I do not have any studies to support what I will say but I believe that the Portuguese have a wrong idea of the inland of our country. It is a fact that there are villages frozen in time, that are uninhabited or that only are only inhabited by ‘the old man and the small donkey’, but they are few in relation to the other villages. The Portuguese have to discover the recesses of our country’s inland!
The absence of vehicles is also interesting, and especially when suddenly we see in a scene appear in the background, behind the village, what seems the plates of a freeway fill the landscape. Why this absence?
I have reviewed the film a few times and found no plans with ‘freeway signs filling the landscape". But, there is an exterior plan of a house with rain and what appears in the background is a solar panel. The absence of vehicles as, for instance, the absence of the mass, is that, in my opinion, they didn’t bring anything new to the film. And, as they say in the village of Alfaião, the traffic in a village is when a herd is on the road and this detail is portrayed in the film.
Since Alfaião is a portrait of the village to what extent was journalistic impartiality desired and to what extent was an artistic partiality created, whether for an aesthetic, ideological or social purpose?
There is no journalistic impartiality or partiality because Alfaião is a film and not a report. There are differences between these two genres and the only common aspect between documentary and reporting is that none is the pure truth because both are truths told through someone.
(Translation)
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