Talking about Miguel Gomes is doing it that maybe it is, for the variety of his work and for his ability to explore his possibilities, One of the most relevant names of contemporary cinema. Try to explain this briefly to that spectator who has still approached his filmography is probably unproductive work for the editor, forced to summarize in two strokes what requires many nuances. Titles like That dear month of August, Tabooor his impressive trilogy entitled Arabian Nights, that are screened these days in Cinema Jove, They account for a very precise look on the reality of their country, Portugal. Childhood memories, Your social reality, cultural, or the conflicts resulting from the economic crisis, His colonial past, These are issues that appear in them from an intimate perspective, But respectful, letting their characters speak for themselves. Some keys of all this are exposed in this interview we had with him. The rest is to encourage that spectator to take off prejudices and be seduced by their own curiosity. Gomes received the Luna de Valencia Award from the contest.
What meaning do these awards have for a director like you who, we could say, You are in the middle of your career?
Bueno, I don't know if I'm in the middle of my career because I'm not a sorcerer and the future is unpredictable, But the truth is that I feel that I want to make other films and I think my job, As I see it, It is very incomplete for what I have in my head. Of course what is in my head, It is only in my head and it doesn't have to be like this for people. There may be those who think it's okay not to make more movies. You never know, But the very fact that you have doubts about the prize is a location to continue working in the cinema.
Your cinema is very personal within a generally very conservative industry. How do you frame your work within the cinematography of your country and in the European context?
Bueno, They are different things because the situation of Portugal is very specific by my country's own economic system as a film market. The Portuguese are ten million and most are not interested in going to the cinema. So, There are not many chances of making money with movies. If there are no great chances of making money with movies, what the commissions of the Cine Institute that support the projects were raised was, bueno, As there are no chance of making an industrial cinema, Because there is no market, which is the necessary condition for an industry to exist, that at least personal things are done, things that do not look like what you see in most films. That made it possible that Oliveira's hand continued filming so many years, or a director as wild in the seventies as Monteiro, o Pedro Costa in the contemporary case ... all those masters of Portuguese cinema benefited in a rare way that there was no industrial structure. And that is why Portuguese cinema has that specificity of a very renowned author cinema at festivals, With your own identity. Although there are other things that are not visible outside, Very silly comedies, That also exists. They are like the silly comedies that exist here in Spain, that do not pass to Portugal. All European countries have their silly comedies that are not exportable. However, This cinema does reach festivals around the world.
Your work mixes a social and documentary cinema with fiction elements that even refer us to an almost magical world, As a story. How do both extremes live in your head?
I talked a lot about that when it came out Arabian Nights, When he said that, To make a portrait of a certain reality, The logic of a place, like in That dear month of August, or in the case of Arabian Nights The portrait of a certain time in crisis in Portugal, That portrait will not be complete if you do not put the most concrete side in the world at the same level, people who represent themselves, Very specific things of the reality that exist outside the cinema and that the cinema has to put inside, On the screen, With the imaginary side. To do, For example, A portrait of a time from Portugal in crisis, I had to capture very specific things that existed while I was filming the movie, But also try to work an imaginary of that time. Only then will the portrait be complete. Fiction and reality are the two poles of the same spectrum, What do we experience.
You often use non -professional actors for your films. How does that influence the construction of your stories? I don't know if you work with a very closed previous script or always open, but, How to work with those characters that are not fiction conditions the result?
The script for me is closed, But the truth is that, When you go to filming, It is reopened. Nothing is definitely closed. Only with death things are definitely closed, especially for those who do not believe in resurrection (laughter). For me, By having actors who are not professionals (Although also work with professional actors), The viewer has different sensations and the truth they transmit is also different. I can't ask a non -professional actor as I can ask a non -professional actor. You have to find something that is shocking, that gives you a truth that is always something that changes from person to person. There is an inclusive logic in my work. Wealth or my interest in cinema is diversity and have different elements in films, sometimes entering shock, It is something that interests me and I think that, I don't know if naively, The viewer may interest.
In that sense of confrontation, How do you feel that you pass creatively between two films as different as That dear month of August y Taboo? How do you combine them within your imaginary?
