en el trabajo, la reducción del texto, de las miradas y de los gestos, tiene su origen en los cineastas a los que admiro. Si tengo que tomar referencias, me fijo en Straub antes que en Gus Van Sant, por ejemplo. Los Straub tienen un método de trabajo muy controlado; no se sirven de la improvisación, ni de lo accidental. Si sucede algo espontáneo que se puede utilizar, lo utilizan, pero si no se puede, continúan ensayando. La gran diferencia es que ellos tienen la capacidad de concentrar el esfuerzo y consiguen filmar en muy poco tiempo, trabajan con mucha preparación; en cambio yo, aunque también trabajo con mucha preparación, tengo el defecto de ser muy lento. Ellos son capaces de ver a priori el resultado de lo que van a hacer, y yo, para verlo, tengo que perder mucho tiempo, haciendo que las personas que trabajan conmigo también lo pierdan hasta quedar casi exhaustas.

En la película No quarto da Vanda, los personajes se expresan de forma espontánea, podríamos hablar de un lenguaje coloquial muy cercano a la realidad; en cambio, en Juventude em marcha el espectador puede tener la sensación de que están recitando un texto, aunque no es exactamente así. ¿Cómo llegas hasta ese texto?

En esta película, el texto es la base de la narración fílmica; y está creado por los propios actores. Yo intervine para dar forma y orden: todos los días tomaba notas de las ideas y de las historias que contaban, y después lo estructuraba. La narración está hecha en forma de mensajes que han creado los actores dando vida a sus personajes, entre los cuales, el más evidente es la carta que recita Ventura, y que repite a lo largo de la película.

La carta es un mensaje a la mujer que lo ha abandonado y en ella se ve el miedo al olvido que tiene Ventura, ¿existía previamente, o la escribiste tú?

La idea se me ocurrió cuando supe que Ventura escribía las cartas de sus amigos a sus respectivas familias y mujeres porque era el único que sabía leer y escribir. Una pequeña parte de aquella carta ya aparecía en Casa de lava. La recordé y a partir de ahí, hice una parte con algunos fragmentos de un poeta surrealista francés que se llama Robert Desnos, otra parte la escribí yo y una tercera parte es del propio Ventura. Me pareció interesante que imaginara que un amigo le pedía que escribiera una carta a la mujer de este, pero poco a poco se fue convirtiendo en una carta de Ventura a su propia mujer; el resultado es una especie de disolución, un mensaje universal para todas las mujeres, para el espectador. El resto de los textos está fuertemente ligado a la memoria de los personajes. No quarto da Vanda hay una escena bastante larga en la que Vanda y un amigo suyo hablan de una amiga, Jenny, que murió de una sobredosis. Esta escena tuvo lugar en la vida real: el día de la muerte de esta joven, llegó a casa de Vanda un chico, Pedro das Flores, y estuvieron hablando de ella. Yo estaba allí con la cámara, no recuerdo si lo filmé. Vanda había llorado mucho y tenía la cara desfigurada, pero fue muy emotivo: dos personas hablando en un momento de muerte. Les dije que me gustaría hacer esta escena en la película, pero que tendríamos que esperar algún tiempo para que se disipara la emoción. Sería un homenaje a Jenny, que no pudo aparecer en el filme. Una semana después comenzamos a ensayar y es una de las escenas más bonitas; se prescinde de la agitación, pero no se pierde sensibilidad: se gana fuerza y un sentimiento más duro que se refleja mejor en la pantalla. La memoria selectiva hizo que pudieran concentrarse en las cosas importantes y, en vez de hablar en todas las direcciones, canalizan el texto. También he utilizado este método en Juventude em marcha.

En Juventude em marcha hay una presencia constante de la muerte, incluso algunos personajes pueden llegar a parecer fantasmas, quizá debido a la estructura narrativa, que no es lineal. A pesar de esto, es una película muy vitalista, incluso optimista, porque Vanda se muestra en un momento de maternidad y recuperada de su adicción a las drogas, ¿qué sensación has tenido al respecto?

Evidentemente, el título, Juventude em marcha, es muy irónico: la juventud que se muestra no está precisamente “en marcha”. Pero por otra parte es muy certero, desde el momento en el que se entiende que la marcha es como el caudal continuo de un río, como la propia secuencia de imágenes que compone un filme. Cuando llegué al barrio, encontré un grupo de personas muy jóvenes que sólo quería hablar de temas serios, siempre relacionados con la enfermedad y con la muerte, considerando que la muerte es un corte, como un final. La escena que más me costó llevar a cabo, a mí y al actor que la hizo, fue la del hospital: un joven hospitalizado solicita a Ventura que le hable de su madre; en el transcurso de esta conversación, el joven comprende que se ha producido un corte en la relación entre ambos (su madre y él), y concluye la escena dando la espalda a la cámara. Es como un acto de suicidio. Para él fue muy difícil porque es un joven con tendencias suicidas. No obstante, a pesar de esta gravedad, es una película que no transmite un sentimiento triste. Si bien habla de temas muy duros, la conclusión es casi siempre una sensación de aprendizaje de los personajes. Por ejemplo el discurso de Vanda está guiado, en gran medida, por la maternidad. Plantea cuestiones acerca de su aprendizaje como madre: qué puede hacer para que su hija crezca bien, cómo puede enseñarle a ser una buena persona, en definitiva; cómo puede llegar a ser una buena madre. Vanda está aprendiendo todo sobre la vida y mantiene una comunicación silenciosa con su hija: no se dicen nada, pero hay un diálogo entre la experiencia y la inexperiencia, y esto es muy bonito. Creo que, aunque la película está sumida en un lado oscuro, nunca se deja llevar por él. En cuanto a los fantasmas que mencionabas, es cierto que hay dos personajes que pueden parecerlo: el de un joven que muere y más tarde vuelve a aparecer, y el de una muchacha que nunca sale de su casa; yo mismo no estoy seguro de que exista. A lo largo del filme, Ventura va dando forma al resto de los personajes. Aunque todos existen, él los moldea y los adapta a su pensamiento: considera que son sus hijos. Creo que es la explicación a estas anomalías. Me gusta mucho este equilibrio de la narración entre por ejemplo Vanda y su hija y sus respectivos procesos de aprendizaje porque produce una ambigüedad muy vitalista. La película acaba con un intento de diálogo entre la hija de Vanda y Ventura en el cuarto de la madre, lo viejo y lo nuevo, como la película de Eisenstein.

Un sector de la crítica de Cannes opinaba que quizá tu película es más apropiada para exponer en un museo, que en una sala de cine. Esto es muy significativo porque refleja los cambios que se están produciendo con relación a lo que hoy en día se entiende por cine.

Estoy en total desacuerdo con esta opinión y, sinceramente: esta gente no está bien de la cabeza. Creo que siempre que una película trate un tema que pueda parecer interesante a algún sector de la sociedad, merece ser expuesta en una sala de cine, independientemente de la forma que tenga. El cine ha sido creado como un objeto para pensar, pero con belleza. Creo que el espectador ha perdido rigurosidad, y que cada vez que le plantean una trama que no sigue los esquemas del cine convencional que se hace hoy en día, piensa en un museo, en arte. Con este punto de vista llegará un día en el que sea imposible ver un filme de Buñuel o de Chaplin en una sala de cine. Resulta inquietante pensar que se puede perder la capacidad de concentración necesaria para entender películas como El gran dictador, o los westerns épicos de King Vidor, por ejemplo. Otra circunstancia que tiene mucha culpa y ha provocado esta situación es algún cine moderno de autor que ha creado su propia muerte. Hay algún director que consigue salvarse porque se pone de moda, como es el caso de Gus Van Sant, pero en general es un gettho y se mueve en un círculo cerrado y asfixiante. Por culpa de opiniones como esta, hay grandes trabajos que no llegan a distribuirse, como los de Straub. La gente piensa que es arte estático, pero son películas que necesitan una gran pantalla y personas sentadas unas al lado de otras, concentradas en la trama, es un cine absolutamente normal; y sería imposible visualizarlo con instalaciones de vídeo, en proyecciones ante las que la gente pasa sin detenerse.

Nos gustaría que hablaras sobre la evolución de tu cine, desde O sangue, Casa de lava u Ossos hasta No quarto da Vanda o Juventude em marcha. Son muy diferentes, aunque mantienes la misma línea. Da la impresión de que te has quitado un peso de encima, quizá por el cambio en el sistema de producción, ¿cómo sientes esta evolución?

Has dado una clave fundamental: me he ido alejando de los sistemas de producción tradicionales. Estaba muy incómodo trabajando con ellos porque se despilfarra el dinero en máquinas, en proyectores y en plantillas con mucho personal. Sentía que era parte de un engaño al no poder desarrollar una idea seria porque dependía de circunstancias económicas e instrumentales, que en realidad no tenían ninguna relación con dicha idea. Creo que me estaba engañando a mí mismo. En Hollywood sucedía lo mismo, pero con el estudio: se invertían tantas horas en un estudio cinematográfico, a diario, que para hacer cosas nuevas, fueron necesarios muchos años de trabajo. En un momento dado empecé a pensar que un barrio y sus vecinos podían convertirse en un estudio y sus actores, así que busqué cosas nuevas e interesantes que hacer siguiendo este camino. Cuando entras en un estudio de este tipo, te sumerges en un mundo: con sus propias historias, con sus personajes y con sus anécdotas. Sólo traté de reflejarlo de la forma más fiel; intenté captar su espíritu. Utilicé el vídeo porque me permitía prescindir de muchas máquinas de cine. Me gustaría hacer un inciso llegados a este punto: cuando filmas con tanta minuciosidad, hay muy pocas diferencias entre el trabajo con vídeo y con 35 mm., siempre que se cuente con los medios indispensables que requieren los 35 mm. y no con grandes equipos. Y hago este apunte porque una de las grandes mentiras que se dicen hoy en día es que trabajar con vídeo aporta más libertad y que es más fácil. Estas afirmaciones son absolutamente falsas porque se dan los mismos problemas en ambos formatos, y la diferencia que hay es la del prestigio; por lo demás hay que filmar con el mismo cuidado y con la misma delicadeza. Toda esta disyuntiva se da porque la gente piensa que hacer cine es caro, cuando en realidad no lo es: la película y los laboratorios son caros, pero la culpa es de los realizadores que no han sabido exigir un precio razonable. La mayoría del dinero se gasta en hoteles, aviones, cenas, sueldos para contratar a grandes estrellas y atrezzos. Existe la falsa creencia de que hacer cine es un lujo, y todos los directores empiezan a trabajar con vídeo; como consecuencia, hacer vídeo cada vez es más caro, sobre todo el proceso de posproducción. Si hemos llegado a esta situación es porque los cineastas lo han permitido; al menos algunos de ellos se han dejado llevar por este destello. Tengo algunos amigos que tienen grandes ideas y son muy estimados, pero están fascinados por esta luz, por esta vida que recuerda a las estrellas del rock de antes. Los más cercanos a mí son Vincent Gallo y Claire Denis: intento convencerles de que el cine no consiste en esto. El hecho de pasar un año en festivales, en cenas, filmando en ocho semanas con todos los lujos, con chófer y con asistentes, sólo produce momentos de decepción una vez que ha terminado todo. El cine no puede ser una decepción para quien lo hace, y para evitarlo hay que trabajar todos los días. Hay tomárselo como un puesto de funcionario, así lo hacían Vertov y Chaplin, sólo que aquí no hay aseguradoras ni abogados que justifiquen que estás enfermo: si un día no puedes filmar, lo haces al día siguiente. Luis Buñuel trabajaba así; la imagen que tengo de él es la de un gran trabajador, la de un tipo duro. Era un hombre que sabía hacer cosas, sabía trabajar con las manos si era necesario, y hacía muchas películas. Yo hago pocas, pero trabajo todos los días. El cine necesita una previsión diaria y hay que tener un comportamiento cercano a lo enfermizo, a lo adolescente y a lo patético.

Es como cuando a Fassbinder le decían: “usted trabaja mucho”, y él siempre respondía: “no trabajo más que un hombre que hace zapatos”.

Es exactamente eso. Cuando pienso en cineastas a los que admiro, pienso en personas muy humildes. Tanto Fassbinder como Godard son hombres trabajadores. Godard siempre está trabajando, puede cometer errores una y otra vez, pero es infatigable, Ozu, que ha hecho un oficio de su trabajo, también John Ford es un gran ejemplo. Straub me contó una anécdota que refleja el mejor piropo que un cineasta le puede dirigir a otro. En una entrevista le preguntaron a John Ford que cual era su película favorita, él respondió que quien más le gustaba era Renoir. El periodista quiso saber qué filme de Renoir le gustaba más, y Ford le contestó: “Todos”. Es lo mejor que un trabajador le puede decir a otro, aunque las cosas sean fallidas a veces. Renoir tiene unas películas mejores que otras, pero en el conjunto de su obra, todas son importantes. Lo mismo sucede con Fassbinder; me gustan la mayoría de sus creaciones, pero todas tienen algún fallo.

No sabemos si habrás visto una película de Chantal Akerman que se llama D’Est. Hemos hablado sobre ella y nos gusta mucho. Sin embargo, Godard dijo que se mostraba una especie de “estetización de la pobreza”. Suponemos que es algo que te has planteado porque en tus películas reflejas ambientes con mucha pobreza, ¿crees que Godard puede tener razón?

Es una cuestión difícil porque no tengo muchos argumentos para defenderme. Creo que el límite que separa la ficción del documental es muy estrecho y muy fácil de pasar. Algunas películas documentales buscan planos y escenas que las hacen estar muy cerca de la ficción, y viceversa. Aunque pienso que este no es el caso de Chantal: esta “estetización” de la que habla Godard está provocada por un sistema formal muy fuerte que caracteriza sus películas; tiene varias en las que es palpable su sensibilidad formal. A parte del estilo de cada uno, el documental es muy difícil porque hay que reflejar la realidad y hay que plantearse cómo hacerlo para no caer en errores. En mi caso, traté de convertir los aspectos cotidianos en elementos formal y estéticamente fuertes. En No quarto da Vanda intenté que las personas se convirtieran en héroes: héroes en una habitación cuyas conversaciones pudieran ser una narración sobre el barrio; tenían que ser su emblema político, con su economía y su moral. Quise reflejar una comunidad de personas que tienen un pensamiento común y que, en el fondo, mantienen las mismas convicciones, y para ello, seguí un patrón narrativo clásico: con sus héroes y sus heroínas. La luz contribuyó en gran medida porque en aquel lugar había lo que podría llamarse “coherencia cromática”. Cineastas muy prestigiosos como Tati, Bresson, o el mismo Ozu mantienen la teoría de que demasiados colores pueden distraer la atención; el barrio es muy poco colorido, abunda el verde azulado y los colores usados, gastados. Todo esto provoca un entorno cromático que aporta coherencia a la película y está muy concentrada. Los escenarios también hicieron su aportación: es un filme en movimiento continuo en el que las variaciones vienen dadas por los locales por los que pasa, no modifiqué nada, sólo puse mi punto de vista. Me gustan mucho las paredes, me parecen elementos espectaculares; recuerdan al cine mudo donde una pared era solamente una pared. En el cine de Griffith, por ejemplo, aparecían puertas que se abrían y se cerraban, pero no dejaban de ser puertas; no tenían más intención que esa. Después, en el cine americano nunca se ve una puerta o una ventana; están ahí, pero no interactúan en la película a no ser que tengan un motivo argumental. No sabría defender muy bien mi postura en cuanto a la “estetización de la pobreza”, pero a lo largo de la historia del arte hay varios ejemplos. Algunas cantatas de Bach giran en torno a los pobres, al pan y al hambre. Recuerdo una en concreto que se llama Tenemos hambre. Es una cantata profana: habla de los alemanes de Leipzig que sufrían y tenían hambre. ¿Tendría que ser ésta más fea que las cantatas religiosas? No lo es, pero si lo fuera, la causa no estaría en el tema que trata. Incluso recuerdo un cuadro de Rubens que se llama Huída a Egipto: se ve a Jesús huyendo con su padre, con su madre y con un burro; de alguna manera también refleja una situación de pobreza, religiosa además, y no por esto es menos bello. Estamos hablando de un concepto muy vago, nadie sabe muy bien de lo que habla cuando utiliza el término “estetización”. Por otra parte no creo que tenga que significar lo mismo para todos. Por ejemplo, el cine de las décadas de los 70 y de los 80 era horrible. Había un grupo de cineastas franceses de pesadilla encabezados por Benoît Jacquot, que era el peor cineasta del mundo y que buscaba el esteticismo a su manera: los personajes siempre estaban pensando y moviendo las manos, las películas estaban ambientadas en París, y su conjunto cromático estaba compuesto por colores pastel. Este “escuadrón”, que también contaba con algún cineasta español, pretendía seguir la línea estética de Tarkovski, pero sus obras están muy lejos de las de su modelo; no comprendo qué tipo de referencias tomaban. Es cierto que Tarkovski introduce alguna exclamación de vez en cuando, pero no creo que su cine guarde alguna relación con este tipo de esteticismo místico en el que se presentaban los pobres y la miseria por un lado, y los ricos por otro. Hacían un cine muy malo. El esteticismo era Angelopoulos... ¡un horror! Varias veces me han planteado este tipo de preguntas, sobre todo en los festivales a los que he llevado la película. Curiosamente la gente que más inquieta se muestra es la que se dedica al género del documental, que llegan a plantear la cuestión inevitable: “qué es verdad y qué es mentira, ¿se drogan o no se drogan?”, son cuestiones al nivel de la prensa del corazón cuando hablan de Brad y Angelina. En fin, que yo no sé si Godard tenía mucha razón cuando decía aquello, a lo mejor no, a veces hasta él se equivoca...

Ya que has mencionado la coherencia cromática, me gustaría que nos hablaras de la coherencia formal de Juventude em marcha. Como el juego que haces con planos casi frontales, ligeramente laterales, contrapicados: siempre muestras las esquinas o los rincones, donde se juntan las dos paredes y el techo. Parece que de ahí arrancara toda la fuerza de los planos. Álvaro Arroba dice que le recuerda a Orson Welles y a muchos Ford de la primera época porque siempre se ve el techo.

Sí, es verdad; es inevitable, aunque es posible que antes que la influencia de Orson Welles esté la de algunos cineastas soviéticos que trabajan con elementos que transmiten mucha fuerza. Busqué la manera para que las estructuras fueran palpables, quería mostrar el hecho mismo de la construcción: desde la obra realizada por los operarios, hasta la propia película que se iba construyendo; también la carta sigue un proceso semejante al de la edificación de una casa. Me cautivó la idea de que la película tratara sobre las casas, las ventanas, las habitaciones, las escaleras, las puertas y las paredes. Siempre intenté que en los planos aparecieran las ventanas para que se viera por dónde quedaba el sol. Quería reflejar procesos de construcción: aquel por el cual una estructura puede soportar otras, dando lugar a estructuras complejas. Todo esto guarda una estrecha relación con el personaje de Ventura: a lo largo del filme, me fui dando cuenta de que es un hombre que se ha construido a sí mismo, un hombre colosal, porque de alguna manera soporta la estructura de las relaciones humanas en el barrio.

Quisiera que nos hablaras de la escena del museo; cómo surgió, qué museo es, qué cuadros aparecen…

Es una escena que se me ocurrió muy tarde. En un momento dado de una conversación con Ventura, cuando pasábamos en coche por delante de este museo lisboeta, nos contó que había participado en su construcción. Nos dijo que su primer contrato en Lisboa fue de albañil, para hacer el alcantarillado y la canalización del museo. Se trata de un museo privado, no el mayor, pero sí el mejor de la ciudad. Se llama Gulbenkien, que fue un magnate de petróleo armenio y tenía una colección de pintura enorme: creó una fundación con su nombre (Calouste Gulbenkien) y el museo, que existe desde los años 70.

Resulta curioso que sea un museo tan oscuro.

No, eso fue culpa nuestra porque utilizamos la luz que había en el museo y, normalmente, habría que iluminar mucho más para filmar dentro.

Nos gusta la naturalidad con la que Ventura se sienta allí.

La idea era convertir a Ventura en una figura más interesante que Rubens o que Van Dyck, y creo que lo consigue. Hay un plano en el que aparece un cuadro de un aristócrata de Delft o de Flandes, que está esnifando rapé. Ventura está sentado con un paquete de tabaco en la mano; un tabaco antiguo, como de western, que se llama “Marie Antoinette”, a mí me parece una marca muy aristocrática, muy a lo Gary Cooper. Se da una imagen simpática de Ventura como aristócrata: parece que sólo él se puede permitir el lujo de fumar, igual que sólo la realeza y la nobleza se podían permitir el lujo de esnifar rapé. Otro motivo por el que se me ocurrió hacer esta escena fue el hecho de que Ventura hiciera una visita al museo, porque no había entrado nunca. La única vez que lo había intentado fue expulsado inmediatamente: es una persona un poco extraña, por decirlo de alguna manera. Supongo que levantó algún tipo de sospecha en el vigilante, puede que pensara que quería robar o algo por el estilo. Intentamos reconstruir esta escena: cuando entra, se encuentra con un vigilante que va a hablar con él y lo lleva por el museo como si fuera una prisión. Después pensamos que este vigilante podía conocer a Ventura; podía ser otro de sus “hijos”, y así aparecería un personaje joven más en la película. Nos gustó mucho esta posibilidad. Me sentí muy bien porque este tipo de escenas acostumbran a hacerse de otra manera. Normalmente se presta más atención al arte; los museos en el cine se suelen usar como decorados en historias de amor o como entorno de intelectuales, evitando siempre la controversia. Como dice Straub, mantienen una estrecha relación con la alta cultura. Creo que la escena de Ventura, en el fondo, es de este tipo, pero está muy alejada de la vanidad: puede guardar cierta semejanza con Hitchcock, con el museo de Vértigo.

