Throughout the short film we are confronted essentially with the sounds of the village, perhaps for this reason both the brief dialogues and the praying for the bread stand out. What led to the choice of these moments?
For 9 consecutive days in January 2016, I lived/recorded the day to day life of this village. At the end of the recordings, I had about 1/3 of the population filmed, which is a pretty significant sample. In the editing, I reviewed all the material I recorded and chose a little bit of each relevant and distinct moment without repeating and had to find a purpose to connect between that scene and the next scene, because there are no interviews helping to make the connection between scenes. Concerning sound, it is normal for it to stand out because the sounds of the village are pleasant, unlike the city sounds that are unpleasant. For example, in one scene there is intentionally the ambient sound above a conversation.
Comparing the protagonist of this documentary with the protagonist of your other documentary The Barber Guitarist, and taking into account that they are quite distinct works, it is curious to note the absence of the past or the history of the character ‘Alfaião’ and to be confronted with a portrait of the village in its present existence. Still, do you believe that this memory, or past, of the space and of the people who inhabit it emerges from within this present?
I believe! The present is the consequence of the past. If we pay attention to some scenes we will notice details that lead back to this.
Throughout the documentary we see the confrontation of the past and the future, sometimes isolated, but quite often also intertwined in curious scenes of a reality in which both seem to overlap calmly. Was this dialogue between the modern and the traditional something casual or was it a purposeful search?
It was intentional! I searched the country, from north to south, for a dynamic village that was not just ‘the old man and the small donkey’.