The best thing is that I don't have to combine anything, That is for critics. I am no longer critical. More than thinking in terms of work, How is this movie and another ... that would be very calculated and the truth is that I move by impulses that are different. The other truth is that it bores me a bit, When I finished a movie, try to do something similar. The idea is, rather, react. Bueno, If I spent so much time with a movie, Because normally my films are processes of three or four years of work, almost instinctively you want to do something different because, but, You get bored of death. I tell you more, It bores me a little, And there are notable cases of directors who do that, That author's cinema where there is a director who became a specialist. It's like medicine, in which there is a neurological specialist, etc ... All movies come out a bit equal. I tell you this, But maybe the director for me more important in the last ten years does this in a very radical way, What is the Korean Hong Sang-Soo, that makes those little films that always seem variations about the same story. But it is an exception. As a spectator I want to see different things and also as a director I want to do different things.
Then, What would you say that bases those two films? That is to say, What prompted you to do Taboo or that prompted you to do That dear month of August?
It is different from movie by movie. That would be the same as comparing different love stories. There are those who can say, bueno, I am only interested in blondes, But the truth is that interest, The love impulse is not prefabricated, And there is always a mystery of why someone is interested and not the girl next door. It is a mystery because it has to do with different things, Because people are different. With cinema is the same. Because Taboo? Why August? Bueno, If you ask me for each of these I will try to answer you, But they are always different impulses that make it possible to talk about cinema as a general idea of something that interests you in common.
You are the second director who, With regard to creation in a certain author cinema, It tells me about mystery.
The mystery is very important. It is essential because if you have all the answers, If you know everything, There is no mystery. When there is something that obsesses you, that you think about it again, It is because there is something that is not resolved, that there is a mystery. I think it's essential because making a movie is something very boring sometimes, a long time. So, If there is no in that mystery, If you already know everything, You get bored much sooner. To fall in love with a project there must be a lot of mystery.
There is something that stands out in your cinema that is the element of humor. Does this correspond to your way of watching life or is it something you want to put in your films as an issue to ask the viewer?
Sometimes it seems to me that there are so many absurd things in the world that the antidote is to put some distance in the sense of humor, To be able to support absurdities. Or you get very nervous or you can try to cope with it. I think that is part of my character. The truth is that I do a very personal job in cinema. I don't have a producer who tells me, no, You have to put this and not that because this is more interesting to the audience of Alaska or Valencia. I can put the things that I like and there, putting my own personality in my work, The things I like, It is normal for humor to pass because it is part of my life.
I wanted to ask you about the trilogy Arabian Nights. Obviously it is an extraordinary event regarding the approach, for its length, its form and for its structure in three parts. What do you think has meant in your career?
The truth is that Taboo [Your previous project], He made many spectators in France. The film industry in France was a bit surprised with that because it is not normal for a black and white film, With two parts, A little rare, made two hundred thousand spectators, which is not much in industrial terms, But for a movie with those elements it is a bit weird. So, Many people thought, This is going to be the next Almodóvar, An author who continues to do something personal, But that can make important numbers. Bueno, Then they decided that it was not very reliable because it is crazy to make a trilogy like Arabian Nights (because I was not doing The Lord of the Rings, Of course). But I like crazy things. The truth is that nobody lost money either. For me it was very important. I had the idea of doing a different thing. At that time I prepared a movie in Mexico about the Portuguese team in the World Cup in 86. And well, When the troika and the crisis arrived [of the 2008] There began to be visible effects in Portuguese society and I thought it was impossible to leave Portugal. I told myself that, If I had the opportunity to film, I had to film that time in Portugal. So, It wasn't something very thought. He was born as a project change for a need that I felt at that time.
I think the realization process was something peculiar.