Los Straub también han hecho una película sobre una visita al Louvre de una forma diferente; se ven los cuadros, pero no el interior del museo.

Sí, y es una gran película. Creo que el principio de los Straub y el mío es el mismo: cuestionar la consideración general de que unas personas tienen derecho al acceso de la cultura y otras no. Recuerdo un momento muy bonito durante el rodaje de la escena en el museo. Estábamos Ventura y yo frente a un Rembrandt y, mientras yo miraba el cuadro, él miraba la pared que lo sostenía, la que él hizo. Sólo después vio el cuadro y dijo: “no está mal”. Creo que una parte importante de la preocupación de Straub es saber por qué se da esta diferencia entre la alta cultura y la baja cultura. Él siempre dice que lo que quiere dar a conocer es Bach a los operarios de la Volkswagen, por ejemplo. Hay planos en los que se ve a Ventura tocando las paredes y el suelo: lo verdaderamente interesante para él son las paredes, aunque de ellas pendan auténticos Rembrandt, y creo que esto es algo muy grande.

Jaime Pena explica el origen del título de tu película Juventude em marcha. En el artículo que escribió dice que está fuertemente vinculado con una organización de jóvenes comunistas de Cabo Verde.

Sí, está relacionado con el partido de la independencia. En los años 60 comenzaron las guerras africanas de liberación. Guinea estaba divida en tres: Guinea belga, Guinea portuguesa y Guinea Bissau. Fue entonces cuando surgió un partido para la independencia guineana, PAIGC. Su líder y fundador, podríamos denominarlo el “Che Guevara de Guinea”, se llamaba Amílcar Cabral y era considerado un héroe: se dedicaba a la enseñanza y al mismo tiempo estaba con las armas, terminó por ser asesinado. En un momento dado, juntó a Guinea con Cavo Verde porque estaban más o menos en frente, en el Océano Atlántico, y fundó el PAIGCV, Cabo Verde: Partido para la independencia de Guinea y Cabo Verde. En realidad, Cabo Verde nunca llegó a participar en la guerra: era una tierra tranquila y pobre, no llueve nunca; así que sus tierras son secas y áridas, es un país muy difícil. Esto produjo un fuerte movimiento de emigración: a Lisboa, a Francia… El PAIGCV, como casi todos los partidos comunistas, y también los fascistas, contó siempre con agrupaciones de jóvenes: ellos son los pioneros, los pequeños rebeldes, los que portan los emblemas; son sus muñecos. En Cabo Verde, incluso, tenían que pagar un tributo al partido (ahora convertido en el Partido Comunista Social Demócrata). Todavía recuerdo con nitidez aquellas marchas de soldados cantando la canción de los jóvenes comunistas, Juventude em marcha. La letra decía algo así como:

"Juventud en marcha
Para un futuro radiante,
Para un sol..."

Ya no lo recuerdo, pero transmite la idea de una juventud efervescente. Me gusta mucho el título que le han puesto a la película en inglés: Colossal Youth. No se puede traducir ni al francés, ni al portugués, ni al español, porque es el título de un disco que hizo un grupo punk a finales de los 70, los “Young Marble Gigants”, son muy buenos, en la portada de su único disco salía una estatua asiria, un coloso.

Hay un texto de Quintín en “Cinemascope” que habla sobre tu cine. Trata de la opinión tan extendida que hay en el cine: “el tiempo es dinero”. Subraya que tú rompes con esa idea porque inviertes mucho tiempo en tus películas, pero no mucho dinero.

Yo no soy el único, los Straub hacen lo mismo. Hay muchas personas que se dedican al cine preocupadas por esto, pero en mi caso particular la razón está en que soy muy lento trabajando. No me da vergüenza reconocerlo porque Jean Renoir lo dijo hace años en una entrevista que le hicieron para “Cahiers du Cinéma”: llegó un punto en el que el periodista le acusó de emplear demasiado tiempo, y él contesto: “es que no soy capaz de ver las cosas a priori, como las pueden ver otros”. Personalmente creo que hay muy pocas personas con esta capacidad, Godard.... Casi todos los cineastas dicen que la tienen: que saben exactamente lo que quieren hacer y que tienen las ideas muy claras, pero cuando ves sus películas, allí no hay nada de lo que han contado. Yo lo admito; no puedo de ver las cosas con antelación, y a medida que pasa el tiempo me resulta más difícil: la dispersión del ambiente que rodea el rodaje me confunde cada vez más, y necesito mucho tiempo para saber cómo va a quedar una escena. Renoir hablaba de esta lentitud diciendo que su relación con sus películas era la antítesis de lo que Hollywood exige: allí un director puede estar haciendo cuatro filmes al mismo tiempo, y los cuatro resultan fallidos, porque se han hecho con demasiada rapidez. No ha dado tiempo a trabajar con los actores, ni a encontrar las localizaciones adecuadas o los planos más convenientes. Esta es la razón por la que decidió abandonar América y volver a Europa, donde podía seguir su método de trabajo Al poco tiempo de su regreso, se fue a la India a rodar una película de preparación larguísima, El río, allí estuvo casi un año y no hizo nada, después se tomo otro año para escribir con calma. Mi problema es muy similar: cuando hacía películas convencionales, sentía que me perdía con muchas cosas. Cada vez que intentaba llevar una idea a la práctica, tenía que depender de mucha maquinaria para poder reflejar en la pantalla lo que estaba pensando. Ahora las cosas están mucho mejor. Por ejemplo, no tengo que esperar la luz, porque la luz siempre está ahí. Si está todo bien organizado, en el sentido brechtiano de la palabra (si Brecht estuviera aquí, sabría de lo que estoy hablando), tengo la seguridad de que no hay nada que se escape. En una película está todo al descubierto porque la cámara lo ve todo, por lo menos en mis filmes lo puedo ver: desde el dinero invertido, hasta el esfuerzo que hacemos todos para llevarlo a cabo. Y es evidente que doy mucha más importancia al esfuerzo (el de los actores al hablar y el mío, o el que es preciso para conseguir que un plano continúe sin que se debilite) que, a veces se hace leve y otras cansa como si hubiéramos estado haciendo un trabajo físico.

La descripción que hacía Quintín es muy bonita: dice que inviertes mucho tiempo en la elaboración de tus películas, pero que en contraste el resultado, más que la captación de su paso, es la detención del mismo. Cuando se ve Juventude em marcha da esta sensación, como si estuviera compuesta de cuadros, y no por escenas.

Es cierto, y soy cada vez más clásico y reaccionario. La verdad es que no me interesan en absoluto las historias de contemplación; al menos en el cine. Cualquier escena en la que se vea el paso del tiempo es absurda, por el contrario me gustan mucho las escenas construidas. El problema está en las duraciones ambiguas de los planos. Hay planos en los que se ve a un hombre, por ejemplo, que sale de una habitación, luego vuelve a entrar, se oye música clásica [canturrea], se vuelve a ir… Creo que esto no tiene ningún sentido. Kiarostami ahora trabaja muy próximo al límite entre la escena construida y el plano de duración ambigua; algunas veces parece que sigue un falso camino: un camino turístico. No le sucede siempre, porque normalmente trabaja muy implicado en sus películas, sin distancia, pero esto que digo se ve sobre todo en su lado “artístico”: en sus fotografías e instalaciones. Invierte mucho para conseguir un resultado superficial, engañoso incluso. Sus películas con los niños resultan más interesantes. En el cine hay que empezar por la construcción, el director debe saber por qué un plano acaba o por qué continúa. En Juventude em marcha hay un plano que es inevitable, implacable: o sales o te quedas en él. Durante el montaje estuve pensando en acortarlo, pero era imposible, tenía que llegar mucho más lejos…

Veinte minutos…

No, son quince minutos de plano. Sabía que si lo dejaba intacto estaba cometiendo una gran osadía, y que me podía hacer mucho mal. Sabía que la película podía llegar a durar dos horas y media, o más, y como consecuencia la distribución no iba a ser buena y la acogida del público… en fin, el espectador tiene que tener un poco de estómago para enfrentarse a él. Los Straub tienen muy claro este concepto: un plano dura lo que tiene que durar, pero sin ninguna intención metafísica o espiritual sino al contrario material. Las duraciones flou, extrañas, de Tarkovski me resultan más interesantes. No así sus imitadores como Sharunas Bartas, parece que de repente descubren su lado místico y confunden el arte con el cine: el resultado no es más que una teorización de la belleza. Esta no es la forma de mostrar la belleza en el cine, no tiene nada que ver con la duración de los planos: la belleza está en la forma, no en el tiempo. La duración de un plano no es nada si lo que se muestra en él no está relacionado con los demás elementos del filme, con lo anterior y con lo posterior. Si se hace una película con duraciones ambiguas, el resultado será también ambiguo, vacío. Otra dificultad con la que trabajo es la falta de guión; mis películas comienzan a tomar forma después de varios meses de rodaje. En primer lugar imagino una construcción, de forma casi onírica; en segundo lugar, el auténtico proceso de construcción lo hacen los actores, la luz y los espacios.

El plano de Vanda es uno de los más tiernos, es necesario. Te permite acercarte a la película porque explica todo lo sucedido desde No quarto da Vanda hasta Juventude em marcha.

Es un plano muy importante por muchas razones. Cuando estábamos trabajando en él, Vanda dijo algo fundamental: “Qué pena que haya un filme llamado No quarto da Vanda”. Esta película la hicimos entre los dos, ella y yo, y en ella hay una Vanda que murió, pero a pesar de ello, está también en Juventude em marcha. Era una especie de juego de espejos tétrico, porque ambos teníamos una parte de nosotros en el primer filme: es el primer trabajo que hice con Vanda, y creo que no haré nunca nada mejor con ella. No quarto da Vanda es una película en la que trabajamos mucho; todo estaba ensayado al milímetro y no hubo nada improvisado. Grabábamos con el sonido en directo y Vanda jamás dijo una palabra que no le correspondiera. La línea de trabajo fue muy clásica: las cosas fueron comprendidas, trabajadas, y hechas como en cualquier otro filme. No estábamos haciendo underground ni poesía. Por otra parte, es un plano extraño porque Vanda le cuenta a Ventura cómo era ella cuando hizo No quarto da Vanda, y él hace como si no lo supiera. El problema es que Ventura es vecino de Vanda, siempre lo fue, y ella le tiene que hablar con frases como: “tú no sabes cómo era yo”, o “yo hacía esto, y aquello, y lo de más allá”, y él tiene que fingir que se sorprende. El rodaje fue un juego con la muerte, porque, mediante la simulación de ambos, teníamos que acabar con la Vanda de No quarto da Vanda, y nos dejó un sabor de boca muy extraño: los tres sabíamos que estábamos manejando un tema muy serio. Este sabor queda subsanado cuando Vanda hace la reflexión final: “¿Cómo he podido llegar a ser madre?”, es extraordinario, como cuando los personajes de Ozu se preguntan cómo ser un buen padre o una buena madre. Cuando trabajas con actores cuya relación con sus personajes es tan estrecha, se da un sentimiento muy íntimo. En Juventude em marcha el aspecto de Vanda es muy distinto al que tenía en No quarto da Vanda, aparece gorda, hinchada. Ella quería aparecer más gorda todavía para eliminar su imagen de junkie fashion. ¡Porque Vanda en Japón es una superestrella! Cuando se presentó allí No quarto da Vanda hubo japonesas muy guapas que se hicieron camisetas con su cara, e incluso la casa “Yves Saint Laurent” (me sorprendió muchísimo) contactó conmigo porque querían llevar a un estudio fotográfico algunas escenas de mi película “en la que hay dos muchachas en una habitación” representadas por dos modelos muy pálidas: ¡no! Por este motivo Vanda y yo queríamos cuidar mucho de esta mujer, aunque estuviera gorda y más fea, envejecida. Yo también he envejecido, y, gracias a eso, hemos podido vivir historias de juventud y de vejez. Me hubiera gustado poner una cantata de Bach en ese plano: Que tu belleza sea como tu juventud, me gusta mucho esta pieza, pero sólo hubiera tenido lugar al final del plano. Cuando ví el plano completo, me di cuenta de que está cerrado y ajustado: no fue posible porque así está bien.

Nos gustaría que expresaras tu opinión respecto a la contradicción metodológica que hay entre Bresson y los Straub. Estos dicen que para hacer cine no hay que mover la cámara del mismo lugar, pero sí se puede cambiar el objetivo; aquél defiende que se puede mover la cámara tantas veces como sea necesario, pero siempre con el mismo objetivo.

Sabes que quien muestra un aspecto muy riguroso, muy cerrado, después resulta ser más abierto de lo que aparenta. Cuando los Straub hablan de que mirar hacia un lugar de esta o de aquella manera no tiene sentido, que hay que hacerlo de esta otra forma, se resume en una frase suya: “Tu novia es bella por todos los lados, pero tú sólo puedes mirarla desde uno”. Esta es la cuestión, no puedes mirar desde todos los ángulos a la vez. Straub siempre dice: “para que una película sea materialista, tiene que ser religiosa; para que una película sea realmente de silla y sobremesa, tiene que creer absolutamente en Dios”. Tiene que ser así. Es necesaria una creencia, no sé si en Dios, en una fuerza o en una convicción, con un sentido del movimiento, con una tensión que es la que une todas las cosas, a todas las personas. Una película tiene que girar siempre alrededor de una trama; un río donde la gente se baña, por ejemplo: allí pasan cosas que no pueden ser cortadas. Eso es el misticismo para mí. No tiene nada que ver con lo que busca Angelopoulos con cincuenta minutos de pensamiento, allí, en la pantalla; la experiencia no es una pantalla, no es ponerse a pensar. La idea que defiende Straub es: “si lo que ves es bonito, por qué te vas a mover”.

Notas sobre Onde Jaz o teu Sorriso?

Thierry Lounas

Discussão elíptica, comentários cruzados, contradição e discussão, se necessário: a solução encontrada não é intermédia e a lição de montagem é muito pouco didáctica.
Danièle Huillet, sentada à mesa de montagem, concentra-se no ecrã, deixa correr os fotogramas da frente para trás, de trás para a frente, em busca de um ponto de corte possível. Jean-Marie Straub, sentado um bom metro atrás dela, falsamente distraído, gesticula como um menino de escola, realça os efeitos mortíferos das ideias demasiado sedutoras e dos raccords perfeitos, mas está sempre pronto para uma divagação teórica. O que aqui se procura não é a fluidez ou legibilidade da montagem. Por isso, é perfeitamente natural que o espectáculo do trabalho dos cineastas possua também algo de hermético. Depois, a pouco e pouco, vamo-nos adaptando. Vão-se preenchendo os vazios, vamo-nos habituando ao implícito do pequeno teatro. Os movimentos, o ritual tornam-se familiares: trabalho de pesquisa, assistência silenciosa, depois, cerimónia do corte por Danièle Huillet, de luvas, enquanto Jean-Marie Straub, que saiu da sala, anda de um lado para o outro no corredor, irrompe de vez em quando pela sala e faz algumas reflexões, para si próprio, para o fora de campo, para Danièle. Mas o recreio é curto. È repreendido. Porta fechada. Luz apagada. Regresso ao lugar.
É-me difícil ser apenas o relator/espectador de Onde Jaz o teu Sorriso?, na medida em que participei na sua feitura.
Eu conhecia os Straub. Sabia que iam montar uma terceira versão de Sicília! na presença dos alunos do Studio National des Arts Contemporains de Le Fresnoy. Sugeri a Pedro Costa que os filmasse, nessa ocasião. Respondiu-me que gostaria muito. O que se segui é muito simples e, simultaneamente, muito complicado; tem quase a ver com o bom senso. Houve algumas constatações práticas, ligadas ao método de trabalho de Straub, que orientaram o filme. As mais determinantes foram as seguintes.

Num primeiro momento, os Straub não queriam fazer o filme. Não queriam um documento oficial. Achavam que seria comprometerem-se a deixar pistas, dar mostras de vaidade, quando as únicas pistas admissíveis eram os seus filmes. Havia, depois, o receio do álibi cultural: parecia mais lucrativo para o canal televisivo ARTE produzir um filme sobre eles do que apoiar ou comprar os seus próprios filmes. Finalmente, a exiguidade da sala de montagem de Le fresnoy dificultava a presença de uma equipa de filmagens, mesmo reduzida.
Penso que houve duas coisas que os tranquilizaram: a leitura da recensão feita por Emmanuel Burdeau nos Cahiers du Cinema sobre a rodagem, com uma pequena câmara digital, de No Quarto da Vanda, e o facto de Jacques Rivette, que os Straub admiram, gostar muito dos filmes de Pedro Costa, que eles, Straub, ainda não conheciam. Finalmente, não disseram que sim, mas também não disseram que não. A única recomendação era não perturbar Danièle Huillet, nem os alunos.
O sucesso do filme – e digo «sucesso» porque, antes de ser um belo filme, Onde Jaz o teu Sorriso? exigiu alguma sorte e umas quantas coincidências – reside, na minha opinião, numa evidência e dos seus corolários. A evidência é que o esquema clássico «entrevista mais excertos» não poderia de forma alguma servir para o que se queria fazer.

1. Primeiro, porque é um esquema académico e feio.

2. Jean-Marie Straub, como bom porta-voz (e, em primeiro lugar, de sua mulher, Danièle Huillet) tem um discurso a toda a prova, forjado e cultivado, ano após ano. Analisado só por si, esse discurso, dificilmente permeável, poderia ser considerado dogmático e visto como mais um discurso de verdade (a utilização do som directo, o respeito da perspectiva, a abstracção necessária da representação do actor, etc.) quando, pelo contrário, inserido no contexto de trabalho de ambos, talvez revelasse uma incrível preocupação de eficácia e de intensidade. E o que se vê é, precisamente, uma tensão: em cada um dos seus planos, o cineasta hesita, contradiz-se e recomeça, entre a maravilhosa eficácia do cinema clássico e a intensidade formal de um cinema mais experimental. Os Straub citam constantemente (quase por uma questão de moral) Renoir, Chaplin, Mizoguchi ou Dreyer. É mais raro evocarem, decerto por prudência, Hitchcock, Rouch ou Snow.

3. Os Straub são dois, não dois irmãos, como recentemente ouvi dizer, mas um casal. Um deles fala em público. O outro fica na sombra, saindo voluntariamente da cena espectacular, porque, como diz a própria Danièle: «O Jean-Marie fala por mim, por nós». Filmar apenas Jean-Marie Straub a falar seria o mesmo, para usar um exemplo straubiano, que dar a palavra a Aarão, sem nunca mostrar ou fazer ouvir o diálogo ou a discussão com Moisés. Mais simplesmente ainda, um filme dedicado a um casal de cineastas deve ser, necessariamente e acima de tudo, um filme sobre um casal. Aliás, um dos mais belos casais que me foi dado conhecer.

4. Outra das grandes vantagens de filmar o trabalho dos Straub, em vez de uma série de entrevistas, tem a ver com a evidência de que a dificuldade não seria a mesma e a discrição, obrigatória nesse caso, daria lugar a uma ficção mais generosa. Para qualquer filme, mas sobretudo num filme dedicado a um cineasta, a menor modéstia é que o cinema não seja mais forte, nomeadamente pelos seus meios, do que aquilo que se filma. A lógica da entrevista, a mise-en-scène, em geral, são, nesta matéria, sempre duvidosas porque submeteram tudo ao filme. Assim, quando não se quer ser demiurgo, tem que se proceder de forma diferente. A primeira prioridade é arranjar maneira de a relação de forças com aquilo que se filma não jogar unicamente a nosso favor. Caso contrário, surgem inevitavelmente os anedóticos e insolúveis problemas do «natural corrompido pela presença da câmara». Tem de haver sempre uma situação (nem que seja criada artificialmente) que marginalize o cinema e o obrigue a firmar um novo acordo com aquilo que se capta. Ganha-se mais com a troca e a paciência do que com a expressão vampírica da nossa própria imaginação. Pedro Costa, por coincidência, já o havia compreendido em No Quarto da Vanda.

Pensávamos que o momento da rodagem não era o mais propício. A maioria das opções e dos pormenores importantes são decididos muito cedo. A planificação, o trabalho sobre o texto com os actores, fazem-se durante os meses que antecedem a rodagem. Portanto, falta sempre qualquer coisa a quem assiste e, mais ainda, a quem quiser fazer uma descrição precisa. Além disso, sabíamos que seria difícil, admitindo que tivesse algum interesse, obter autorização para filmar durante as cenas, e que só poderíamos ter acesso ao trabalho de preparação dos planos.
A perspectiva de uma terceira versão de Sicília!, de uma terceira montagem, era, portanto, ideal. Permitia um acompanhamento constante da montagem, o que não teria acontecido na primeira versão. E permitia igualmente articular, melhor do que em qualquer outro momento do trabalho dos cineastas, o discurso prático e teórico.

Pedro Costa também tinha pensado filmar os ensaios de Operai, Contadini, no Teatro Comunal Franceco di Bartolo, de Buti, em Itália, por um lado, para compreender melhor como é que, nos Straub, se faz a passagem de um filme para outro e, por outro lado, para mostrar o trabalho minucioso que é feito com os actores sobre um texto. Seis meses depois da montagem de Sicília!, foi filmar alguns desses ensaios. Ficaram registadas umas trinta horas, mas essa parte italiana não aparece na montagem final de Onde Jaz o teu Sorriso?. Pedro Costa preferiu preservar a coerência espacial da sala de montagem e não fazer «transbordar» o filme. Sendo a versão longa o que é, dificilmente se imagina como é que esse pequeno teatro straubiano teria passado incólume pelos ensaios.

Le Fresnoy é uma escola enorme, com uma arquitectura contemporânea, construída nos bairros operários dos arredores de Lille. É um local frio e fantasmagórico. A rodagem começa com uma equipa reduzida: Pedro Costa, com a pequena câmara Panasonic que já tinha servido para No Quarto da Vanda; Jeanne Lapoirie, com mais uma câmara digital, um director de som, Matthieu Imbert. A sala não é grande, os alunos ocupam-na quase toda. Está escuro. Felizmente, há um candeeiro de mesa que se acende automaticamente quando a película deixa de correr, o que dá uns raios de luz ao filme. Costa resolveu colocar-se atrás de Jean-Marie-Straub, enquanto a outra câmara foi colocada no outro lado, mais perto da porta, para não perturbar os alunos e enquadrar o vaivém de Jean-Marie.

Seria necessário filmar os alunos? A montagem propriamente dita não exige contracampo. Todavia, quando Straub sobe à tribuna, quem é o interlocutor? A quem se dirige, quando não se dirige a Daniélle Huillet? Os bons costumes documentaristas exigiriam que se inserisse, pelo menos uma vez, se possível muito cedo, um local de escuta os rostos alegres, ou não, dos alunos de Le Fresnoy. Ora, esses rostos não estão no filme. Onde Jaz o teu Sorriso? é um espectáculo sem espectador, sem outros espectadores a não ser nós mesmos. É o que confere a este filme a sua extraordinária força teatral. A invisibilidade inicialmente desconcertante da audiência converte-se em mera frontalidade onde as intervenções de Straub figuram como apartes. Não são caricaturais. São mais subtis e problemáticas, mais próximas do one-man-show.
Numa situação de monólogo, há dois comportamentos possíveis. Há quem deseje que tudo tenha um cunho muito pessoal e seja dito olhos nos olhos, para dar a ilusão democrática de um intercâmbio possível e, sobretudo, para não haver ambiguidades acerca da originalidade do que é dito. E também há quem só de vez em quando encare o interlocutor, olhando para outro lado e acompanhando, por vezes, esse olhar errante por uma errância real. Straub faz parte desta segunda categoria. Só episodicamente se dirige à assistência, um pouco à maneira de Jean-Pierre Léaud, e raiando sempre o solilóquio. Está – e isso é perturbador – ao mesmo tempo in e off, dando espectáculo para Daniélle Huillet, para os alunos presentes e para a câmara, mas também, de certa maneira, para o espectador desconhecido. Se assim é, para quê mostrar um fora de campo qualquer, já que o fora de campo, o off deste pequeno teatro, é o próprio Straub, que transforma o corredor em bastidores onde se esconde.

Estas notas, ainda que dispersas, pretendem revelar um sentimento: entre os filmes dos Straub e os últimos filmes de Pedro Costa, embora a sua concepção seja muito diferente (os primeiros foram concebidos antes da rodagem, os outros, depois), há uma preocupação comum, vital e determinante: fazer cinema sem lhe ser devoto, exprimir com o cinema o que não lhe pertence exclusivamente. Quer isto dizer, mais concretamente, que cada uma das fases de criação de um filme não tem o carácter lamentável e ridículo das produções clássicas. É ridículo ver que é tudo representação. É ridículo ver que é tudo simulação – a desmistificação gerada, normalmente, pelo espectáculo da rodagem só está, infelizmente, à altura da preocupação de mistificação que o rege (recusam-se os artifícios da série B). O documentário é o local privilegiado para essas aberrações e esse esquematismo.
Pensa-se, filma-se, faz-se a montagem, tendo em mente uma forma de cinema. Não se fica preso a nada e, inexoravelmente, perde-se firmeza. Quer-se a forma antes da ideia e isso é, precisamente, o que não se deve fazer. Aliás, Straub é categórico sobre esses assuntos, no inicio de Onde Jaz o teu Sorriso?. «Não se pode dizer isto ou aquilo, é evidente, em primeiro lugar há a ideia. Do encontro da ideia coma matéria nasce a forma.» Van Der Keuken também falava assim dos seus filmes. Para ele, os vaivém constante entre as intenções e os obstáculos era a expressão suprema da improvisação, ao contrário das ideias preconcebidas. A improvisação não é o lugar ameno da espontaneidade, da fusão, de uma imanência graciosa e desinteressada. A improvisação é conflituosa e difícil: Costa faz o enquadramento, fixa, compõe o plano, ilumina o menos possível para não incomodar, conhece cada vez melhor a mise-en-scène do lugar e tenta antecipar o esquema da montagem, pensa nos vários ângulos, não esquece os «pequenos planos», não omite as situações mais «picantes», aceita perder muito para não sabotar o que filma. Um pouco como o ciné-transe de Jean Rouch.

Exile and the Kingdom

Featuring the residents of a Lisbon slum, Pedro Costa's 'Colossal Youth' is a mesmeric, visually stunning portrait of a deprived community that confirms its director as one of Europe's major talents. By Jonathan Romney

The intransigently austere Colossal Youth is the kind of film that must usually look for its exposure in those areas beyond the remit of commercial distribution, where cinema meets moving-image gallery work. It is not a film you would expect to find in a premium slot in Cannes, but its inclusion in the festival's 2006 competition was a welcome recognition of Portugal's Pedro Costa as one of today's most challenging and individual film-makers.

Colossal Youth demands to be seen more than once: a first viewing just about lets you acclimatise to its mesmerically slow pacing, visual stillness and incantatory verbal rhythms. In fact, Colossal Youth is a rather more approachable continuation of Costa's 2000 film In Vanda's Room, an engrossing but gruellingly unadorned semi-documentary study of Lisbon's Fontainhas quarter, particularly of its heroin addicts. Returning to Fontainhas, this time more specifically to its Cape Verdean community, Colossal Youth finds the quarter in the latter stages of demolition. Again, Costa's players are real people, apparently telling their own stories in starkly pared-down dialogue and in long, static takes. The central figure is Ventura, a tall, bald man with a thin grey beard, his quiet air of detached solitude chiming with a distinct resemblance to Ornette Coleman. Ventura figures at once as a ghost-like wanderer - embodying the communal memory of Fontainhas, about to vanish - and as a universal father leading his children, Moses-like, to a new home.

In this poetic essay on architecture and urbanism, the new housing development of Casal Boba - to which the Fontainhas community is being relocated - is first seen as a row of white, iceberg-like blocks. Its interiors are caves with glowing featureless walls, their windows framing blank white sky. We tend routinely to consider such spaces as dystopian, yet compared to the squalor of Fontainhas, whose cramped spaces encapsulate a long accretion of misery, Casal Boba's whiteness suggests a blank slate for the future. For all its preoccupation with loss and deprivation, the film gestures at least towards the possibility of optimism. Where the English title emphasises the monumental quality suggested by Costa's compositions, the Portuguese means "youth on the march", better translated by the French En Avant, Jeunesse! ("Forward, Youth!"). Hope in future generations is suggested by the last voice we hear, the babbling of Vanda's little daughter.

In contrast to the forbidding rawness of In Vanda's Room, Colossal Youth is stylised on every level. The players' quietly monotone, almost mechanical diction gives their ostensibly mundane dialogue a ritualistic quality charged with shades of memory and mourning. Ventura's words acquire an oracular ring, his shamanistic function deriving from a love letter that he recites throughout the film: "I wish I could give you a hundred thousand cigarettes, a dozen fancy dresses, a car, the little lava house you've always dreamed of, a four-penny bouquet." Adapted from the words of French poet Robert Desnos, the letter has the attributes of a spell, a magical cure for nostalgic solitude.

The film's other dominant presence is Vanda Duarte, the central figure of In Vanda's Room. There we saw her as an emaciated addict, her violent coughing suggesting she was on the verge of death. Here she reappears, stockier and almost ebullient. Her character 'Vanda', whose circumstances presumably reflect Duarte's own, has moved from smack to methadone. She has a young daughter and is having trouble making ends meet, but she is surviving. Her raucous, sing-song tones (hers is the only dialogue that appears at least partly improvised) disrupt the prevailing tone of sepulchral solemnity. While some of the film's testimonies feel as if they come from beyond the grave, Vanda exudes an abrasive vivacity, the sort you sense in someone who has clung to life by her fingernails.

Words, however, are sometimes less telling than gesture. In one scene, Ventura plays a record of Cape Verdean pop while his son scribbles on a rickety table, making the needle skip: Ventura reaches out and gently stills his hand. Spoken words compete with ambient sound: dialogue exists against a clamour of television voices and demolition, but almost never traffic noise, as if to emphasise Fontainhas' isolation from the outside world.

Colossal Youth comes across as a heroically patient film. Like Straub and Huillet - the subjects of his 2001 portrait Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? - Costa favours stillness and uninflectedness. The film was shot over 15 months, with Costa often shooting up to 30 takes per scene, resulting in 320 hours of footage. The finished work feels as if it has slowly crystallised, like a mineral deposit. The film was shot digitally using only available light manipulated with reflecting surfaces, and this economy of means results in absolutely idiosyncratic textures. High contrast provides a striking quality of charcoal and chalk in the blacks and whites. Colour seeps in only at certain significant moments: for example, in a rare sighting of blue sky, as Ventura sits in the Gulbenkian Museum gardens, which he helped landscape.

Costa and co-cinematographer Leonardo Simões consistently shoot at low angles with wide-angle lenses, giving their compositions the status of spaces first and foremost, and only secondarily frames for human presence. People often inhabit the screen almost like living statues, notably Ventura, looming augustly in black suit and white shirt; in one shot, spatial distortion makes him tower over a council official.

Images resemble still photos: the first shot of Ventura shows him against a wall slanted away from the camera, its calcified texture suggesting an Anthony Caro sculpture. Alleyways resemble rock chasms, geological rather than human spaces. Walls glow as if with inner radioactivity. Often figures are haloed with light, suggesting the chiaroscuro of Old Master paintings - notably the scenes in a deserted Gulbenkian Museum where Ventura, next to a gold-framed scarlet canapé, seems to silently appraise the spoils of Western European colonial history.

Colossal Youth thrives on indeterminacies. It remains unclear whether Lento, the son who recalls a fire in his apartment, is living or effectively a ghost recalling his own death; whether Ventura's letter is to the newly-departed Clotilde, or to a lost love; or whether any of his racially diverse 'children' are literally his offspring. The scenes in which Ventura sports a head bandage turn out to be flashbacks to the 1974 Portuguese revolution that ended the Salazar dictatorship - a revolution which, Costa discovered, was experienced by Lisbon's Cape Verdeans less as liberation than as trauma.

Costa's engagement with Fontainhas' former residents comes across as a profoundly democratic endeavour, one that does not mythologise its disadvantaged subjects but attempts, as it were, to 'sing' the collective memory of a defunct community. Formally hybrid, Colossal Youth has as much to do with still photography, and with non-narrative theatre, as with conventional ideas of cinema. No doubt the film will find only a very limited audience, yet it is surely destined to have a resounding influence on the future of European independent film-making. This is cinema povera of a kind that achieves a truly epic weight.


Sight & Sound, June 2008

De Sorrisos Ocultos

João Bénard da Costa

1: Eu sei que a interrogação titular do filme de Pedro Costa não pergunta quem escondeu o sorriso, nem pergunta quando é que esse sorriso se ocultou. Mas o quem e o quando parece-me, crescentemente, da maior importância, à medida que revejo o mais claustral e o mais clausural dos filmes de Pedro Costa. No sentido monacal de clausura, pois – foi Camilo quem o escreveu – «isto de viver na clausura não é para todas as compleições».
Talvez, por isso, tanto tardei em escrever este texto e tanto tenha revisto o filme (em sala ou em casa) à busca do claustro dele. Ou seja, à busca de um espaço exterior e descoberto, onde, mesmo nos mais severos conventos, se demanda a paz e se pode achar a paz.
Não estou nada certo de o ter encontrado, como não estou nada certo de saber melhor onde jaz o sorriso oculto, nem quem o ocultou, nem quando foi ocultado.
Mas vamos por partes.

2: Como se sabe, ou se é suposto saber, este filme situa-se numa sala de montagem do Fresnoy, perto de Tourcoing, no Pas-de-Calais, onde Jean-Marie Straub e Danièle Huillet montaram a terceira versão do seu filme Sicília!.
50% das imagens dele são imagens de Sicilia!, do qual seguimos, por ordem cronológica, algumas das sequências, ou alguns planos dessas sequências. Para além de Sicilia!, sã-nos mostradas também algumas imagens (comparativamente poucas) de Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach, obra de 1968, realizada trinta e dois anos antes de Sicilia!. Dos 24 filmes Straub-Huillet, Chronik é o terceiro e Sicilia! o vigésimo segundo, como, aliás, o próprio Straub o sublinha a certa altura do filme.
No entanto, desviando-me da trindade – tomista ou marxista – ideia-matéria-forma, sobre a qual Straub insiste com particular veemência, parece-me legitimo dizer – até porque estou a falar de um filme de Pedro Costa e não de um filme dos Straub – que a obra straubiana com quem mais rima, não é Sicilia! nem Chronik, mas Von Heute auf Morgen, o filme dos Straub imediatamente anterior a Sicilia!
Como se sabe, ou se é suposto saber, Von Heute auf Morgen baseia-se na ópera homónima de Schönberg, terceira e última das óperas do compositor, estreada a 1 de Fevereiro de 1930. O libreto, da autoria da mulher de Schönberg, gertrud, sob o pseudónimo de Max Blonda (pseudónimo masculino, pois) situa a acção num apartamento da alta burguesia, regressado a casa, noite alta, após uma festa. Tudo o que se passa, passa-se durante a noite, uma «noite branca» em vários sentidos, até ao romper do dia. Recorrendo a uma tradição, velha como as «comédias de enganos», a intriga varia sobre o «on ne badine pas avec l´amour», com a mulher a provocar os ciúmes do marido e a tentar salvar o casamento da rotina e da superficialidade. Resumindo ainda mais, a conjugalidade é o grande tema dessa noite entre o hoje e o amanhã, para me refugiar na tradução literal de Von Heute auf Morgen. A «velha fidelidade» ou a «moderna infidelidade». Por alguma razão, Schönberg acabou a ópera com uma criança – o filho do casal – a perguntar à mãe o que é que quer dizer «pessoas modernas».
Ao contrário do que fizeram em 1974, quando adaptaram, também de Schönberg, Moses und Aaron, os Straub não recorreram a décors ditos «naturais» para esta segunda incursão no mundo do escritor vienense. Pela primeira e única vez na sua obra, filmaram tudo em estúdio, «numa incerteza entre o teatro e a vida». E só fugiram ao texto da ópera, uma única vez. No final, após a pergunta da criança, filmaram um muro com um grafito que, durante a rodagem, ocasionalmente lhes chamara a atenção. Wo liegt euer Lacheln begraben? O que se pode traduzir por Onde Jaz o teu sorriso oculto? ou, na mais explicativa tradução francesa (escolhida por Pedro Costa para titulo original do seu filme) Où gît votre sourire enfoui?, vertido mais elipticamente, no titulo português como Onde Jaz o Teu Sorriso?.
Nem o marido nem a mulher da ópera formulam, alguma vez, nesses termos, a pergunta sobre o que aconteceu ao amor deles, mas há múltiplas referências ao muito que mudaram e o marido, a dado passo, exprime mesmo saudade pelo brilho do olhar dela, o brilho de quando casaram, o brilho que ele já não vê. Aliás, é o tempo e a passagem do tempo o que domina a ópera de Schönberg, (e o filme dos Straub), como a questão da modernidade, da verdadeira modernidade, (a de Schönberg, utilizando, pela primeira vez o dodecafonismo serial numa obra cénica) à falsa modernidade, personificada no «casal livre» da ópera. Como escreveu Andreas Maul: «Schönberg, compositor “moderno” por excelência, troça, na sua ópera, de uma “modernidade” mal entendida. Os diálogos ligeiros conferem à obra a aparência de uma “ópera-bufa”, com repetido recurso ao coloquial para a assemelhar ao nível e à desenvoltura de um sketch musical».

3: a conversa vai estranha.
Se vim para falar de um filme de Pedro Costa, sobre e com os Straub, filme que têm como matéria o filme Sicilia! e não o filme Von Heute auf Morgen, porquê e para quê perder tanto tempo e espaço com Schönberg e com o filme dos Straub sobre a ópera de Schönberg?
Porque, na minha opinião (às vezes convém ser pedagógico) penso, genericamente, que tudo quanto disse se aplica tanto à ópera de Schönberg como ao filme de Pedro Costa; porque Pedro Costa, ao escolher para título do seu filme, uma frase daquele filme, me reenviou (não julgo das suas intenções, penso em factos) a três questões maiores que atravessam o cinema dos Straub e o cinema dele, e que, elíptica ou explicitamente, são as três questões maiores que atravessam a ópera de Schönberg.
a) Concebeu o seu filme como uma «arte poética», ou seja, como uma reflexão sobre o que o cinema é para os Straub e para ele. Situando-o num estúdio (não num estúdio de cinema, mas numa sala de montagem de um moderno estúdio de artes) deixou-nos na mesma incerteza entre o teatro e a vida (incerteza entre o cinema e a vida) em que os Straub nos quiseram deixar em Von Heute auf Morgen, ou, mais aventurosamente, em toda a sua obra. Do estúdio, nunca se sai do filme. Da sala de montagem sai incessantemente Jean-Marie Straub (para um corredor que nunca saberemos nem donde vem nem para onde vai) e sai Pedro Costa, com os Straub, por três vezes: duas para um auditório onde Straub, no lugar de professor, expõe aos seus alunos que participaram no mesmo atelier, as suas confissões maiores sobre o cinema e a vida; uma, a final, quando o par abandona (fim de um dia de trabalho) a sala de montagem e se prepara para sair para o exterior. Eventualmente, Danièlle Huillet saiu, mas Jean-Marie Straub detém-se num patamar a espreitar para o interior de um auditório (não vemos o que ele vê, nem sabemos o que ele espreita) e, depois de algum tempo como voyeur, senta-se no degrau de uma escada, e fica de cabeça entre as mãos, em cansaço ou reflexão, até o plano fundir em negro para o genérico final.
E, enquanto entra e sai, em permanente agitação, em permanente solilóquio, permanentemente a fumar, na sala de montagem (quase todo o filme) não cessa de expor a sua «arte poética» (a sua teoria de cinema) quer recorrendo à teoria, quer contando histórias, quer socorrendo-se da história do cinema (Chaplin, Eisenstein, Dreyer, Bresson, Buñuel, Nicholas Ray, Godard, cassavetes, etc., são dos muitos autores citados).
Mas a arte leva consigo uma espécie de rudeza, como dizia o velho Mathias Ayres. Straub não é um teórico, ou não é sobretudo um teórico. E a sua «arte poética» exprime-se sobretudo ligada à prática, ou seja à montagem (ou remontagem) do seu filme Sicilia!, tão cerne deste filme como o corpo e as vestes da mulher o eram na ópera de Schönberg. Essa é a matéria (para voltar ao vocabulário straubiano) com que Pedro Costa deu forma à sua ideia de um filme sobre os Straub. E através da qual nos comunicou a sua própria arte poética, ou seja a sua absorção da arte poética dos Straub na arte poética dele. Herdeira da deles mas não inteiramente coincidente com a deles.
b) Subjacente ao filme (subjacente?) está também a reflexão sobre a modernidade no cinema, sobre o «was ist das die Modernitat», modificando muito pouco a pergunta final da criança de Von Heute auf Morgen.
Longe vão os anos 60 e 70 em que o cinema dos Straub era o nec plus ultra dessa modernidade. As «pessoas modernas» hoje, ultrapassados até os chavões sem sentido do que chegou a ser chamado «post-modernismo» (a expressão mais contraditória nos termos que inventar se pôde) rejeitam esse cinema como relíquia pré-histórica, último suspiro de uma raça em vias de extinção, que acreditava em arte, em cinema como este e em cinema como forma de expressão individual e colectiva. O cinema dos Straub – hoje – como o cinema de Pedro Costa, é um cinema de resistência, à margem de qualquer discurso dominante.
Onde está a modernidade? No fundo daquela sala de montagem, onde Jean-Marie Straub e Danièlle Huillet lutam, fotograma a fotograma, para chegar à forma que exprima com fidelidade a ideia deles, dedicando horas de tempo a segundos de filme?
Ou no que se passa lá fora, nos outros estúdios de cinema, nas produções que são vistas por milhões e que dão milhões a ganhar?
A resposta de Pedro Costa – como a dos Straub – é inequívoca. Mesmo que sejam os últimos, serão fiéis até ao fim. Mas é sobre isso – sendo o isso o cinema – que Onde Jaz o Teu Sorriso? é. Como o era, há setenta e alguns anos, a ópera de Schönberg.
O oculto – o sorriso oculto – é o sorriso deste cinema jacente e ressurrecto. Neste filme e enquanto se fizerem filmes como este.
c) Mas há também a questão da conjugalidade. Os Straub não são um, são dois e dois que são marido e mulher. Jean-Marie e Danièle. E todo o filme é um filme sobre a relação daquele casal, sobre a paz e a guerra conjugal.
Contrastando com a permanente mobilidade de Jean-Marie, com as suas idas e vindas, com o seu in e com o seu off, temos a imobilidade quase permanente de Danièle Huillet, que nunca se levanta da mesa de montagem (a não ser quando o dia de trabalho acabou), que quase não fala e que nunca desvia os olhos da mesa de montagem. Ele fala, fala, fala. Ela responde-lhe cortantemente, tratando-o sempre por «vous», ora por «Jean-Marie», ora por «Straub». Certamente conhece de cór e salteado todas as histórias que ele conta, certamente antecipa e adivinha as soluções que ele pensou encobrir e ela lhe dá, de fotograma beijado. Mas, como em todas as discussões de velhos casais, repetem-se incessantemente discussões velhas como eles, mas que os apaixonam, irritam ou enfurecem como sempre os apaixonaram, irritaram ou enfureceram.
Li numa critica ao filme uma comparação que não me parece nada parva: a guerra Jean-Marie – Danièle parece repetir as guerras conjugais de Spencer Tracy e Katherine Hepburn nas comédias clássicas de Cukor. Até fisicamente, qualquer deles faz lembrar os actores citados. Adam´s Rib. Pat and Mike. Tracy e Hepburn discutiam sobre outras coisas? É bem verdade. Como é bem verdade que era sobre outra coisa que discutiam o marido e a mulher na ópera de Schönberg. Mas a violência e a ternura (para usar termos utilizados por Straub no filme) são idênticos, como idêntica é a comunhão e a separação. Nenhum deles assume a divisão de trabalho (género eu trato da montagem, você trata da rodagem). Como não vimos a rodagem, não sabemos do lugar que qualquer deles teve nela. Mas a obra é na montagem comum, por mais que Straub se afaste da mesa e Danièle se agarre a ela. A rivalidade está implícita e não precisa de ser explicitada, como a comunhão. A discussão faz parte do jogo, é regra do jogo, aceite pelos dois, por muito que ou um ou o outro pareçam impacientar-se com a obstrução. Uma tal conflitualidade cúmplice ou uma tal cúmplice conflitualidade só pode ser conjugal. Mesmo que nunca se toquem, mesmo que nunca nenhuma intimidade intervenha (até há o vous, até há o Straub e nunca há o Danièle) sentimos a cada momento a história comum, o passado comum, medido a vinte e dois filmes e trinta e oito anos de vida.
O tom de voz de qualquer deles é sempre crispado, agressivo, quase violento. Nunca os vemos brincar, nunca os vemos rir (à excepção de uma breve gargalhada, que não sabemos a quem atribuir). Mas sabemos que ambos se lembram (e não estou a fazer poesia) do sorriso que nos fica oculto e que a pergunta tutelar a ambos interpela também. Como todos os grandes filmes, Onde Jaz o Teu Sorriso? é também um filme de amor e foi sobretudo para um filme de amor que Pedro Costa nos convocou.