For me it was very nice to make this movie, that at first did not have three parts. The idea was to have a 16mm camera and a team available all the time, as firefighters. When there was a fire we went out to try to fight it. It was not exactly fighting fires, But it was trying to transform into fiction what was happening during that year in Portuguese society. All stories are born from one or more events told in newspaper articles. In our office we had a small writing with three journalists who continued to investigate what was happening in reality. These journalists, more two other scriptwriters who were with me, We said, That article interests us, Can you investigate that, But trying to get these aspects that are not in the news? They left to investigate, They talked to people and said it wasn't for a newspaper, what was for a movie. In a surprising way for me, All people spoke. They had fewer problems talking to the movie than for the newspaper. And then me, With the two scriptwriters, We transformed that and we did fiction. The process was as quickly as possible. Sometimes we were investigating a story, writing another, another filmed, riding one that we had already done ... it was crazy. For a year it was a structure that made all the stages of a film in a slightly handmade way, But all at the same time. I ended up very tired (Me and all the people who work in the movie), But the idea was to have the maximum possible stories. And when I had everything and I started the final assembly, We think, And now what do we do with all this? Do we do a best of? There were more fragile stories, There were more fictional, others more mixed, There were very different things. The first version I think it gave about nine hours. We continue working and there was a moment in assembly in which we understood that we could build like three parts, three volumes, and try that each volume had its own personality, Your own feeling. But there was no calculation, While we filmed we didn't know what three films would be. The idea was to have the maximum diversity of stories, characters, Film styles, different things, To portray that time.
Since you talk about that, I wanted to ask you about the relationship between truth and the truth portrayed, especially when talking about the media. Your cinema feels like very true, even more than the media, Of those that parties to make your movie.
Yeah, Now with the digital everything has changed very fast. Now we have the related lie that is the truth too, las fake news And all that. But let's say that, traditionally, The truth related is journalism. Cinema does not have to do journalism, is very different. At the beginning of The thousand and one night There is a strange report on naval builders that are almost unemployed. Start with a television report, And I stay filming when the reporter is silent and the camera leaves. Bueno, There is also bad journalism and good journalism, But journalism, which seems essential to societies and the functioning of democracy, It has its codes. Cinema does not have to follow those codes. So, The truth related to journalism or the truth taught from cinema are different, But I think you have to find the truth at every moment. Every moment, In each movie, You have to find the way that truth can exist.
Your trilogy talks about the economic crisis, with everything that supposed. Hoy, With the new government, We get good news from Portugal. Is everything as good as it is said?
No, Not everything is so good. Is better than in the years I did Arabian Nights. In fact, there is a little better with the government that happened to the one when he filmed, some pension cuts were reversed, of salaries, All that changed a little. But, above all, Because different things were said and that had a very large psychological effect because, If you have confidence again, Everything changes. Although the truth is that there is still a big difference between the rich and the poor, There is too much poverty in Portugal, Public services are degraded, etc. It is not a situation that will change from one moment to another, And the truth is that Europe wanted to believe (It was strategic), that there was an economic miracle in Portugal, But that's not true.
Your cinema is a very specific cinema of spaces. I feel that cinema sometimes shows inconcrete spaces, unreal or abstract places that do not really exist.
Yeah,Taboo,For example, It is located in an Africa that is not named. But the truth is that it is an Africa made with the colonial memory of the Portuguese, With the memory that the imaginary of cinema invented from Africa. Maybe there are specific elements. But it is not the same as in That dear month of August where, In the arganil [Villa located in the district of Coimbra, where the movie was shot], It was almost like mapping a region. Not only the specific places, but also its own imaginary, The musical groups, The songs, All of that is part of that cartography. And it is true that my next project is the adaptation of a book that makes a place of a place. That is something that interests me a lot, put the identity of a place, To be a little Catholic, The soul of a place, Your specific side, But also his own imaginary, Your rituals, It is something that interests me a lot, And in my next movie you will return, although otherwise That dear month of August.
There is something that stands out from your cinema and is that, Despite making a sometimes critical or political analysis of a situation, It seems to me that there is always a space for tenderness and understanding with respect to the characters. Even from the corrupt man you extract in your cinema his humanity. I don't know if it's something you find or that you express intentionally.
It is my "Renoirian" side. Jean Renoir said that all people have their reasons. They are different of the other, But they all have their reasons. I am not interested in that cinema that acts almost like a justice or, at least, as a judge who is judging the characters. Cinema is not a court. And if the cinema behaves like a court, The spectator loses the possibility of thinking for himself, It is passive. It is a very moralistic way of being. Today there is an author cinema that has a very moralistic side, an almost puritano side. There are films that make a very big effort to convince the spectator that the world is rotten and horrible and everything is shit. That doesn't interest me a lot.