4: Mas há outra questão e é a minha questão final.
Durante todo o filme – já o disse – quase não saímos de uma sala de montagem nas profundezas de um estúdio. Von Heute auf Morgen (neste caso de manhã à noite) aquele casal esteve enterrado numa sala subterrânea, sem luz que não luz artificial, sem qualquer contacto com o exterior e com a luz «natural».
Será por acaso que nunca os vemos chegar cá fora? Sabemos que vão sair, sabemos que vão voltar para casa. Mas perdemo-nos deles nas subidas das escadas e ficamos com ele, a meio da subida, prostrado num degrau.
Pouco antes, Jean-Marie notou à mulher que a vida deles, comparada com a vida de 90% das pessoas, é uma vida feliz. O trabalho deles é um trabalho feito por prazer, enquanto o comum dos mortais trabalha para viver.
Mas o princípio do prazer está ausente do filme, ou o sinal dele fica-nos tão oculto como o sorriso ou os sorrisos.
Ou como esse sorriso, que Danièle Huillet vê esboçar-se no rosto do céptico protagonista de Sicilia!, quando, na carruagem do comboio para Catania , o companheiro de viagem se apresenta como chefe do cadastro. «É preciso que o espectador o perceba» diz-lhe Straub, «perceba que ele não se deixa levar pelas lérias do outro». Mas até esse sorriso ficou oculto. Como todos os outros, jaz algures. Onde? É a pergunta capital do filme de Pedro Costa.
«Por nós, por ti, por mim, falou a dor/E a dor é evidente/libertada».

Este filme lembrou-me esse final do soneto final de Jorge de Sena em As Evidências. Esse soneto que fala da «cendrada luz». Tudo se aplica menos a libertação. Seja por ela a minha última pergunta a Pedro Costa.

Director’s Quest for Truth Among the Downtrodden

By DENNIS LIM

Published: July 29, 2007

FOR someone whose films have until recently gone largely unseen, the Portuguese director Pedro Costa has a pretty vociferous fan club. His admirers include the French director Jacques Rivette (who called him “genuinely great”) and the Canadian photographer Jeff Wall (who claimed that Mr. Costa’s films improve on Robert Bresson’s). He has been feted at festivals and museums from Vienna to Mexico City to Tokyo. His work has been extensively discussed in Cahiers du Cinéma, Artforum and Film Comment. Last fall Cinema Scope magazine produced promotional — or, more to the point, polemical— T-shirts, identical to the “Vote for Pedro” T’s from “Napoleon Dynamite” except for an additional phrase: “Pedro Costa, that is.”

But Mr. Costa, 48, is not uniformly loved by world-cinema tastemakers. The press screening for “Colossal Youth” at the Cannes Film Festival last year was punctuated by a steady stream of departing critics. Detractors call his films slow and obdurate. Their rigor and stringency, along with the ferocious rhetoric often deployed by his champions, have given him the forbidding air of a high-art Spartan.

That reputation does the work a disservice. Few movies are as concretely rooted in physical reality or as profoundly attentive to their social context as Mr. Costa’s. In recent years he has shot almost exclusively in the slums of Lisbon, working closely with the downtrodden inhabitants. Staking out a radical middle between documentary and fiction, he has invented a heroic and quite literal form of Arte Povera, a monumental cinema of humble means. (A retrospective of his films, which has been touring North America, starts Friday at Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan and runs through Aug. 12.)

Speaking by telephone from Lisbon, Mr. Costa called his methods a throwback to, of all things, old Hollywood. “It’s like a studio system,” he said. “We go to work every day. We have our economic structure — everyone gets paid the same — and we have our stars.”

Mr. Costa’s first feature, “O Sangue” (“The Blood,” 1989), was not a reliable indicator of things to come. A black-and-white reverie of family disintegration, it is, in the best sense, a young man’s film, drunk on romantic doom and movie love — a rhapsodic style Mr. Costa now regards as “camouflage.”

Frustrated with the rightward drift in Portuguese politics and the scarcity of financing, he ventured abroad — to the West African islands of Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony — and made “Casa de Lava” (Down to Earth,” 1994). The story of a nurse who accompanies a comatose laborer home to Cape Verde, it changed the course of his career.

The Cape Verdeans he met sent him back to Lisbon with gifts for relatives who had emigrated there. The delivery mission led him to the shantytown of Fontainhas, where many Cape Verdeans had settled. He decided to set a film in the neighborhood, using residents as actors.

The result, “Ossos” (“Bones,” 1997), centered on the newborn infant of two hapless teenagers, is a parable of economic and spiritual desperation as oblique and concentrated as anything by Bresson. Mr. Costa was dissatisfied with the shoot, not least for having invaded a residential neighborhood with the unwieldy machinery of film production.

“We would be shooting late at night and shining lights into people’s houses,” he said. “I realized there’s something wrong with the way movies are made today.”

Mr. Costa set out to address not merely logistical headaches but also the responsibility that comes with picking up a camera. The act of filmmaking is premised on a discrepancy of power. As Mr. Costa put it, “The balance is off between those behind and in front of the camera.” His next film, “In Vanda’s Room” (2000), went a long way toward redressing the inequality.

Encouraged by Vanda Duarte, an actress in “Ossos,” he continued to film in Fontainhas, which was being demolished. This time he did so with a small video camera, often by himself. He grew close to his subjects and shot for almost two years. From 140 hours of footage he shaped a three-hour film.

A series of shadowy domestic tableaus (the camera never moves, and Mr. Costa used only available light), “In Vanda’s Room” is a stark, intimate portrait of a community whose world is literally falling apart. (Bulldozers are continuously heard on the soundtrack.) It feels at times like a documentary but is actually the result of long conversations and multiple takes. Ms. Duarte and her friends, who sit around, talk, prepare heroin fixes, smoke and shoot up, are not documentary subjects so much as actors playing themselves.

Mr. Costa handled the copious drug use matter-of-factly. “I was never moralistic,” he said. “But I was hoping to get them to see that drugs are a punishment imposed on them by external forces.”

While shooting “In Vanda’s Room” he recognized that he didn’t want to return to traditional filmmaking. “Going to work on the bus I felt exactly like I should for the rest of my life,” he said. “It’s almost not a film at that point. It’s a job you do, a job you like. We could be making chairs or shoes. It just happens to be images and sounds.”

Mr. Costa’s films assert that there are more important things than art, even as they insist that beauty is everywhere to be found. “Art should be more than it is and a lot less than it is,” he said, voicing the implicit manifesto of his films. “Brecht said he made jewels for the poor. He talked about the epic quality of the day-to-day life of common people. That’s something I pursue. I really want them to be heroes.”

He left Fontainhas to make “Where Lies Your Hidden Smile?” (2001), a documentary on Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, the avant-garde filmmakers he had long admired. (Mr. Costa speaks passionately of his “idols” who range from the Hollywood titan John Ford to the punk-rock rabble-rouser John Lydon.)

“Colossal Youth,” which came next, stemmed from an impulse to document the relocation of the Fontainhas residents. Ms. Duarte, now on methadone though still possessed of her signature hacking cough, appears in the film, but the focus is on Ventura, an elderly Cape Verdean whose wife has left him. Mr. Costa again amassed hundreds of hours of footage, but he moves further from documentary to include surreal and mythic touches. Ventura wanders between the old ghetto, where a few stragglers remain, and the new housing project. He refers to the men and women he meets as his children and repeatedly recites a love letter (adapted from the poet Robert Desnos) to his absent wife.

In a sense “Colossal Youth” is a film about walls. The contrast between the worn interiors of Fontainhas, walls on which entire lives are inscribed, and the whitewashed surfaces of the anonymous new apartments is almost shocking.

There is a third space the movie briefly occupies — the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon — and to hear Mr. Costa describe the genesis of a scene he shot there, the walls are again significant. He was driving with Ventura one day when they passed the Gulbenkian. “Ventura told me he worked on the construction years ago but had never been to the museum,” Mr. Costa said, so they pulled over. Inside he noticed that Ventura was drawn less to the art than to his own handiwork: the walls. “He’s moved that his walls have Rubens and Rembrandts,” he said. “But he kept looking behind the paintings.”

by Acquarello

The Rabbit Hunters (Pedro Costa)

Pedro Costa's entry, The Rabbit Hunters is a graceful modulation of his short film Tarrafal from the The State of the World omnibus, a series of elliptical encounters shot from the perspective of displaced Fonthainas elder villagers, Ventura, the paternal, old soul drifting through the vestiges of his dying neighborhood in Colossal Youth, and his unemployed and homeless friend, Alfredo (rather than José Alberto's perspective in Tarrafal). At one point in the film, a cook, having offered free meals of leftover soup to Ventura and Alfredo in the back kitchen, proceeds to brush off the dirt and grime from Ventura's clothing to make him look more presentable, and gives him a filial admonition for his careworn, disheveled appearance. "I'm haunted by lots of ghosts", explains Ventura. Similar to Costa's seminal film Casa de Lava, the characters' existential limbo is also a spiritual desolation borne of a haunted, implacable landscape. In The Rabbit Hunters, the repressed environmental memory has been formed by Tarrafal's unspoken history as a concentration camp site once dubbed the "camp of slow death" during the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, where political dissidents and anti-colonialists were imprisoned and tortured. In a sense, the prison camp has become the embodiment of a corrosive, suppressed memory that has metastasized and leeched into the landscape, contaminating everyone who has lived on - and off - the land (in one episode, Alfredo recounts having trapped nothing but diseased animals to take home and cook for his meals). Like the long-forgotten prisoners before them, the villagers, too, exist in a state of slow death, discarded by the living and haunted by unreconciled ghosts - an ambiguity that is reflected in Ventura and Alfredo's odd conversations over each other's death experiences. Concluding with a shot of José Alberto's deportation letter that has been affixed to a wall by a pocket knife, the film comes to a metaphoric full circle - illustrating the connection between the trauma of dislocation and institutionalized marginalization.


Tarrafal, 2007

In an episode that occurs halfway through Tarrafal, Cape Verdean immigrant José Alberto, having just received his expulsion notice, encounters the elderly, displaced Fonthainas resident Ventura waiting on the side of a dirt road as his friend, Alfredo tries in vain to catch rabbits by thrashing random bushes with a wooden club. In a way, the idea of silent, enduring landscapes as figurative intersections for other unfolding - and often converging - human stories (a recurring theme in José Luis Guerín's cinema as well) may be seen as a metaphor for Pedro Costa's densely layered themes of dislocation and statelessness. As subsequently revealed in The Rabbit Hunters, Alfredo, too, is homeless, resorting to a life in the streets after having been thrown out of the apartment by his wife. In Tarrafal, this converging image of forced - and implicitly traumatic - displacement and exile is established in the opening images of José Alberto's ironic inquiries to his mother over the derelict conditions of their ancestral houses in Cape Verde from his own ramshackle home in the slums. As the conversation morphs from the neglect and inhabitability of their beloved, deserted homes that recalls the reclamation of abandoned ghost houses in In Vanda's Room, to the strange tales of a blood-sucking phantasm who foretells a person's hour of death by surreptitiously leaving letters in the most mundane of hiding places to be subsequently retrieved at the time of their immutable appointment - an impersonal, life-altering communication that alludes to the state's arbitrary dispensation of deportation and eviction notices in modern day Portugal - Costa illustrates a sense of anonymous interchangeability among the transitory, drifting souls of Tarrafal. Visually, this sense of surrogacy and transplantation is reflected in the repeating angular doorway view of José Alberto's house: first, in the solitary image of José Alberto facing away from the camera as he sits on a wooden plank to smoke, then subsequently, in a reframed shot of Ventura and Alfredo seated on the same plank looking out into the neighboring town, commenting on the profound transformation of the once desolate landscape (note Alfredo's humorous misidentification of stray cats as rabbits that further reinforces their seeming interchangeability). Moreover, intrinsic in José Alberto's sad tale of requesting a work release to single-handedly bury his estranged father, and the rabbit hunters' conversation over their mistreatment and death at the hands of authorities is the specter of Tarrafal's unreconciled history as a prison camp where inmates were tortured and relegated to die a slow death. Composed as skewed, frame within frame stationary shots that evoke the acute angles and distanced address of Straub/Huillet, these parallel testimonies of dislocation, separation, entrapment, and fatedness unfold through supplanted images of interchangeable, moribund, drifting ghosts that integrally reflect their own erasure and social invisibility.


Colossal Youth, 2006

On a derelict building illuminated by the crepuscular glow of a night sky, assorted pieces of furniture and household goods are intermittently discarded from upper level windows, crashing into the razed ruins below. A woman emerges from the shadows, brandishes a small kitchen knife, and recounts her fragmented tale before disappearing, once again, into the cloak of darkness. A deliberative, grey haired man named Ventura hides behind a structural pilaster protruding from a wall - made all the more monolithic and formidable by the low angle shot - as he abstractedly gazes elsewhere, beyond the frame. From this muted, elliptical, and deceptively facile (and seemingly atemporal) opening composition, Pedro Costa establishes the pervasive sense of disposability, social invisibility, longing, and desolation that would define the contextual framework for the film. For the characters in Colossal Youth, the third installment of Costa's loose triptych of quotidian encounters among a community of Cape Verdean itinerant laborers from the shantytown of Fontaínhas in Portugal, the historical landscape of the Cape Verde islands as barren land, exploited colony, commercial way station, slave port, and leprosaria institution is not a forgotten anecdote, but a suffocating reality that continues to weigh on the collective consciousness of its inhabitants, even in their migration and displacement. Within this immateriality of a haunted, unreconciled burden of past - an imprinted spiritual memory of enslavement, isolation, expendability, impermanence, and social rejection - these transitory, everyday interactions may be seen, not as polite, communal gestures, but rather, as personal testimonies of people living in the ever eroding margins of the visible, struggling to emerge from the liminal before receding into the shadows.

At the nucleus of this rended community from the demolished Fontaínhas slum is Ventura, a laborer forced into retirement by disability who has assumed the role of informal village elder to an assortment of uprooted friends, acquaintances, former colleagues, and extended family (a paternal character that evokes the musician with an inordinately large family (from a series of out of wedlock relationships) in Casa de Lava): a recovering drug addict (and titular character of Costa's earlier film, In Vanda's Room) whose awkward maternal instincts reveal her own stunted maturity, a government housing agent bemused by Ventura's vague and often arbitrary requirements for his new home, a daughter still living in the ruins of Fontaínhas awaiting relocation to public housing, an injured laborer undergoing physical rehabilitation who longs for a less hazardous job in his trained vocation as a goldsmith, a museum guard who scuttles Ventura from a gallery exhibiting Diego Velázquez paintings, his lean and angular physicality momentarily cutting a dark and sinuous figure as majestic and transfixing as the works of art that frame him (note Costa's homage to Straub/Huillet in their strategy for full representation (or proportion) framing of the paintings in Cézanne and A Trip to the Louvre), an illiterate migrant worker who enlists Ventura to write a letter to send home to his beloved. However, as Ventura's role transforms from transcriber to author - or more appropriately, ghostwriter - the love letter increasingly takes on the profound weight of his own longing and sense of despair after his lover's abandonment. Inevitably, the repeated recitation (or perhaps, incantation) of Ventura's work-in-progress, visceral prose in subtly alternating forms throughout the film becomes a reflection of the overarching structure of temps morts that characterize the encounters of Colossal Youth itself - the transfiguration of the corporeal into the ethereal through mundane ritual - in all its awkward composition, disarming humility, and poetic ineloquence.


Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, 2001

Nearly twenty years after Harun Farocki paid homage to the profound influence of Straub/Huillet's cinema by filming their exhaustive rehearsal process during preparations for the shooting of their film Class Relations for the documentary Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work..., Pedro Costa captures their equally exacting process of editing their feature film, Sicilia! in Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?. Indeed, as Farocki's film intrinsically captures the filmmakers' working methodology through the framework of his own recurring themes of automation and systemization of processes (even as they apply to the human process of creativity), so, too, does Costa's film illustrate the particularity of their methodology through his own characteristic preoccupation for capturing the allegorical in the quotidian. Curiously, inasmuch as both films capture the rigorous and deliberative nature of their creative process, it is only through the complementation of both films that the nature of the Straubs' collaborative process begins to truly emerge - a portrait, not of inequitable roles of visionary and confidante (as implicitly suggested in the Farocki film as Huillet's role during rehearsals is seemingly reduced to that of advisor and clap board simulator), nor implementer and consultant (as illustrated in the Costa film where Straub is shown to be the intrusive, occasionally tangential, gregarious observer - and comical counterfoil - to the more focused, serious-minded, and methodical Huillet who is editing the film), but rather, as equally creative contemporaries with instinctively defined, yet interactive roles throughout the filmmaking process: one, more conceptual and abstract, the other, more pragmatic and methodical. Ironically, this tumultuous, often colliding process of interactivity itself between theory and application, idea and implementation reflects the complex, yet delicate alchemy of the medium itself, a creative struggle that is articulated by the roguish Straub's impassioned commentary on the subordination of form over idea in Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? that is integral to the realization of their aesthetic.

"The form of the body gives birth to the soul. I've said that a hundred times. ...When someone says, 'Yes, the form, it's the form, the form, never mind the idea', that is a sell-out. It's not true. You have to see things clearly: First, there is the idea, then there is the matter, and then the form. And there is nothing you can do about that. Nobody can change that! ...And through this work, the struggle between the idea and the matter, and the struggle with the matter, gives rise to the form. And the rest is just filling material. ...The same goes for the sculptor. He has his idea and gets a block of marble and he works the matter. He has to take into account the nervures in the marble, the cracks, all the geological layers in it. He just can't do whatever he wants."

This intrinsic "struggle with the material" that defines the process of creation also serves as an allusion to the hidden smile of the film's title. In an illuminating sequence during the editing of a train conversation scene in Sicilia!, Huillet attempts to convey an actor's unarticulated, knowing smile - an illustration of his realization that a passenger seated across from him lied about the nature of his employment - by finding an appropriate intercutting image from their brief exchange. But how can this uncaptured, hidden smile be revealed when the facial expression itself does not manifest in the any of the shot footage? Poring over each frame in search of the indefinable glint in the actor's eye in search of that fleeting image that betrays his disbelief to no avail, their strategy is then to abruptly truncate the shot at the final syllable of the passenger's staccatoed delivery such that the consequence of the lie does not dwell on the prevaricator's image - and implicitly suggest his deliberation over the ramifications of his own statement - but rather, on the delayed response of the listener to suggest his evaluation (and dismissive deduction) of the passenger's seemingly incongruous statement. It is this process systematic refinement - a struggle with the intrinsic properties (and inherent limitations) of the given matter to create implication through elision that is also reflected in Straub's subsequent exposition on the aesthetic evolution of their cinema.

"Most of us begin with a cliché - not always, but most of the time - and that's fine but you have to look at it from all sides and clarify it. So you start with the idea of a discovery, showing a mountain without the window, without anything. A torn curtain. Then you ask yourself, but why? It will inhibit the viewer's imagination instead of opening it up and you say to yourself: 'Yes, after having filmed Mount Thebes in Moses and Aaron, after having filmed Mount Etna, Mount Sainte-Victoire, why add another one?' And so you renounce slowly. Then one fine day, one fine day you realize that it's better to see as little as possible. You have a sort of reduction, only it's not a reduction - it's a concentration and it actually says more. But you don't do that immediately from one day to the next. You need time and patience."

As the filmmakers alternately engage in recounting personal anecdotes, gentle natured marital sparring, and professional ruminations over their collaborative cinema, what emerges in Costa's reverent and understated portrait is an affectionate, humorous, and indelible image of profound kinship and creative symbiosis - an idiosyncratic, modern-day love story that fuses passion with politics, creativity with conviction - told from the privileged intimacy of irascible, enduring romantics, intellectual peers, social activists, obsessed cinephiles, ageless idealists, and innovative, mutually-inspiring artists.

In Vanda's Room, 2000

The first image of Vanda's childhood friend, Nhurro is an insightfully intimate one. On the morning of the scheduled demolition of his home - an abandoned house in the slums of Fonthainas that he had taken over and settled into as his own - Nhurro takes a final, almost ceremonial, thorough scrub down bath in near total darkness in the midst of pounding sledgehammers and approaching heavy machinery, using buckets of ported hot water to rinse off the soap suds in the absence of running water and electricity. Emerging in the shadows from his bath with the steam evaporating from the surface of his skin, Nhurro's obscured silhouette momentarily appears phantasmagoric and evanescent against the stray rays of light poking through the crumbling walls and covered windows of the barren house, transforming him into an almost spectral, otherworldly figure that is subsequently reframed against a more mundane reality when he awkwardly stumbles from the wet floor while trying to retrieve his clothes from a nearby chair. This metaphysical image proves to be Pedro Costa's most direct illustration of the marginalized, discarded Fonthainas residents as displaced ghosts in In Vanda's Room - a theme that would again surface in Colossal Youth and especially Tarrafal) - a manifestation of figurative lost souls drifting from one derelict landscape to another in the wake of the shantytown's looming, phased demolition, systematic depopulation, and involuntary exile. In an encounter with Vanda that occurs near the end of the film, Nhurro, once again forcibly displaced by advancing bulldozers from his newly claimed "home" (a house that he continues to fastidiously clean until the very end of his brief "tenancy", perhaps as a symbolic gesture of his human dignity), secretly takes refuge in Vanda's room for a few days while searching for other intact, abandoned houses to move into, and resignedly tells her of his life in perpetual transience, "living in ghost houses other people left empty." In a sense, the sad, adrift characters wandering into and out of Vanda's room are also leading impermanent, yet paradoxically static and inescapable lives in the doomed ghost town.

In Vanda's Room also anticipates José Luis Guerín's En Construcción in its untold stories of disposable lives and buried cultures that continue to surface and reassert their inerasable identities from the rubble of area revitalization. Composed of long take, stationary shots, often of cramped interior spaces or narrow alleys framed against neglected building façades, doorways, and even gouged walls that reflect the characters' economic bondage and spiritual captivity, the film's oppressive moral landscape and interminable stasis are also revealed through repeating episodes of inarticulate, idle conversations, hardscrabble drug use, door to door peddling, acts of petty theft, and habitual rummaging (most notably, in Vanda finding an antique model ship that had been inadvertently left outside that alludes to the country's own historical change in fortune from colonial empire to increasingly marginalized country within the economic homogenization of a borderless European Union). But there is also a specter of inevitable change in these uncomfortably intimate moments of destructive (and often self-inflicted) limbo as the remaining residents, too impoverished to move away, await their fate. (In one ironic juxtaposition, the extended image of Vanda resting in an alley with a crate of unsold vegetables is framed against a doorway as the song The Power by Snap! plays in the background.) The news of Nhurro's newfound residence that is mentioned during Vanda and her sister, Zita's opening conversation is supplanted by his subsequent eviction from his latest home during the course of the film. In another conversation, the state-enabled, mass eviction of Fonthainas is reflected in the inequitable dispensation of institutional justice over the apparent theft of Knorr soup cubes, where punishment is exacted against the arbitrary measure of human disposability. Perhaps the most emblematic of its systematic cultural extinction lies in the fate of a middle-aged woman named Geny who, early in the film, anxiously stands near the door of her home, having been evicted on the same morning as Nhurro. Raising a faint smile when a neighbor tries to cheer her up with a tongue in cheek offer of cohabitation, the fleeing moment of lightness becomes even more poignant within the context of a passing visitor's subsequent indirect account of her misfortune. This sobering convergence in Vanda's room - the evocation of Geny's faint smile, told by an emphysemic friend who trades a bouquet of flowers for a supply of respiratory medicine, in the room where Vanda and Zita get their heroin fix - powerfully encapsulates the film's haunted, indelible, and unflinching intimacy: an image of tragic souls hovering aimlessly over their physical captivity, pursuing distractive quests for transitory relief.


Casa de Lava, 1995

The real-life eruption of the Pico volcano in the island of Fogo and the outbreak of cholera in the Cape Verde Islands provide a dense and ingeniously metaphoric contemporary backdrop to Pedro Costa's exposition on isolation, entrapment, moral inertia, and longing in Casa de Lava. Once an uninhabited Portuguese colony situated off the coast of northwest Africa, Cape Verde's geographic location was ideally suited to serve as a logistics center for merchant ships traveling westward to America for the slave trade. In Costa's cinema, this complex history of the islands as a place of involuntary settlement and captivity, as well a waystation for people embarking on journeys into distant lands never to return again, has continued to seep into the present day consciousness of the local population, and is reflected in an introductory montage of the ruggedly impassive residents - composed primarily of women - framed against the austere landscape in the early sequences of the film. The image of repressed violence surfacing through the juxtaposition of the ominous, fluorescent glow of slowly churning lava and the opaque gaze of the villagers is immediately repeated in two connecting episodes to otherwise seemingly unrelated scenes in the Portuguese city of Lisbon: first, in the shot of a somber Cape Verdean migrant worker Leão looking down from the framed opening of an unfinished building that cuts to the shot of the construction office where news of his "accident" sets the worksite into a chaotic scramble for help; the second, in the shot of hospital nurse Mariana (Inês de Medeiros) curiously dowsing her face with a bracing quantity of isopropyl alcohol at the end of her exhausting shift at a coma ward where the gravely injured Leão has been admitted after slipping out of consciousness. A few months later, an anonymously written payment has been dispatched to the hospital in order to cover the cost of sending the still comatose Leão back to Cape Verde after he is inexplicably discharged, and Mariana agrees to accompany her patient as well as facilitate the transfer of medical supplies to the island hospital where an outbreak of cholera has reached epidemic proportions. But the circumstances of Leão's homecoming prove to be even more complicated. Deposited at a desolate open field by a military transport plane en route to deliver military equipment to a distant war (with an equally nebulous arrangement for a scheduled return date), no one has arrived to welcome Leão home (except for an aging violinist who approaches the abandoned couple with the demeanor of a curious onlooker, but will not verify his actual relationship with the patient), and Mariana is compelled to bring Leão to the hospital for shelter, along with the medical staff's far more anticipated delivery of medical supplies.

In hindsight, the absence of men in the establishing sequence of Cape Verdean villagers foretells the underlying reality of the elliptical, opening images, a sentiment articulated by the island doctor that soberingly echoes the haunted memory of the country's slave trading past - that everyone leaves Cape Verde, but no one ever comes back. Indeed, inasmuch as impoverishment has upended the social fabric of the community as able-bodied men leave - and never return - in search of economic opportunity, it has also rended the very idea of family and sense of responsibility. Children are born out of wedlock and neglected by disconnected, self-absorbed, fractured families, emotionally abandoned like the domestic animals that roam the streets (the violinist boasts of 30 children, but cannot even remember the name of his first child), and flagrant transgressions are carried out against each other with virtual impunity from prosecution (a police officer is never seen, even after the theft of medicine in the hospital dispensary and Mariana's attempted assault at the beach).

Within this environment of perpetual estrangement and isolation, Mariana's arrival at Cape Verde can also be seen as an existential waystation between life and death, a recurring theme that is reflected in Edith's (Edith Scob) perpetual mourning of her dead lover, the outbreak of a cholera epidemic in the village, and Leão's reluctant (if not resentful) awakening from his coma - a state of waiting for inevitable passage that seemingly continues to fulfill a centuries-old predestiny that had been sealed with the settlement of the village on the abandoned ruins of a slave port and former leper colony. Visually, Costa reflects this sense of metaphysical transience through recurring murky, crepuscular, and eerily otherworldly images of volcanic activity, clandestine encounters, and waves violently crashing against the shore (most notably, during Mariana's thwarted rape and in Edith's subsequent tearful discovery of the brutally killed dog that had protected her).

Moreover, through the role of the French émigré and local benefactress Edith - a still grieving woman who once followed her politically exiled lover to Cape Verde and decided to remain on the islands with her aimless son (Pedro Hestnes) long after her lover's death - Costa also confronts the issues of lawlessness and socio-economic stagnation that continue to plague many contemporary post-colonial African countries towards the end of the twentieth century. Doling out her lover's pension to ungracious supplicants who swarm around her each month as she retrieves her checks from town in order to plead their case for a handout (not surprisingly, often for a one-way ticket out of the islands), their lopsided relationship is one of disempowerment and parasitic dependency (a sentiment that is also reflected through the villagers' collective reference to Mariana as their savior when she first arrives to the island with a supply of vaccines to help stem the epidemic). Within this context of a culturally perpetuated neediness, Casa de Lava becomes a trenchant reflection of the broader geopolitical issue of continued post-colonial economic dependence endemic within many third world nations - a situation that is exacerbated by an intrinsic dependency on foreign aid and external charity, coupled with a systematic exodus of the very population who can provide the appropriate skills, innovation, and resources necessary to frame the structure for a self-sustaining economy and provide the social stability to - if not transform - their increasingly fragmented, isolated, and dispossessed communities.


O Sangue, 1989

Perhaps the most overtly Bressonian of Pedro Costa's body of work (albeit suffused with the brooding shadows of a Jacques Tourneur film), Costa's first feature, O Sangue, nevertheless bears the characteristic imprint of what would prove to be his familiar preoccupations: absent parents, surrogate families, unreconciled ghosts, the trauma and violence of displacement, the ache (and isolation) of longing. The thematic convergence is insightfully revealed in an episode that occurs near the end of the film, when the older brother Vicente (Pedro Hestnes), having been held captive by his father's nefarious associates on New Year's Eve in a half-baked attempt to collect his father's unpaid debt from him, awakens in the darkness of an unfamiliar apartment to the sight of a restless silhouette on the balcony - the shadow cast by his father's mistress (Isabel de Castro) that has been made spectral and incandescent by the transient glow of exploding fireworks and the sweep of wind against translucent curtains (a sense of otherworldliness that also reinforces a captor's earlier idea of conducting a séance in order to contact Vincente's missing father (Canto e Castro)). Costa establishes this sinister atmosphere of sudden, erupted violence in the film's opening sequence: the prefiguring sound of a slammed door and scurrying feet that subsequently reveals a frontal shot of Vicente on a muddy road as he is suddenly slapped by his wayward father while intentionally blocking his path, trying to prevent him for leaving by imploring him to show consideration towards his younger brother Nino (Nuno Ferreira) who has been left home alone in the middle of night in pursuit of him. Cutting to the image of Vicente riding his scooter through the empty streets at twilight, and subsequently, the schoolteacher, Clara's (Inês de Medeiros) realization that a student, Rosa (Sara Breia) has run away from school with Nino, the image of dislocation and fugue also becomes a resurfacing idea, a reflection of the characters' own desire to reinvent and transform in the aftermath of loss that is reflected in Nino's impulsive attempt to rearrange the furniture, and his subsequent request to similarly dress Vicente in his clothing while accompanying him to school after their father's disappearance (a longing for change that is also implied in Clara's selection of a new haircut for Nino). However, when Vicente and Nino's skeptical uncle (Luís Miguel Cintra) pays a visit and finds the brothers home alone on Christmas Eve with Clara, his heavy-handed, if well-intentioned decision to take Nino away from home and form a new family with his fragile son Pedro (Miguel Fernandes) would lead the brothers into their own journeys of self-discovery in their isolated quest to return to their broken home.

It is interesting to note that in illustrating the brothers' (as well as Clara's) subverted attempts at escapism (and figurative erasure) - the persistence of a haunted past (an apparent allusion to Tourneur) that is ingeniously reinforced in the discovery of a body on the lake near the fairgrounds where Vicente and Clara go on a date - Costa introduces the idea of an irrepressible, hidden history that continues to haunt present-day consciousness. Costa expounds on this theme of place as the eternal witness to a deracinated history in evoking Cape Verde's tragic legacy (as leprosarium and slave port) in the moral contamination of the forgotten residents in Casa de Lava, as well as the concentration camps of Tarrafal (in Tarrafal and The Rabbit Hunters) that perpetuate a sense of moribund captivity to a contaminated, dying land. Similarly, the contrast between the abandoned, rural family home and the sterile, anonymous apartment buildings where the brothers are held against their will in O Sangue may be seen as a prefiguration of the Fonthainas diaspora itself, from the transitory sanctuary embodied by dilapidated, condemned spaces (In Vanda's Room), to the soullessness of uprooted communities represented by impersonal, high density, public housing (Colossal Youth). In this respect, Vicente and Nino's instinctual struggle to escape also represents a moral captivity to a traumatic history, an elusive homecoming that paradoxically embodies both liberation and surrender to the will of fate.

Ossos e Intimidade

por Sérgio Dias Branco e convidadas

Esta é a transcrição da sessão 2 do ciclo de projecções e debates Os Sentidos da Cidade. Dez encontros entre o cinema e a arquitectura, organizados por Sérgio Dias Branco (SDB).

24 de Abril, 2002.

TEMA: Intimidade.

FILME: Ossos (Costa 1997).

CONVIDADAS PARA O DEBATE: Prof.ª Doutora Arq.ª Dulce Loução (DL), professora de Projecto na licenciatura em Arquitectura da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Elisabete França (EF), ex-crítica de cinema do jornal Diário de Notícias, jornalista na área das Artes e Multimédia da mesma publicação.

TEXTO INTRODUTÓRIO (por SDB)

Intimidade. Não há modo de dizer ou ouvir esta palavra sem sentir a violação do inviolável. Ou que se desvanece o espaço que o discurso e a escuta tentam desvendar no momento em que é dita, no instante em que é escutada. A palavra pretende evocar. É uma imagem que profana, porque tenta representar aquilo que conhecemos demasiado para querermos enunciar. O íntimo como o sagrado não pode ser representado. Estas palavras com que escrevo compõem uma ilusão que não consegue reduzir essas paisagens inomináveis a uma imagem mental, a uma ideia, a um conceito. Pedro Costa evita esta violência exercida sobre as coisas. O seu trabalho paciente procura captar o que se revela num olhar furtivo, numa respiração demorada, num gesto cru. Aceita que a linguagem dos corpos é, talvez, anterior a toda a ordem e invenção. Que as suas presenças são os limites do secreto, as manifestações do espírito. Que quando eles falam só podem falar da solidão e do medo. Porque sob essa fala corre um processo simples, lento, sem palavras, de ligação com as pessoas e com os lugares, para que o amor e o desespero possam ser vividos sem terem que ser comentados. Partilha, feita de silêncios e frases cortantes, que precisa do olhar humano do espectador para existir. Ao contrário da palavra. Intimidade.



DL: Eu quero dizer que não tenho nada preparado, como calculam, porque cansada de dar aulas já estou eu e tenho muitos objectos para dar aulas teóricas. Portanto, tenho imensa dificuldade em dizer alguma coisa organizada sobre intimidade e a propósito desta fita. E acho que as coisas correm sempre melhor quando estamos à mesa do café e eu acho que nós já esgotámos grande parte da conversa ali, a tomar bicas. Aquela que eu via que, eventualmente, pudesse ter sido a razão pela qual o Sérgio me pediu para vir cá dizer umas palavras sobre intimidade, é porque eu acho que se acredita que a arquitectura teve e tem o papel de resolver este tema de um modo que eu imagino que seja, ao longo dos tempos na sociedade ocidental, considerado como politicamente correcto. A arquitectura teve essa coisa fantástica de lhe ter sido atribuído o direito, o dever, a responsabilidade, de regular espacialmente a relação entre as pessoas. É nesse sentido que eu penso que o Sérgio me pediu para vir cá. Devo dizer-vos que, para início de conversa, tenho a maior das dúvidas de que o tenhamos conseguido, nós enquanto disciplina. Portanto, esta é a minha primeira abordagem.

EF: Ia pegar na nossa conversa de ali fora. No sentido em que, pelo meu lado, eu vejo as condições do bairro em que o filme é rodado como condições ao mesmo tempo de abertura a uma intimidade e de fechamento. Aliás, o filme acaba com uma porta que se fecha. Se as pessoas quiserem fecham a porta e mais nada nos é acessível, da sua intimidade. Mas antes disso aquilo que vemos é que elas vivem com janelas e portas abertas ou entreabertas e estão profundamente sozinhas no seu canto, mas chegam-lhes todos os ruídos das ruas, as falas, as músicas. E nesse sentido há uma certa devassidão da intimidade, se quiserem.

DL: Eu gostei imenso do filme. Não consegui deixar de ficar comovida provavelmente por uma coisa de espectadora, que eu considero muito importante, que é a qualificação espacial daquele bairro. A qualificação até formal. E a dimensão compositiva das presenças todas e das vidas humanas naquele território. E fiquei comovida também por outra coisa. Não conheci este bairro, mas conheci o Alto da Cova da Moura que tinha uma estrutura espacial — não sei se tem ainda, já foi há alguns anos — muito semelhante a esta. E uma das questões que se colocava — neste caso aos alunos do final da licenciatura — a propósito das estruturas urbanas era a de poderem ou não conduzir situações no plano social: é que estes bairros contêm tudo aquilo que são os modelos iconográficos da arquitectura, portas, janelas, ruas, largos, pessoas a passar, têm o mote todo daquilo que habitualmente as pessoas entendem como sendo uma situação urbana adequada. O sítio, portanto, onde as pessoas comunicam e onde — o que é fantástico aqui, ao mesmo tempo desagradável e fascinante — há a aproximação entre as pessoas, portanto o problema da dimensão das coisas e a interposição de distâncias ou a ausência de interposição de distâncias manipula exactamente os mesmos instrumentos que a estrutura urbana tradicional. Só que, readequando as dimensões, origina ao mesmo tempo situações espaciais fascinantes, mas totalmente incorrectas, inadequadas.

Como é que habitualmente a cidade constrói os diversos graus do universo da intimidade? Como diz o Sérgio neste texto: a intimidade não se representa, é parecido com o sagrado. Todos os esforços de representação são esforços menores. São exercícios de aproximação a um desejo de plenitude, neste caso do sagrado ou do íntimo. Mas não deixam de ser exercícios de aproximação. No privado, a coisa já se torna menos equívoca. Só os elementos relativos à dimensão do privado, relativa à capacidade de divisão, podem ser controlados pela arquitectura.

O universo da intimidade é, de facto, uma coisa mais inatingível. E porquê? Quanto a mim, porque a intimidade prende-se com uma incapacidade que tem a ver com o confronto do indivíduo consigo próprio, para conseguir com isso reconhecer os seus limites e interagir com os outros. A definição da identidade provém da definição da oposição entre o privado e o colectivo, na organização social. Esta procura do eu pode passar por um universo que se manifesta como uma profundíssima solidão ou um profundíssimo silêncio interior. E isto é particularmente manifesto neste filme, por oposição à ausência de silêncio naqueles espaços que nós reconhecemos naturalmente como espaços privados, nomeadamente as casas. É uma leitura dificílima, porque o universo do privado, que é o sítio que culturalmente é o lugar da intimidade, onde eventualmente a entidade a existir se corporiza ou se instala, tem os códigos do colectivo. Tem a noção do colectivo, tem a partilha, tem os espaços de divisão. Mas por outro lado existe o espaço do colectivo: o espaço da rua, o espaço da relação entre ruas, o espaço do peão. A estrutura é claríssima e era uma coisa fantástica, carros por um lado, peões pelo outro, largo, rua, a possibilidade das pessoas, porque estão próximas, se deslocam.

Portanto, contém, até do ponto de vista da dimensão, qualquer coisa de muito parecido com algumas críticas que foram feitas à arquitectura por outras pessoas — não presentes, espero eu — num encontro de profissionais de Saúde no qual também participaram arquitectos. Na altura, fui eu e mais uns tantos colegas que debatemos o problema da infelicidade das pessoas por viverem em estruturas urbanas. Enfim, no limite, a situação era esta. Ou seja, o espaço da cidade, exactamente como espaço do colectivo, era o espaço onde a privacidade e portanto a inevitabilidade da intimidade estava a conduzir as pessoas a situações de grande infelicidade. O que, no limite, provocou uma ausência de relação, que é como quem diz: a ausência de cidade podia ser eventualmente o caminho para um paraíso qualquer. Não acreditando eu, nem que a arquitectura tem esta capacidade regeneradora, nem que tem esta capacidade demolidora, aquilo que é fascinante do ponto de vista arquitectónico neste filme, parece-me a mim, é a utilização de todos os instrumentos que espacialmente introduzem um processo iniciático entre o colectivo e o individual e entre o público e o privado e entre o não íntimo e o íntimo. Que passa, por exemplo, pela porta. Que é fantástico: a porta como manifestação do acto de entrar, do acto de sair, do acto de estar dentro ou de estar de fora. E a janela. E a parede. E tudo aquilo que significa a bolha, o espaço de protecção contra o espaço que não é de protecção. Portanto: da casa contra a não casa. A consagração do que é que é o espaço da família. Quer dizer, a consagração de um certo modo de viver e de um certo modo de estabelecer relações familiares. Porque a arquitectura só faz coisas que o conceito cultural não sabe como manifestar. A arquitectura não tem esse talento de inventar uma coisa que está fora do contexto, tudo aquilo que está fora do contexto não é reconhecível, visível. Já não tem clientes, enfim. Isto quer dizer que a arquitectura como disciplina corporiza e manifesta contextos e relações, que são as estabelecidas. Incluindo, evidentemente, o modo como organiza o espaço do privado, ou neste caso, da casa, da morada. A casa é um modo de construir e um modo de manifestar uma relação de natureza familiar. Ou uma disposição de elementos, portas, janelas, paredes. Dentro e fora. O modo como o dentro e o fora se estabelecem dependem de contextos. A arquitectura só tem esse talento, que é conseguir manifestar isso. Há uma imagem fantástica no filme, dele com o saco de plástico, que descreve aquele percurso de aproximação do bairro até à Praça da Figueira. E a estrutura urbana que está presente no bairro é igual à que está presente na Praça da Figueira. É um problema de dimensão. Só muda o tamanho. Eu não consigo explicar isto de outra maneira. Para mim, isto é claríssimo.

EF: É a mesma a uma escala diferente?

DL: Não. Tem outro tamanho, não tem outra escala. São dimensões diferentes. A escala tem a ver com proporção, portanto com a hierarquização de coisas. Estas dimensões têm mesmo a ver com o tamanho maior ou mais pequeno. A dimensão da incomunicabilidade, a dimensão do silêncio, a dimensão do discurso referencial — que é o modo como eu, como pessoa, me situo em relação ao filme, este silêncio, a perda, o autismo, do conjunto de pessoas que circulam e que se cruzam e que aparentemente definem coisas, não só territórios —, a estrutura desse território é igual, só que têm dimensões diferentes, não escalas, porque as proporções não são alteradas. A proporção é a mesma, a dimensão é que se altera.

EF: Mas não há uma diferença entre um local que é uma residência e outro que já só é de passagem? Porque tudo se polariza na Praça da Figueira, na boca do Metro, não é?

DL: É. Mas vamos lá falar de residência então: morada, lar, sítio de morar. Há uma frase fantástica ali, que é assim: “A minha casa é entre as pernas da não sei quantas, mas pode ser entre as tuas.” O sentido de lugar, o sentido de residir, o sentido de morada, é este. Percebe o que estou a dizer? O sentido de morada é este, é isto ou aquilo ou será uma ruína. Eu referia-me à Praça da Figueira, sítio público, que por acaso é contornado por um conjunto de paredes que têm janelas e portas. Nós denominámos aquelas casas do Bairro das Fontaínhas de residência, se acreditamos nisto, as relações de lugar familiar são diversas, são muito diversas daquelas que nós estamos habituados a conhecer como adequadas. As pessoas partilham de outro modo. Aquilo que para nós é o limite da intimidade, que nós consideramos que é a relação afectiva, o acto de fazer amor, é partilhado por toda a gente que passa. A questão está em saber que nós entendemos que o espaço da cama, o espaço do quarto, é um sítio, eventualmente, distanciado do sítio público — aliás, tem sido na cultura ocidental e, enfim, na cultura da casa ao longo do final século XIX e do século XX. A casa é organizada também por esse ponto, esse sítio mais sagrado, o tal lugar da intimidade, que é a alcova, vamos supor. Aqui isto está completamente subvertido, não sei se por razões de natureza distancial ou se por razões de contexto. Ou seja, finalmente, a intimidade é aquilo que nós entendemos como sendo algumas coisas que na cultura ocidental não podem ser partilhadas pelos outros ou a grande intimidade é outra coisa? No sentido de residir, então não é um sítio físico, mas é um sítio de outra natureza. E portanto não representável, como diz o Sérgio.

— Acha que se naquele mesmo espaço existisse outro contexto arquitectónico a interacção das pessoas e o seu comportamento seria igual?

DL: Respondo-lhe assim. Há uns anos fizeram um estudo a propósito de áreas mínimas de habitar e constatava-se que as áreas menores de todas as áreas mínimas de habitar eram ocupadas por japoneses. Isto a propósito também das áreas mínimas do R.E.G.E.U. — foi na faculdade suponho eu, ou alguém já o tinha investigado e nós usámos — e constatava-se que havia uma inadequabilidade na aplicação das áreas mínimas do R.E.G.E.U. para habitação social, porque se entendia que quem conseguia viver em espaços genuinamente pequenos e eventualmente com todas as questões relativas à identidade, deveriam ser pessoas com contextos culturais um pouco mais elevados. Quer dizer que a construção da intimidade, deste silêncio, esta capacidade de estar imóvel, silencioso, sem tocar, está desadequado: as casas de topo de gama deviam ter áreas mínimas, as casas de habitação social deviam ter mais espaço. Ou seja, de facto, a construção da intimidade é um acto — não sei se estou a dizer barbaridades tão grandes assim —, mas é um acto de evolução interior que pressupõe contextos económicos, culturais, bastante mais diferenciados do que a questão da habitação social, daquilo que é habitação social, isto é, auto-construção. Respondendo à pergunta: nós, de facto, viveríamos de um modo diverso, provavelmente porque vivemos noutras casas, acredito eu, mas não sei quão diverso. E, pelo contrário, não sei se as pessoas deslocadas — e é verdade que já há pessoas deslocadas — alterarão, senão de um modo muito gradual, as relações com a vida só porque finalmente já têm um T3. Porque eu não sei se tem a ver com o T3, está a perceber. As relações de casualidade, de intimidade, é isso mesmo, de silêncios, de cruzamentos, desencontros, são inevitáveis. Mas há uma coisa que é fantástica neste bairro: é que a definição territorial está asseguradíssima. Um bairro de auto-construção funciona como outros territórios que têm a ver com modelos ancestrais. Na Alto da Cova da Moura haviam três comunidades que tinham estabelecido localizações e partilha de momentos comuns. E a organização do território era de facto um exercício de apropriação de território. Coisa que nós não sabemos fazer.

— Mas era uma organização táctica ou estratégica?

DL: Não, não. O Alto da Cova da Moura que eu conheço, e que é um bairro parecido com este, é um bairro de auto-construção. Portanto, há uma apropriação de um pedaço de território, onde não sei quantas famílias começaram a construir. E a seguir, entre elas, estabeleceram os limites da sua territorialidade. Decidiram o que partilham, o que não partilham, e qual é a relação que estabelecem entre elas, enquanto grupo, e os outros. Nós não sabemos fazer isso, por exemplo. Graças a Deus, nós moramos em habitação colectiva, que alguns de nós, autores, inventaram para estabelecer o tipo de relação que as pessoas devem ter umas com as outras. O interessante para nós, arquitectos, é ver como é que nós conseguimos funcionar com a auto-construção. Através dessa capacidade, por exemplo.

EF: Bom, ainda relativamente àquilo de que se falou agora, que é uma situação hipotética. No filme aparece, e é a casa para onde a rapariga vai trabalhar, a casa da enfermeira. E aí há já uma relação que é de patroa/empregada, mulher-a-dias.

— E é uma patroa que tenta introduzir-se na vida dela e das pessoas com estão próximas dela. Aquela casa vai servir também de casa para o rapaz, o pai da criança, que é uma espécie de marido das duas empregadas. E, falo por mim, o filme toma como exemplo uma patroa que não é o comum. Ela preocupa-se com as empregadas, mas vive numa promiscuidade, porque não pertence de facto àquele meio. Ela apropria-se de tudo, menos da criança.

EF: Pois, comum não é, pelo contrário, é completamente excepcional. Tanto assim que é a única daquelas imensas pessoas que passam ali, pela Praça da Figueira, junto ao supermercado, a responder ao apelo do pai.

DL: Exactamente.

EF: Mas eu estava a referir-me ao território da casa e à diferença real. Porque aquela é uma casa fechada onde as pessoas vão para trabalhar. Ou no caso do pai, para receber auxílio, porque ela ofereceu o leite que intoxicou o bebé, que depois ficou hospitalizado — e ela é enfermeira no hospital. Tudo isto leva ao nascer de outro tipo de intimidade.

DL: Acho que podíamos começar a falar sobre esse desejo que as pessoas têm de que quando a intimidade é obtida, eventualmente a vida das pessoas seja melhor. As casas das patroas são casas de uma tristeza infinita ou estarei eu a ver mal? São casas sem gente, não têm vida. Só têm resíduos de coisas. Têm copos. Têm pratos. Têm, têm. Não é? Têm máquinas. Têm coisas, não se percebe muito bem para quê. E nós, deram-nos tudo aquilo que, em condições, enfim, teóricas — como sabem os alunos —, são fundamentais para a qualidade de vida das pessoas: janelas, luz, electrodomésticos, máquina disto e despertador daquilo. Não sei se percebem. Não sei.

— A intimidade estará na partilhada forma do bairro mostrado ou na intimidade de ter um espaço para si próprio, na mais completa solidão?

DL: Eu não sei. Mas voltando à história da outra conversa, que também foi um bocadinho traumática para mim, em que se falava de cidade e de felicidade. Eu vim na qualidade de representante daqueles que produzem ou desejam vir a produzir futuros arquitectos ou lá o que é que eles passam a ser. Há uma coisa que eu garanto que nós, que eu pelo menos nas aulas não ofereço nenhuma garantia: é que a arquitectura confira felicidade e que o desígnio da vida das pessoas seja mesmo alcançar felicidade. Isso não posso garantir e não está escrito em sítio nenhum que tenha que garantir. Tenho que eventualmente aceitar a inevitabilidade de construir espaços para albergar vida com todas as características incluindo as mais dramáticas, as mais horrorosas, as mais incorrectas. Não sei quanto à felicidade. Sei que é para cumprir listagens de desejos que um grupo alargado de pessoas determina que são os de um contexto e de uma época. E o que é interessante fazer é eventualmente, de um ponto de vista da definição da cidade, uma comparação de dois territórios ou de dois modos muito diversos, mas igualmente inevitáveis, manifestados espacialmente de dois modos diferentes; sendo que, para meu desgosto, a competência espacial do subúrbio, da periferia, é poeticamente mais adequado do que o outro. É assustador, isto. Ou seja, é mais clara a manifestação espacial relativamente ao propósito. É mais clara a relação entre o público e o privado, por exemplo. Percebe-se essa intimidade numa imagem fantástica que é quando a senhora vai a casa da prima e nós estamos a vê-la numa janela de outra janela, e as pessoas passam e aquele espaço intersticial é rigorosamente igual, com outra dimensão, a não sei quantos espaços construídos por nós e que são dimensionalmente feitos para as pessoas partilharem coisas, mas de facto são espaços feitos para pôr outras coisas. Ou seja, aquele espaço do ponto de vista arquitectónico é igual a este, só que por acaso aquele é mais qualificado do que este do ponto de vista poético. Pode é ser problemático.

— Acha que os condomínios fechados, que estando fechados ao exterior deviam projectar uma imagem de intimidade entre pares, não são muito diferentes destes bairros suburbanos, onde isso existe, essa partilha da intimidade? Não sei se me estou a fazer entender.

DL: Está. Esses condomínios são construídos por duas ordens de razões. Primeiro acho que as pessoas têm terror da morte e vão à procura de segurança. E a segunda é porque o condomínio fechado projecta uma imagem e as pessoas vivem desesperadas à procura de uma imagem para projectar. São muito diferentes destes bairros, porque a gente é completamente diferente. As pessoas aproximam-se umas das outras e coabitam por razões. As pessoas têm hábitos próximos porque provêm de contextos próximos. Enquanto que aqui é o facto de serem todos muito pobres e terem todos que partilhar. Portanto, não é um acto intencional, é uma situação precária, enquanto que no outro caso é mesmo um acto intencional, as pessoas desejam aproximar-se daquilo que supõem vir a ser a sua paz, por razões que se prendem com o isolamento em relação aos outros. É um exercício assim um bocadinho prévio a este da intimidade e é um pouco adolescente, do meu ponto de vista: a gente reconhece quem é, por oposição aos outros, que não são como nós. Talvez um dia consigamos ser alguma coisa, no dia em que conseguirmos. O problema é que nós só conseguimos ser alguma coisa quando nos separarmos do grupo. Esta coisa do grupo tem esta vantagem e esta enorme desvantagem. Além de que o condomínio fechado tem outra coisa assustadora: é que ocupa pedaços fundamentais da cidade, porque tem esta característica, essa sim, claramente “voyeur”: penduram-se no sétimo andar para ver a vista, retirando da cidade essa componente, não chamarei estética, mas visual. As acessibilidades, as localizações fantásticas, e depois não interage pura e simplesmente. Esse é que é o verdadeiro gueto, do meu ponto de vista. Isto é capaz de ser o mais incorrecto politicamente e o Sérgio devia desligar o gravador neste momento. Mas tem mesmo a ver com isto. O condomínio fechado é um grande gueto, as origens são completamente diferentes, as pessoas não sei se partilham o que quer que seja ou se vivem na ilusão de que, porque moram juntas umas com as outras podem, eventualmente um dia, vir a partilhar a fantástica piscina do condomínio. É um problema de imagem, neste caso. E um problema de vida, no outro. Como eu estava a dizer, não são comparáveis.

— Na sessão anterior falou-se da autenticidade da arquitectura e do cinema. E esta auto-construção é um exemplo de um arquitectura ainda feita para o Homem, construída pelo próprio, em que há uma totalidade, uma autenticidade, bem diferente do absurdo de algumas arquitecturas.

DL: Agora vou falar como membro da Ordem dos Arquitectos. Eu acho que esta profissão de arquitecto tem uma componente ética e social poderosíssima, sem a qual devia ser retirada a carteira profissional a todos aqueles que não entendessem este tipo de conduta ou de missão que o arquitecto deve ter. Se falasse como académica provavelmente diria que a disciplina da arquitectura avalia relações num contexto cultural e manifesta essas relações — e só faz isso. Não tem que funcionar contra elas, até porque esta função da arquitectura só se manifesta porque o contexto pede. Se falar como docente aproximo-me muito mais seriamente da atitude do missionário do que da atitude da academia. E se falar como docente provavelmente fico numa situação horrível de não conseguir explicar a todos os futuros arquitectos que aquilo que eles estão a fazer são exercícios de natureza transitória, meramente instrumentais, para conseguirem construir arquitectura. A arquitectura, de facto, não é imagem nem é progresso, é uma tarefa árdua de procurar pelo menos que a vida das pessoas não seja agravada por más soluções por parte daqueles que tinham obrigação de garantir uma infra-estrutura mínima de habitabilidade das coisas. Os arquitectos, em função do lado da barreira, responder-lhe-ão de maneiras tão diferentes quanto estas. Porque, em última análise, ao arquitecto profissional acontece uma coisa interessante: é que ele só faz arquitectura se tiver com quem. E esse quem é o contexto económico, é o contexto social, o contexto cultural, somos nós, é a sociedade. Portanto, nós nem sequer podemos fazer projectos sobre o vazio por uma razão simples: os projectos não são arquitectura e os que vão para a gaveta perdem o sentido. Nós não somos donos das obras, não somos donos da pedra. Enfim, andamos aqui no meio disto tudo.

EF: Eu creio que me perdi um bocadinho a tentar acompanhar a conversa. Mas nesta parte final direi que, ao contrário do que disse em relação à arquitectura, o cinema é imagem. Imagem ou a ausência dela, imagem e som a partir de uma determinada forma de território, concretamente no fim deste filme, quando a porta se fecha, deixa de ser imagem e é ainda som.

No contexto da obra do Pedro Costa a mim parece-me que este bairro — e no Bairro das Fontaínhas ele já fez dois filmes, o Ossos e o No Quarto da Vanda (2000) — foi onde ele chegou de um trânsito da Ilha do Fogo em Cabo Verde onde esteve para fazer a Casa de Lava (1994) e onde estabeleceu relações com algumas destas pessoas, relações essas que se mantiveram e que o levaram ao encontro de outras pessoas que coabitavam ali, com aquilo a que talvez se pudesse chamar tribos do império, digamos assim, misturas de crioulos. E este lugar é, do ponto de vista da intimidade ou do afecto a ela, o lugar de uma comunidade que de filme para filme é um tema para Pedro Costa. São comunidades de onde se exclui o pai e isso aliás acontecia logo no primeiro filme, onde se matava o pai: O Sangue (1989), que ele rejeita muito por considerá-lo um bocado “arty.” Depois, no segundo filme, na Casa de Lava, há um filho que é devolvido à origem, que é acolhido basicamente pela comunidade das mulheres. E quando se chega ao Ossos, há um pai que finalmente leva o filho para tentar salvá-lo, mas que é eliminado por esta comunidade das mães, onde todas querem ter mais um bocadinho daquele bebé. Até que chegamos ao No Quarto da Vanda e o pai pura e simplesmente não chega a aparecer. Portanto, esta é a imagem que eu vejo a percorrer os filmes do Pedro Costa. E onde ele se encontrou mais. De tal maneira que se no Ossos ainda tem actrizes profissionais misturadas com aquela comunidade é retirando-lhes completamente o “glamour” que ele pretende ir ao osso do que me parece ser a sua procura de uma certa essência do humano — confirmada, de resto, em entrevistas que tivemos tanto acerca do Ossos, como depois acerca do No Quarto da Vanda. E se o que fascina o Pedro Costa nestas pessoas é, como ele me dizia aqui a propósito do Ossos, “uma espécie de língua nova que brilha na escuridão,” a mim também me parece que os filmes dele constituem no cinema uma espécie de língua nova que brilha na escuridão. Tudo isto é muito escuro, mas tudo isto é uma língua cinematográfica profundamente poética.

SDB: Queria só aproveitar a oportunidade para deixar uma nota, que foi uma coisa que eu não expliquei no início. Não devíamos ter passado este filme. A primeira ideia foi passar o No Quarto da Vanda, só que parece que o filme já não existe. No outro dia, estava a conversar ao telefone com o João Antunes da Cinemateca Portuguesa — e que também vai participar neste ciclo — e ele falou com o Pedro Costa na semana passada e deu-me algumas informações. Curiosamente, esta semana, e isto é uma mera coincidência, na sexta-feira este filme vai passar na RTP. E a RTP queria passar o No Quarto da Vanda, simplesmente o filme já não existe. O filme está a ser remontado pelo Pedro Costa, portanto podemos dizer que haverão várias versões. A semana passada tivemos o Sicília! e tal como eles fizeram outra versão daquele filme, cuja montagem aliás foi documentada pelo Pedro Costa — é uma ligação interessante o facto do Pedro Costa ter feito um documentário sobre esta segunda versão do Sicília! —, também o Pedro Costa resolveu remontar o seu filme. Era só para esclarecer que é por isso que nós passámos o Ossos.

— Tenho visto alguns filmes, mas não tenho esse conhecimento cinéfilo que demonstrou. De qualquer modo, será que um filme destes pode traduzir a força do feminino no presente? Será que os homens se estão a afastar do poder?

EF: Eu não dei, de maneira nenhuma, esse tipo de interpretação. Eu limitei-me a fazer uma leitura sequencial dos filmes do Pedro Costa. E não posso responder pelos criadores. Posso quanto muito tentar ler as suas criações. Mas parece que cada um procurará criar alguma coisa que, de certo modo, confesse as suas falhas mais profundas. No caso do Pedro Costa, provavelmente será a falha materna, porque a mãe lhe morreu quando ele tinha oito ou nove anos. E portanto ele privilegia altamente a comunidade das mulheres e das mães.

SDB: O No Quarto da Vanda não tem actores profissionais, mas há uma actriz que aparece nos três primeiros filmes dele, que é a Inês de Medeiros.

EF: Ele disse-me numa das entrevistas, já não sei em qual, a propósito de um destes dois últimos filmes, que tem de haver sempre uma mulher de alguma idade, que no caso de O Sangue era a Isabel de Castro, no caso da Casa de Lava era a Edith Scob, uma actriz francesa, no caso do Ossos é a Isabel Ruth, e no caso do No Quarto da Vanda é a mãe da Vanda Duarte.

SDB: Professora, se tiver alguma coisa para dizer, diga.

EF: Eu não tenho nada para dizer... Não, ia dizer uma coisa horrível que é começar por perguntar se a arquitectura tem um feminino e um masculino. Esta leitura do papel da mulher ou da mãe ou da demissão do pai...

Vamos lá ver se a gente se entende: há aqui um processo que eu não sei se tem a ver com o exercício do patriarcado no sentido em que se estava a colocar. Eu acho que as mulheres sempre tiveram poder, mesmo quando cederam simpaticamente aos homens a possibilidade de se ocuparem dessas tarefas mais visíveis. A intimidade é uma coisa feminina. É no feminino. E a arquitectura também é uma coisa no feminino. Sendo que eu odeio a frase “a arquitectura feita por mulheres”. A arquitectura masculina ou feminina: eu acho que a arquitectura, essa entidade, não tem a ver com o universo masculino ou feminino. Mas tinha que dizer o que eu acho que é essa a situação do matriarcado e do patriarcado. A cultura ocidental é claramente matriarcal, no nosso contexto cultural então, do sul da Europa, é claramente matriarcal. Sempre foi, porque as mulheres têm aquilo que é mais essencial na vida, determinam as coisas mais fundamentais, exactamente porque são aquelas que operam as grandes transformações. Há uma frase que aquele homem, o marido da Clotilde, diz e que é importantíssima: quem assegura a vida daquela família é ela. A atribuição, no sentido da vida na sua dimensão global, é esta: é a casa dele, mas ela é de facto o garante daquilo tudo. Mas eu acho que, no limite, é um elogio. E provavelmente, ao nível da estrutura da arquitectura e culturalmente, quando a arquitectura não tinha essa questão funcional que fazia com que tivesse que ter casas de banho e cozinhas, nem nada determinado, quando só havia lugar para o fogo e o sítio de ir buscar água, quando as funções do espaço da casa não estavam organizadas com atribuições espaciais próprias, as casas construíam-se em função de relações de intimidade que não tinham lugar físico. Como é que eu consigo explicar isto? Toda a gente conhece o Palácio da Vila, em Sintra. É um paço medieval que tinha uma coisa que eu acho belíssima imaginar-mos, que é assim: a corte quando lá ia incluía as pessoas e os adereços. Portanto, é a ideia de que a casa, a morada, é alguma coisa habitada. Por isso é que eu dizia à bocado que não me parecia tão diferente o facto de haver sofás ou isto ou aquilo, para a construção da intimidade, ou da boa maneira de viver, ou da maior felicidade se quiserem, face à ausência dessas coisas no outro território, no território das Fontaínhas, porque houve tempos em que as pessoas não associavam a privacidade ou os lugares de intimidade a localizações físicas fixas. E aquilo que acontecia quando a corte ia para Sintra era: quando chegava a corte havia de haver um sítio, que era o sítio dos fogões, das chaminés e havia sempre um sítio onde se confeccionavam coisas, porque tinham outras ao pé. Depois, as pessoas organizavam-se a partir do sítio onde o rei dissesse que era a cama dele. Ou seja, havia uma hierarquia que não era coisa física, portanto tinha a ver com estas importâncias, que determinava a dimensão de afastamento das pessoas em relação à cama do rei, que contrariamente ao nosso modelo, era o momento mais consagrado. Aliás, toda a gente conhece aquela história de que o grande momento público era o banho do rei em França. Portanto, a ideia de intimidade ou o que são as hierarquias dos espaços e das coisas são determinações que provêm de quem tem mais poder. E se nós avaliarmos como é que tradicionalmente, no século XIX, a casa se organizou acabamos por perceber bem o poder da mulher. No momento em que a mulher disse ao homem: “muito bem, tu agora vais para a guerra e fazes e aconteces” ou “agora não há guerra e tu trabalhas e nós remetemo-nos a esse trabalho menor, horrível, de gerir a vida e os filhos e consolidar tudo isso”. O marco no território é a casa e quem organizou a hierarquia da casa foi a mulher. Fê-lo foi de uma maneira silenciosa. Era só isto que eu tinha para dizer.

Costa fait un film de genre digne de Tourneur

par ANTOINE THIRION

Quant à Tarrafal, des voix portugaises donc crédibles sont allées jusqu`à y voir le meilleur film de Costa. Sans concurrencer En avant, jeunesse, Tarrafal présente la même perfection en format court, qui raconte la notification d`expulsion faite à José Alberto, immigré cap-verdian de Fontainhas. Le film tire son nom du camp de concentration pour prisionniers politiques créé par le régime salazariste, en 1936, au Cap-Vert. José Alberto croise des proches disparus ou morts, parmi eux Ventura dont il serait un autre fils, et leur parle comme s`il n`en était rien: dans les conversations, il est question d`un diable dévitalisant ses victimes après les avoir prévenues par lettre – et il est clair que ce diable a un ministère. C`est là que Costa retrouve la force des films noirs et des westerns, au-delà de la beauté intrinsèque du surcadrage d`un paysage désolé ou d`un plan épique sur un poignard fixant l`Avis d`explulsion à un poteau. Tarrafal n`est pas un film sur la violence mais sur le Mal, et la lutte sociale est à sa mesure.

Cahiers du Cinema, Février 2008, Nº 631

"I Have to Risk Each Shot"

By Michael Guillén

Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa - a traveling retrospective organized by Lisbon's Ricardo Matos Cabo - launched at Toronto's Cinematheque Ontario and has since traveled on to the Vancouver International Film Center, Manhattan's Anthology Film Archives, the REDCAT in Los Angeles, the Harvard Film Archive, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Chicago's Gene Siskel Film Center, Seattle's Northwest Film Forum, Rochester's George Eastman House, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and recently the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California.

Pedro Costa was artist in residence at UC Berkeley as a Regent's Lecturer, sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and - along with the series (coordinated for PFA by Kathy Geritz) - delivered the annual Regents' Lecture. For over 50 years, this prestigious program has brought to the University individuals distinguished in the arts, letters, sciences, and business whose careers are outside of academia.

Daniel Kasman logged notes on the entire series when it hit Manhattan. Dennis Lim likewise previewed the series for the New York Times while Manohla Dargis focused in on Colossal Youth. The same one-two punch was delivered at the Village Voice, where Ed Halter previewed the series and his then-cohort Nathan Lee wrote up Colossal Youth. Scott Foundas previewed the series for LA Weekly when it played REDCAT, as did the Boston Phoenix's Peter Keough when it came to Harvard. After watching the series at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote up his thoughts for the Chicago Reader.

Though nominated for the Golden Palm at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, the film's critical response at that festival could almost be described as hostile, as noted at GreenCine Daily. Perhaps there's something to be said for seeing a film in proper context, which this retrospective admittedly redresses?

My thanks to Kathy Geritz, Susan Oxtoby and Shelley Diekman for arranging time for me to sit down with Costa to discuss the series.


James Quandt has written that this traveling retrospective "acts as both primer and corrective, introduction and redress." Having traveled around with the retrospective to several cities in both Canada and the United States, have you found this to be true? Has the interaction with your audiences served to wake them up to your work?

Well, "waking them up" is perhaps too much. It has been a different experience because mostly in Europe the films are shown isolated, each one on their own, so they have no relation to each other like here in San Francisco or in Toronto, where the films have been screened daily, nearly in chronological order. In that sense, it's more interesting. Audiences make their own montage. They make their own associations, which is good.

I like retrospectives. When I was young, I had the chance of seeing a lot of films by, let's say, Japanese filmmakers - 15 films by Ozu - every day I saw them. With these great films from classic filmmakers, of course each film makes you want to see the next one and it produces your own idea of the filmmaker, of his themes or styles. It's great but it's also difficult because retrospectives in themselves are a difficult set-up.

Let's go back to the beginning, to your first film O Sangue. I can see why in your introduction you characterized O Sangue as a "safe" movie by comparison to your later films, "full" of cinema, "protected" by cinema. You insinuate the danger that was yet to arrive in your later work. What was it you learned from making O Sangue that helped you approach that danger?

It's not exactly O Sangue because - even if it's full of ghosts and demons and dreams, bad dreams most of all - the shooting on that film was quite usual. As I said, it was a first film for a lot of us, especially the actors, so it was rather a strange, very nice moment, a long succession of nights shooting with these big lights and everything. It was a kind of enchanted moment. You can see that, you can feel that in the film probably? All those nights in the park with the river and all of that. So it wasn't exactly this film; it was more Ossos, the following [film].

I did film school and just after that I had four or five years of [working] as an assistant to the producer/director. I did a lot of things from just getting sandwiches for the actors to picking [them] up [and driving them to location]. Those five years just before this film, that was the period where I saw a lot of things that I didn't like. I chose film or cinema; but then I had this experience of the hard reality of making films. What I saw was very bad. I did a lot of films - maybe 20 or 30 - as an assistant and each one of them were mirrors of the worst parts of society, from power relations to all the worst part of our organization as human beings. I was a bit afraid that this work could become the rest of my life because I saw a lot of directors collapsing, failing, afraid, usually in very bad situation[s]. It was all about money or about lacking time. As I was assistant director, my job was to say, "Calm down. Everything's all right"; but I saw that everything was collapsing. That's what an assistant director does more or less, is to calm down the paralytics. It's a phony job actually, at least in Europe.

Then I had this moment in my film where I tried to avoid a lot of things. I think we succeeded. We had a very good crew. We did this film in five weeks. It was very quick and hectic with a lot of lighting. We had no time to rehearse with the young boys. There were a lot of locations. Because I was a little bit experienced with this kind of organization, we managed through it, but it was more a sensing or feeling [of] what the secret of making a good film could be - not the film itself - but the way you make it; the way you live it. It took me many films and many experiences to get to that point, to get things more or less right, as I feel I have now. Now, the film and the way we live the film during the making has begun to balance. I feel I have achieved a certain balance between being behind and in front of the camera. Here [in O Sangue], though there were not a lot of production problems, there is still a lot of me in front of the camera. The balance is not right, correct. It's more [that] everything was a means to an end.

In some ways, I had to pay my debt to a lot of dead people and a lot of films that I liked. This was the way of finishing with that also. What I like about O Sangue is this sense of the long night of childhood that embraces a lot of films that were made and a lot of American books [that I read]. I'm remembering this now while I'm here, but there was a writer that I loved, Flannery O'Connor, and probably the title [of O Sangue] comes from O'Connor. I think I stole some things - like the [relationship of the] boy and the uncle - from one of her books, The Violent Bear It Away.

Momentarily deferring to your detractors, your films have been described as "formidable," "obdurate," "impenetrable," "inaccessible," "difficult" and "a colossal bore"; still, I prefer your own term: "dangerous." What exactly do you mean by that?

Let's not make this pretentious; but in some ways my films are dangerous because I work within limited financial means. There's not that much money that comes in and less and less every year. You can feel it. Also, there are less possibilities of showing my films. But they're dangerous in the sense that I have to risk each shot of my film. There's a French writer, Céline, who I like a lot. He wrote Journey to the End of the Night, a classic novel. He used to frequently say that the writer should "put his skin on the table"; that was his expression. I feel the same way. If you don't risk yourself and the people with whom you're working in almost every shot you make, it's not good, it's useless, it's just another film. For me, this danger takes a lot of forms. I'm shooting with video, which - perhaps - some people think is easier and has more freedom, is cheaper. It is cheaper - you can do it yourself - but at the same time, if you want to do something ambitious, it's difficult for this small-medium machine to accommodate so much ambition. Can it produce a bigger form? A bigger picture? Sometimes, I think, not always. It's a very limited machine, a limited medium, and you can easily make false moves.

It's risky to try to use video as I'm trying to use it, almost like a 35mm camera. It's no different for me. I used to work with a crew and big cameras. I have the feeling it was safer for me when I had this crew, these assistants, this large machinery. It was protection. I was surrounded by people that were there for me, sometimes a bit naïvely, sometimes very sincerely, but that's a kind of work that no longer interests me. I don't know. There's a danger to the kind of engagement video affords, letting yourself be in reality, aware of certain aspects of reality. When I did films in 35mm with a crew, every day the thing that I wanted to shoot, to film, was happening either to the left or the right or behind the set-up - it could be some bit of the actors; it could be just a bit of light on leaves; it could be something happening just to the side - and with a big crew and cameras, lights and everything, you never had time to turn the camera and just shoot this small spot of sunlight on a rock. You never have the time. If you do that, it will kill your production schedule. So you never do it. The producers don't allow it. The machinery does not allow it. It's too complicated.

Again, this freedom or lightness in the way I work now doesn't mean that it's completely improvisational or that it's a vacation with a video camera. Not at all. I try to impose, almost, the same discipline and the same consciousness as working with a 35mm camera; but I feel that everything is really more risky. Technically, because we have to be as good as with a 35mm camera, which is nearly impossible. I'm adjusting my camera to conditions and always trying not to make false moves because video is not good for certain things.

Not to be too pandering, but - along with Thom Anderson who was writing about this in his article for Film Comment - if anyone has proven that video can approximate film, it's yourself. Colossal Youth, along with Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Climates, both filmed on DV, are some of the most beautiful cinema I've ever seen. They're almost shocking in how accomplished and beautiful they are. Where the danger transfers to the spectator is in having to learn how to appreciate and acknowledge the accomplishment and recognize the beauty of limited formats.

One of the things I especially respect about your work is that you grant agency to your audiences. You're not just spoon-feeding us. The films pull us into their gravitational orbit and require an accommodating physicality, an attention, exploration, engagement, endurance.

It's not only me or the style or the way the film is structured; it's more the rhythm of the people inside the films. They also put themselves in danger because they are naked. These are naked people; they have been all their lives really, not only sentimentally, but socially, economically. They have little and they're giving a lot in the films. Giving a lot almost like actors though, for me, better than actors. They're more sincere. They want to share, they're trying to express some things, and - in that sense - they also are very much in danger. They reveal a lot. I think they expect that the viewers and the audiences can be as naked or as responsible or as conscious. Responsible is a good word because it's about memory, it's about rhythms, it's about different timelines and timeframes, all these people, and you have to accept that or walk out.

It would be inexact, I think, to try to talk about the spirit of this place Fontainhas because it strikes me as much more embodied and - as you've described it - material. I love how you have framed your characters in doorways and window frames, often at skewed angles. Can you talk a bit about your compositional eye?

No.

No?

No. To be very frank, people are always comparing and referring to filmmakers of the past. I forget to mention that there is a tradition that moves me a lot. Here, in France, in Portugal, in Spain, there were people all over the world at the beginning of the 20th century who were photographers. One of them even called himself a "citizen." They were more or less amateurs - you could say documentary photographers - because photography was so young from the turn of the century until the 30s when it became something else. But photography is still something that touches me and I always forget to say this because it replaces for me a lot of things that I miss in film today and in filmed documentaries. I don't like to talk about framing or the composition because I don't know how to talk about that. I really don't. I know that in Fontainhas it comes from the material space. You have to think about the space.

This is the kind of place that - I don't know if you know the Arab or African countries - but this place is the old Arab town, the medina, the casbah. These photographers that I'm talking about, certain filmmakers, there's something that has to do with the medina and the casbah. I think film was born there. It's supposed to be there. It has to do with the exchange and trade of things, it's very obvious. Morocco is a country where I've spent a lot of time alone for long periods of time. The noise, the sound, the way people organize life; there are 10,000 people in a very small space. They live in basements, on many levels. You would be amazed how the houses have so many families and all kinds of ways of moving around without being seen. It's very complex. This is very interesting also to study in my country, this kind of place, because they no longer exist, they've destroyed them, demolished them.

Again, it has to do with this frontier between the public place and the private place. You see more of that in In Vanda's Room. It's a room but the idea of being alone in your room is not accurate because all the neighborhood is passing through all the time. Sometimes the street can be much more secret and closed. These kind of spaces are obviously fascinating. It's one of the things we've lost a little bit in film. I'm not saying I'm doing it well; but this was a space that existed. You only have to see films by Chaplin.

My friend Jean-Marie Straub says something obvious, "When you see a film by Stroheim, you are afraid for people when they cross the street." It's that material. It's two things. One, he was saying cars are bad. Second, the very powerful effect that just crossing a street at a street corner could really materialize fear on the screen; it's just incredible. Fritz Lang, the way he organizes space - I'm saying Fritz Lang but it could be 30 different filmmakers - all of them, even the not very good ones, are fantastic. Today, you don't see doors or windows. You never see a door. If you see a door, it closes in perfect silence. "Stuck in a perfect silence," that's what Jacques Tati used to say. Now a door closes and it's a different conception of space. I don't know if it's a conception that people accept today. I don't know how to answer your question.

I'm satisfied; I think that's an evocative response. I love the reference to the medina.

I'm excommunicated. There was film criticism that I really hate completely, that almost killed people that I like, like Straub, all this semiology, and I hated that and I still do. It's pathetic if you read it today. I think everything communicates. They say nothing communicates. Perhaps people have difficulty communicating but things communicate. They organized space to communicate. That's what was the cause of one of my fascinations.

I accept your answer about photography's influence upon your work and the integral presence of an image, separate from efforts to interpret or transform an image into a metaphor or a representation or a symbol. I acknowledge your efforts to apprehend directly the integral presence of images in your own film work. That being said, I'd like to discuss the scene in Colossal Youth where Ventura visits Lisbon's Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. That museum sequence is exquisitely beautiful with its paintings on the walls illuminated by mirror-deflected light and Ventura seated on the red sofa. Were you trying to go for a "painterly" effect?

Not really, no. The scene is a surprise for me - as it was a surprise doing the scene - and as it is now probably for someone who is watching the film. Suddenly, after all these moments with the people at Casal Boba, and probably thinking the film will go like this to the end of the film, suddenly you have this very extravagant moment. It's like another planet in the film. But for me it was a surprise and it came about because one day we were passing the museum. We were not shooting and Ventura and all of us were in the car going somewhere, I don't remember where, and he told us, "I built this. I did this." Actually, it was his first contract when he came to Lisbon. He worked four years on the construction of the museum. I asked him if he had been there after the opening and he said, "No. I never went inside after I made it."

I proposed that we could go take a visit that afternoon. And then began the idea of making something there because immediately - as Ventura was walking into the museum a little bit ahead of us - I saw a guard at the door walking towards him. I'm sure he was going to say something like, "You're probably searching for something else; not this museum. You're not in the right place." He had this sense - something that was said in the museum scene - that people like Ventura don't belong in those places, they don't come, they're not welcome. Museums are for "other" people from "other" classes.

This, and the idea that perhaps the museum could be the best place for Ventura to talk about his arrival in Lisbon, the moment he started working, and the moment when he had his work site accident and also because we had all these "children" that were possible - the film is about Ventura finding, searching, taking care of all his lost children, imaginary or real - we could have another one at the museum; it could be the guard; perhaps not his real child, but another young man telling his story and talking about his problems. All of this together seemed good, in the museum especially because it was also a way, of course, for me through Ventura to balance art, classical painting, and work, just work like we do in the film - I insist I'm just working and not making compositions; I'm not making paintings, that's for sure - taking art a bit lower and putting our film a bit higher. We had to confront Rembrandt and Holbeins and Van Dyck, all these Flemish, French and English painters; but we had an excuse, and a very good excuse: Ventura had made the walls for them. If you like, this is also a metaphor, Ventura is in this museum watching and admiring and really moved by his own work, his walls, his floors. It just so happens that there are some Rembrandts hanging.

This was very good for our work because it joins a conception or an idea or a belief that I have that Rembrandt or Van Gogh or Picasso are just workers. They were workers. They were craftsmen, rather than "sacred artists." I see no difference between Ventura's work and Van Gogh's, let's say. They can be moved the same way.

The scene in the museum brings a little bit of the art into the film and, of course, says also that we say hello to these artists but without being too reverent. I don't like films that try to be paintings or try to imitate paintings or try to be close to certain paintings, as I don't like films that are too close to films, to cinema. A lot of vanity and fetishism is involved in that and I'm trying to get rid of that. So this museum scene is for me a nice way to come together with people that we liked in the past who did the same work we did. Very tough, very hard. Reubens worked like that with enormous canvases that he spent months and months trying to find something; it was not about some secret or strange mystique; it was just work, and our's too, so we meet and we do this moment where it's not only an homage to Holbeins and all the paintings but it's an homage to Ventura's work also.

Well, there's work and there's work. I've been taught that within indigenous cultures there's a belief that soulfulness is embodied and corporeal and that it comes through the body to register as creative expression. In other words, it comes from within and literally emerges through the whorls of the fingertips into the creative object. Fine craftsmanship is thus recognized as soulful. When I first read about Ventura's visit to the Museum, I considered that he was in essence admiring the soul he put into those walls.

I admittedly foist metaphors on films. I psychologize characters on the screen. In that respect, I don't think I'm that different from most moviegoers. This is how I've been taught to watch and understand movies. So I agree that your films are indeed challenging because they're more like being plunged into the presence of something; but even you have said that - though not during filmmaking - afterwards psychologizing goes on. An interpretive construction occurs after the film is made. Reading reviews of your films, it's noticeable how frequently construction and architectural metaphors are used to describe your creative process. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, for example, says you are assembling life one room at a time. Several writers are - as is to be expected, of course - obsessed with your doors and windows and walls. If I understand you correctly, you're not psychologizing a film when you make a film? You're working at directly apprehending what's already there? Unconsciously, however, is a certain psychologizing going on?

The best answer for your question is something I shot in my film on Jean-Michel Straub - Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? - the film about the editing. They say something that is not a mystery but that everybody tends to forget a little bit. All the critics and people that write about cinema, they tend to forget what is evidence for me and for Straub. He says it and I could say the same thing: there is not so much psychological investment when we are working. We're not trying to compose a dream or compose with dreams; but of course psychology comes into the film and - for me and for Straub and for a lot of filmmakers, especially the most classical ones, the ones that depend on at least some kind of narrative; it can be modern but they have this minimum narration they have to achieve - psychology comes into the film when you edit the film.

When you edit the film, you are composing, you are analyzing, you are choosing more deeply than when you are shooting. Of course you are choosing certain things when you are shooting a film - you are choosing a space and not another; you are choosing an action and not another; you are choosing a smile against something else - but when you're editing, you're choosing and you're going deeper and that can affect the psychology of a character, of the film. It depends on how you cut your film. It depends on how you put your shots together. It can say things and there it launches a lot of possibilities. That's when a lot of psychology is coming into the work. It's like that; you cannot refuse it. It's like Straub says in the film, you cannot refuse it because - if you cut close to a smile; if you cut close to someone that cries; then you have your next shot and it's larger and the reaction or response of someone to this laughter or this cry - this is psychology. This will tell things in another way, in a psychological way. I cannot refuse it. I'm just saying that when we are shooting, we are trying to concentrate on something that is very dry, actually, very dry. We're trying to get to what's rough. It's not a sketch. We start with the sketch of a thing and then we try to improve and improve and improve, but in movement, in rhythm.

It's more like a musician perhaps than theater work. There is not much psychology; feelings are absent; we tend to expel them to find them again at this editing stage. That's also very fascinating because you can change a lot of things and create a lot of affinities, which are psychological, even more than psychological. Editing is almost a psychoanalytic process, as you can see in the film about the Straubs.

I think the exact term would be "psychoid" rather than psychological, in the sense that you're not trying to create a meaning or generate equations saying this means that or this is the consequence of that. To be in a psychoid state is to say you are seeing with the psyche, imagining with the psyche. The affinities an audience might catch might emanate from a psychoid state and might not be your psychological intentions at all. You may not have put an affinity there; but, a spectator can look at a well-crafted, well-edited image and feel an affinity.

Sure. Then there is the interpretation the audience chooses or makes; but, that's another thing. Yeah, when you are structuring or constructing your film, in the editing especially, you're creating enemies, affinities, certain things begin to become enemies of other things, some things connect very closely, just because you cut one or two or three frames. It's fragile and magical. It's unexplainable. You cut a little bit and images become closer in every sense. You cut large and they clash.

I can't even fathom that work: shaping 340 hours of footage down to three hours. I can't imagine the process or the commitment of time. You took a year to edit Colossal Youth?

Yeah, it takes a long time. But it's great because it forces you to be patient. It's a discipline that, I think, lacks in a lot of cinema today in general. It's a lesson - well, this is very pretentious and reactionary - but, it's a good lesson for young people. I think young people today are used to things that are so easy; the films are so easy to see and easily made. That kind of work is everywhere so they don't imagine hard work. Probably they don't want to do hard work. I tend to say that it's not a mountain of suffering that comes for you; it's just work you should do like everybody else does in all aspects of society, like the simple guy that has a shop and opens the shop at 9 and closes at 6 or 7 every day for years and years. Cinema should be like that and not just special and incredible with funny and strange moments in six weeks of the life of someone. It should be everyday. It should be patient. That's the only way to learn a little bit. You should give film time. You should give cinema more time today. That's what I think it lacks a lot.

When I see a movie, I always see that they had no time to think. It's like Jean Renoir. Renoir said something that is not very true; but he said his American films, the films he made in Hollywood, were all bad because he had no time. He couldn't get used to the four, five, six week production schedule, shooting very fast, so he said his films were not good and that - after the films in Hollywood - he had to go to India to do something where he could really discover and work properly. He did The River.

Speaking of that temporal quality to film, you've used the term "material" to describe your films, and suddenly materiality in film seems better than metaphors in film! Letting something just be what it is and apprehending it that way, appropriately. The Maya of Central America had a concept called the ilbal. An ilbal could be any number of things - a rock crystal, a folded book, an inscribed monument, in your case a cinema lens - basically, an ilbal is a seeing instrument that furthers perception. Your films allow me to see. I don't always understand what it is I'm seeing but, then, I think you like my not always understanding. I think as a filmmaker you want me to question what I'm seeing?

Of course.

And it ramifies. Now, I will accept that your films are not metaphorical and I will accept that they are not necessarily symbolic or even representational, but - because of the temporality and the materiality in your films - I would have to argue that there is a mythic quality to them. Yours are stories that slow down and dilate perception, shifting them into mythic territory. Let me offer two examples from Colossal Youth, which I'd like to run by you to see if I'm projecting or not.

Returning to the doors, I know you have talked about leaving the door closed, that it's a philosophy about access or lack of access, but for me such a philosophy implies a necessary transgression on the part of the audience, in the old style of fairy tales, let's say, where a character is told, "Do not open that door. Do not open that box. Don't do that!" And yet it's absolutely imperative for the character to open that door, open that box, and to do what they're not supposed to in order for the story to move forward and for the wisdom to be gained. Are you doing that?

[Costa smiles ear to ear and chuckles.] Yeah. It's so obvious for the films that I've been making at Fontainhas and Casal Bobol that we are dealing also with space and fear. Everything comes together because it's about space, it's about being in space, creating your own space. It's all about rooms and it comes from a very faraway place also, from childhood, from being a teenager.

For instance, In Vanda's Room is a film that I thought was about all the rooms, all our teenage rooms, where we close doors and decide not to talk or to talk, to play a guitar or read a book or imagine. It's a film about creating your space or how space is created for you to be in. It's about the problem of space today because the space today is paid for and it has to be almost fought for. This space is a way in and out also. Even the light comes in through some holes and so I'm very used to this being my center for making a film. I have to find the center of a room, the center of a neighborhood, so that then I can begin to have an almost 360° view of things. I start opening some doors and closing some other doors, letting some people in or not, and sometimes I decide to close some doors because it's better for the audience perhaps or for the story or for the film. While other doors are just open, mostly windows I think, lots of seen or unseen windows, sources of light, there are spaces. You can see that the light comes in through some indirect window or hole or aperture. That's very interesting for me.

Another mythic element I've foisted on Colossal Youth that I'd like to run by you: in Sumerian-Babylonian mythology the original descent myth is that of the descent of the goddess Inanna. Do you know that story at all?

No.

Innana has a sister named Ereshkigal who is the Queen of the Underworld and, one could say, she doesn't really like her job. She's pretty miserable. It's not so much that Ereshkigal is a bad person; she's just a dark person and it weighs heavily on her. There are many elements in the myth of Inanna but the bit that I'm interested in that I think is relevant to Colossal Youth involves Ereshkigal. She has two attendants. They're like imps or spirits that live in the thresholds of the doors. They're threshold spirits and I see them as the original psychoanalysts, the original therapists, because what they do is they repeat back to Ereshkigal all her complaints. She'll say, "Oh, I have all these aches and pains. My arms hurt" and they'll whisper back, "Oh, your arms hurt." She'll say, "Oh, my back hurts," and they'll whisper back, "Oh, your back hurts." That's all they do. They repeat her complaints and it comforts her. I felt this with Ventura, that he was a liminal spirit moving through all these doors and rooms, listening to everybody, but never offering advice, just listening and sometimes repeating what people have said.

That's nice. I like this comment you're making. It's important because he never really gives advice. He's not a doctor or a psychoanalyst. He's not even a father. It's a bit like myself when I make a film with these people. The thing is I cannot rob them, but at the same time, I cannot give them anything. It's very sad sometimes. It's very ambiguous, but I don't think cinema can give that much to these people, but anyway, cinema is not there to rob them or dispossess them of something.

You've honored them.

I think so. It's done with some dignity. But we're equals. I'm not quite sure who is gaining in a profit sense and neither of us lose also.

When you talked about meeting Vanda Duarte and trying to get her to work on Ossos, you said she didn't want to at first because she was too "busy", she had too many "personal" things to attend to. What made her change her mind?

It was my insistence. Every day I came and I insisted and I said, "I think you'd be great. I have this idea." It was just a matter of time. I was almost, more or less giving up. I already had the idea, "Well, I'll have to search for someone else," and I was not very happy about that because I had the feeling I was going for a second choice. The essence was there. She's the one who was so clear and so sure. I think it was just sheer insistence. I wouldn't let go.

We're lucky for that.

Yeah, because I saw no equal to Vanda in that place. Other people could do other things. Some other girls could have done their thing, but not like Vanda. She could show me. She could give the film a lot of things that were the neighborhood, that were the collective. She's a little bit like Ventura. There's that quality some people have of embodying other people. They're not just one person; they're already ghosts of people. They can have all the dead people behind them, behind their backs, and that's very clear to me with Ventura: he carries the weight of a lot of tragedy. There's a bit of the hope of the pioneer in him and the beauty of that gesture of the immigrant who comes alone, but he's also the tragedy of all that inevitable damnation. When I see him, he has this double side. He's a very strong man and, at the same time, a very destroyed man, a broken man. Vanda has the same thing. I could see no other doing what she does.

Recently, I read Alexander Nemerov's Icons of Grief, which is about the films of Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton. I'm looking forward to seeing Casa de Lava, which I understand is somewhat a remake, or a reworking, more a riff, of I Walked with a Zombie, which is one of my favorite films. Nemerov's thesis - and I can apply it to your films - is that, like John Ford, like yourself, the extra, the character actor, the minor role, the marginalized role, is almost the true story. The lead actors are primarily there to drive the narrative forward, but it's the brief appearance of minor character actors that carry the weight of unspoken grief and tragedy. Nemerov describes them as iconic. Especially in his collaborations with Tourneur, Lewton would film these minor actors standing very still, almost pictorial, invested with presence.

In many of the reviews of Colossal Youth, Ventura is described as iconic and mythic. He embodies, as you are saying, the grief of ages, the ongoing tragedy of a displaced, enslaved people. In Colossal Youth I noticed this iconicity was achieved through your camera placement, which is very low, looking up at him. Was that conscious? Why did you do that?

For me it was more about the daily work. Before starting every day's work, for me it was more about, How can I meet this man? This very big man that I had met and with whom I had talked and who had accepted my proposal to make a film? Then came the moment in the first weeks of the shoot where I had to find how I could be as - the words are not enough - how can I put myself at his height really with my camera? The camera came down and down and down because I could not be at his height. I had to be lower. It was not instinctive, but for the first weeks of shooting, I adopted this height, this position, this respect perhaps - but it came like that and stayed like that. It seemed good for me. It seemed good for him, especially for the image, and it seemed good for him in the space. He was the one who was more or less the designer of the space. He crosses some things that make you aware.

It's my feeling that when you see him at some doors or in some places like the museum, Ventura is a man for a museum also when everyone says no. There are some people that are not for the museum. This is also a metaphor. Of course he fits very well in this Louis XV chair called the "Canopy of Confidence." Ventura is more or less the designer or the architect and it is because he designed the neighborhood. All these men, these pioneers, they made this medina, this place.

So it's because he crosses the shots or he enters and gets out or just being in the shot, being there, made me be at this height of camera position. If there's not a living human being in a shot, the shot does not exist today. It's very strange. Even more with Ventura or with people with this mythical quality, I tend to be respectful. My camera wondered and was a little bit afraid of him. A little bit. It's not fear; it's...

Awe?

Yes. So that was my feeling every day when I came to the place, when I arrived and saw Ventura, how can I do it again? How can I do it today? How can I go on? Because he seemed much more than what I imagined. And that was good because we both worked with imagination, especially the other's imagination, which is much more rich, confronting this other person and you have to begin the work with him, this challenge between him and you. This is what's going to be the film, the imagination and the void of the film, the ideas. The whole film is about me and him and it's also about space. The way we are everyday. Ventura is a very polite, elegant man that does not seem a man of today, you know? I have the feeling that some people are not of today. It's rare but sometimes you see someone who seems from the past, who has the force of the past, like our grandfathers, and Ventura is this kind of man. It makes you wonder.

in http://www.greencine.com/

Colossal Youth: Slumland Empire

By Kevin B. Lee

"It is wrong to liken a director to an author. He is more like an architect, if he is creative. An architect conceives his plans from given premises--the purpose of the building, its size, the terrain. If he is clever, he can do something creative within these limitations."

John Ford


If cinema resembles architecture more than any of the other arts, then Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth makes for an intriguing case study. Shot over two years with a non-professional cast in the Cape Verde immigrant slum of Fontainhas just outside Lisbon, Costa's film is a poetic if perplexing work that turns a run-down neighborhood into a psychic landscape of light and shadow reflecting the liminal lives of its inhabitants.

Both beautifully raw and willfully abstruse, the film invites any number of approaches to understanding it. Those in the know may refer to the two previous installments of Costa's trilogy on life in Fontainhas, Bones (1997) and Vanda's Room (2000). Some may compare Costa's compositional gifts with those of his Portugese predecessors Manoel de Oliveira or João César Monteiro, or cite his association with Jean-Marie Straub and the late Danièle Huillet, who share his penchant for recitative dialogues and a meticulously formalist approach to realism. Or one might find themselves echoing Mark Peranson's ebullient praise in his write up for Cinema-scope: "This is so out of the zeitgeist I don't know where to begin."

I beg to differ, mass walk-outs at Cannes be damned. As challenging as this film is, at first glance it falls into much of the same stylistic territory as a dominant strain of festival cinema that relies heavily on static long takes and a non-demonstrative approach to performance. It's a style that I am finding increasingly exhausted and exhausting, which may be why I at times resisted Colossal Youth, suspecting it of defaulting to an international cinematic house style for universal ennui. When I find myself at such an impasse, Ford's analogy of the filmmaker-as-architect feels particularly apt because it brings the mind back to focusing on the specific, unique relationship the creative mind wishes to have with the life in this location.

Nearly every scene of Colossal Youth's 155 minutes features Ventura, the name of both the character and the man playing him. He's a 60-ish Cape Verdean whose wife leaves him in the opening scene, which is presented in Costa's characteristically elliptical manner: a wide shot of furniture being tossed out of a third story apartment followed by an infuriated monologue delivered by Ventura's as-yet-unidentified wife, a knife gleaming in her hand. Ventura spends the remainder of the film shuttling from one outpost of the impoverished neighborhood to the next, visiting a revolving series of younger inhabitants. None of his relationships to these people, or their relationships to each other, are clarified: some refer to him as Papa, most notably a younger, lighter-skinned woman named Vanda (Vanda Duarte), who offers him a bed to lie upon as she delivers lengthy monologues in front of a television that never seems to shut off.

Holed up nights with a young man in a shack, Ventura takes over the talking duties, helping his companion memorize a long, eloquent love letter to give to his estranged wife. But in some of these scenes, Ventura wears a head bandage and a different shirt than the stained white dress shirt he has in every other scene. It is unclear how much of the film is in flashback and even if one were to parse out past and present tense using visual or informational cues, it is all shot in the same impassive tone of the here and now. The film's sense of time taking place out of time may be one way that it reflects the mindset of its protagonist, a recovering drunk who admits to a lifetime of sleeping in strange homes after all-night binges. In that sense, any of the younger people he meets could very well be his children, but the film undermines such literal readings.

Similarly, it is never clear how much these characters' experiences are based on the actual experiences of the actors. By jamming together fiction and non-fiction elements and discarding familiar markers (i.e. father, daughter) to describe characters, the film achieves a bracing if confounding immediacy, as the audience must constantly assess and re-assess relationships based on each nuance of their interactions. The characters don't seem to share this much anxiety, but that may be because they are used to a lifetime of comings and goings. In one scene, Ventura visits Vanda just as she is about to go to work -- leaving her five year old daughter unattended -- and she gratefully lets him in as an impromptu babysitter (cut to a shot of him snoozing while the daughter gives the most horrifying lost child gaze since Jean-Pierre Leaud).

While the film's temporality can be challenging to the point of confounding, it is Costa's treatment of space that more immediately impresses, if only as an object lesson in Ford's maxim of being creative with one's limitations. The film is shot in some of the most depressingly barren interiors to be found outside of post-Soviet cinema, not only in the burned out slum houses, but in the new government-subsidized apartment that Ventura is scoping out, presumably to reunite all of his "children". The blinding, unadorned white walls of the new building are as oppressive as the dim, stained domiciles found elsewhere. Vanda's unfurbished housing project residence is as much a prison as a home; a gaudily ornate mini-chandelier dangling from her dining room ceiling looks like the welfare service interior designer's idea of a bad joke.

One of Costa's prime achievements is in giving these locations and their inhabitants a profound dignity by virtue of his lensing. At times he does this perversely by hiding them in shadow, giving his subjects the chiaroscuro treatment as they offer rambling ruminations from their literal inner depths. Costa's economy of production achieves a brilliant consistency as virtually every scene is lit from a single source (in some scenes it's the reflection of light on a single object, most memorably a flower). His use of DV is another testament to the existential properties of present-day digital imaging: the hard lines that surround figures in video set them defiantly against their oppressive backgrounds. The sense of these peoples' hereness is so hyper-real at times as to become surreal; they aren't so much characters as they are visual artifacts of a place and time. And here is where the film's endless sense of time pays off: as incidents and interactions accumulate, these unassuming characters amass in weight, to the point that late in the film, in a scene where Ventura and Vanda sit quietly in a room, their hunched bodies seem to emanate so much unspoken pain into the sterile space surrounding them.

As much as I've tried to make a case for the logic behind the film's more puzzling elements, after one viewing I am not fully persuaded that Colossal Youth's many fragments cohere into a masterful whole. According to Peranson, Costa spent two years shooting 320 hours of footage, and no doubt he established strong relationships with his actor-subjects in that time, but that still does not discern whether the film's seemingly loose structure is a vivid reflection of the dissolute lives playing out on screen, or is simply dissolute, indulgent filmmaking. Yet I have no reservations in lauding the film for the specific and innovative approaches it takes toward depicting a way of life that is usually portrayed, when it is portrayed at all, without attentiveness or empathy. It is in the attempt to create a house of cinema from the derelict moments of these people on screen that I find Colossal Youth pulsing with purpose.

The young untold

Pedro Costa shows us the way to go

BY MARK PERANSON

Wednesday March 5, 2008

To say that Pedro Costa is one of the world's greatest filmmakers might sound like a provocation. But I have said it and will repeat it: Pedro Costa is one of the world's greatest filmmakers, and there's nothing willfully perverse in my statement. What follows are initial notes toward understanding why Costa matters. Final judgment is left up to the audience — to whom this director yields so much — and should only follow from seeing his films. Watching Costa's work gives me the chills; it's a most mysterious, unusual, and unclassifiable oeuvre, one littered with ghosts of the past and the present.

From the first frame of each Costa film, it's apparent we're in the company of that rare filmmaker who simply cares about people: about who his subjects are, about what they're feeling and thinking, and just as crucially, what his viewers are thinking about them.

Each work is riddled with enticing close-ups, and Costa's pictorial attention (coming out of a sensibility equally at home with European fine art as, say, the dust bowl photography of Walker Evans) is a constant wonder. The subjects are for the most part the downtrodden inhabitants of a Lisbon, Portugal, slum called Fontaínhas, people literally overlooked by dominant cultures. He's not trying to rub their misery in his viewers' faces — calling him a "Straubian neorealist," to quote J. Hoberman, is misleading; if anything, his films, with their rejection of rational structures, are more neosurrealist. Rather, the progression in Costa's cinema has been to give voice to his subjects and to treat them as worthy of existing as fictional characters (Bones, 1997); then, to delve further into their world, their personalities, and their ways of living (In Vanda's Room, 2000); and most recently, with great success, to combine the two approaches (Colossal Youth, 2006).

Costa finds richness in small variations, and his evolution has led to a narrowing of both subject matter and spatial exploration. Costa has retreated from the wide-open, Monument Valley–esque volcanic surface of Cape Verde to interiors; the benefit of seeing 1994's Down to Earth is in realizing how Costa's characters must now feel, cramped in their disheveled surroundings. Combined with his movement toward a long-take style, this signals a shift from a cinema of space to a cinema of time. A parallel trend is an attempt to redefine beauty in cinematic terms — from the exquisite monochrome 35mm of The Blood (1989) to the grubby, purposeful digital video of In Vanda's Room — and its staggeringly unique use (aided by Costa's remarkable compositional eye) in Colossal ...

Youth. Likewise, few contemporary filmmakers are as concerned with the juxtaposition of image and soundtrack, and each of Costa's films reveals new ways of seeing and hearing: in Colossal Youth, the sound is a better narrative guide than the visuals — making long takes a necessity.

Yet the more these movies seem to be within one's grasp, the more they slip away from comprehension. Costa seems to be saying the same thing about life today: he portrays the outside world as a labyrinth and the domestic arena as a much-needed shelter. He's surely something of a Brechtian modernist (with Jean-Luc Godard as perhaps an even greater influence than Jean-Marie Straub), yet it's tempting to assign the modifier post in order to understand Costa's work. His persistent interrogation of the ways in which people live is certainly post–Yasujiro Ozu. And as Jeff Wall has noted, Costa can also be considered post-Bressonian in that he improves on what some find problematic about the master's later works — namely, Robert Bresson's tendency to turn his models into intense abstractions.

Costa corrects this by allowing disorder, the uncleanliness of the real world. (Bones is that rare transitional film able to stand on its own as a masterpiece, though at the same time, it doesn't go far enough — as Vanda and Colossal Youth show). The category that Costa might most willingly fit is that of a postpunk director; that the English moniker Colossal Youth — distinct from the film's Portuguese title Juventude em marcha, literally "Youth on the March" — is also the only album from the stripped-down Welsh band Young Marble Giants (Rough Trade, 1980) is a surrealist coincidence.

Costa's films are complex objects in which the present and the past intermingle, both literally (in the posthuman Portuguese slums where Costa's last three features unfold) and within the history of film. The lipstick traces of Howard Hawks, John Ford, Fritz Lang, Jacques Tourneur, and many other auteurs reappear in Costa's films. Just as Down to Earth takes off from I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Bones remakes The Searchers (1956). (It might be perverse to say Colossal Youth is Rio Lobo [1970] to Vanda's Rio Bravo [1959], but ... there, I just said it.) Les inrockuptibles's Serge Kaganski has said that Fontaínhas's poor are like Indians in classical westerns, and that seems about right. In the same way that he recognizes Bresson's genius, Costa nods to Hollywood even as he tries, in his unorthodox mode of production — he's created a studio system in which the crew is minimal, and in the case of Colossal Youth, technical support is provided by the actors off camera — to rip it up and start again.

One final, crucial note: As Costa describes, the themes in the films are highly personal. A search for family and for home threads through them, articulating desire for a community that merges the personal and the political (his community is about as far from the European Commission as one can get). And in his subjects, he's found that missing family, which is but one of many reasons why Colossal Youth is so touching. He's also developed an alternative, collaborative model of filmmaking that is radical yet replicable, and one that will generate disciples — provided a director is willing to devote the time needed to nurture similar relationships with actors. Even if Costa "only" continues to make films about downtrodden Portuguese — exploring what one festival guide has called a "desperate utopian dream of a human existence" — it's a new form of cinema that will continue to reverberate, echo, and grow richer with each variation.

in http://www.sfbg.com/