Divided Hybrids: An Analysis of Miguel Gomes’ Oeuvre

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes 11689986 Date: 26/06/2018 Supervisor: Dr. Abraham Geil Second Reader: Dr. Marie-Aude Baronian Media Studies: Film Studies University of Amsterdam Table of Contents

Introduction 03

Chapter 1: Foundations - Shorts & The Face You Deserve 06

Chapter 2: Recognitions - Our Beloved Month of August 15

Chapter 3: Recollections - Tabu 24

Chapter 4: Dreams - Arabian Nights 33

Conclusion 45

Bibliography 47

Filmography 48

List of Illustrations 49

2 Introduction

Documentaries and fiction films have been intertwining since 1895, when we first saw moving images of workers leaving the Lumière factory. This hybridization of registers has been explored since the very start but, like most aspects of our day-to-day, it is an idea that is constantly evolving and reinventing itself. This reinvention of ideas can be compared to André Bazin’s belief that cinema was yet to be invented (Myth 17) - a statement that can still be considered true when analyzing the development and eventual reinvention of specific filmmaking methods. The essential difference is that, while Bazin believed cinema was trying to catch up to the myth of its total enactment - in order to eventually reach an end result - in this case cinema continues to be “invented” due to its openness for experimentation - one without an end. The Portuguese critic-turned-director Miguel Gomes is behind a body of work that is distinctive in how it shifts between documentary and narrative filmmaking techniques, helping with this slow “invention” of the seventh art through formal experimentation. Strongly, but not exclusively, due to his mixture of techniques, his oeuvre is also firmly linked to realism, keeping such theories relevant, and as contemporary as his own work. His movies should for such reasons, and many more, be analyzed and considered with care. With Miguel Gomes’ oeuvre as my case study, I intend to investigate how the somewhat paradoxical dualities presented in movies that hybridize the filmmaking methods often linked to fiction films to those linked to documentaries reinforce the realities of what they depict, using the theories of figures like Bazin and Kracauer regarding film realism as a basis for part of it. In order to reach an answer to this question, steps need to be taken to first understand how his collected directorial trademarks would place him within the spectrum of an auteur, how his use of non-actors actively link reality and fiction, what is the role of memory in the perception of reality, and how his evaluation of the current Portuguese socio-political situation creates documentaries out of fictions (and vice-versa).

In his short career, Gomes has produced a number of shorts and four features - The Face You Deserve (2004), a fairytale-like story of a man who is coming to terms with reaching his 30s, Our Beloved Month of August (2008), a true hybrid that explores rural Portugal’s citizens and their traditions, Tabu (2012), an homage to cinema’s silent era about infidelity and its consequences in a Portuguese colony in Africa, and Arabian Nights (2015), a six-hour triptych epic that humorously but poignantly comments on the Portuguese economic crisis. All of these will be analyzed with different purposes for this research, culminating in an overall understanding of the ideas behind his filmography which, collectively, results in a unique and thought-provoking oeuvre. Through a formalist analysis, where specific scenes and moments will be read in detail regarding either their editing, narrative, or production aspects, each one of Gomes’ features will help with an aspect of the answer to the main question regarding the connections of hybrid films and realism, and his overall contribution to film history through the perspective of a modern auteur.

3 In tracing the trajectory of his work, this thesis will construct a narrative that interweaves his evolution as a filmmaker and how different theories could be applied to read his oeuvre contextually. While my focus is not on Gomes’ role within a national cinema, I will at moments contextualize the history and position of Portuguese cinema within the global market, thus centralizing the environment in which he works without necessarily evaluating the way his surroundings influence his filmmaking in one way or another. Letting this side of it looser, I intend to free his filmography from such constraints and responsibilities. While his movies deal directly with the reality in Portugal, from its colonizing history in Tabu, its traditions in Our Beloved Month of August, and its politics in Arabian Nights, I believe that Gomes does not think of his work as bound to the country itself. Similarly, while I will consider the aspects that could label him as an auteur, my goal is not to bind his work within such a category. However, as I am analyzing his career in terms of recurring themes and techniques, it’s hard to escape this dimension of it. Gomes himself is a great believer in the interaction of the audience with his movies, always constructing them in ways that give the spectator more freedom to comprehend them in their own ways, getting what they find valuable, and so creating a series of different understandings. If he goes as far as giving his audience such freedom, it would be unfair to systematically pinpoint his career. While my analysis will reach a final conclusion, I hope such conclusion to be fluid, and only one within many that could be gathered from a theoretic and analytical understanding of an oeuvre. While I am confident that such a research could lead to revelatory findings that could hopefully present the work of Miguel Gomes to a larger audience, my main goal is to elucidate his formal inventiveness as a director working in the industry today, and not how he is one thing and one thing only. For such, steps need to takes to slowly understand his career, as described below.

Chapter One will focus on the start of his career, and how slowly, through his short-movies, he built a repertoire of techniques and ideas that lead up to his first feature, The Face You Deserve. With that, I will consider how and to what extent he can be considered an auteur, guided by Dudley Andrew’s views on the position of the modern auteur today. Chapter Two will be an extended analysis of Gomes’ second feature, the one that put him on the map of world cinema. As Maya Deren suggests, realism in film requires “of its subject matter, only that it exist; and of the audience, only that they can see” (60). This specific concept, that makes no distinction between documentary and fictional truths is of particular use in my analysis of the impact of hybrids within the discussion of realism, particularly concerning Our Beloved Month of August. Also instrumental for a reading of this particular title, but further applied at different moments, will be Jacques Rancière’s considerations on the legacies of documentary and fiction filmmaking, particularly due to how he understands cinema as “the combination of the gaze of the artist who decides and the mechanical gaze that records, of constructed images and chance images” (161). Reading it through the lenses of Rancière, which in turn are discussed by Nico Baumbach, I will analyze how the film mixes fiction and documentary between and within its own divided structure.

4 As the discussion of realism in film is a long and diverse one, I intend to focus mainly on thoughts brought up by classical film theorists. André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer find themselves among such a group, and will be the starting point of Chapter Three. Their opposing views concerning film realism, given Bazin’s belief that film was the closest men could get to finally satisfy their obsession with reality (Ontology 6), and Kracauer's description of the photographic image as a “jumble that consists partly of garbage” (Photography 426), will allow me to argue how Gomes is capable of juggling such ideas while keeping them at play in the present aesthetic, political, and historical moment. By comparing photographs with memory-images, Kracauer argues how the latter is more reliable, as it acts on the realms of space and time, much like the moving image. This argument will also be instrumental for my analysis of Tabu, given the way that it presents its second half as a stream of mnemonic consciousness. This title will be the focus of Chapter Three, and will be read through its exploration of recollections and memories, and how it inwardly speaks of realism with its characters and outwardly explores the history of film itself - ideas that I relate back to Kracauer, Bazin, and others who have dealt with realism in film - such as Maya Deren. To conclude, Chapter Four will focus on all three parts of Gomes’ latest, Arabian Nights. Olga Kourelou, Marina Liz, and Belén Vidal’s collective article on the impact of the European economic crisis on the artistic output of Portugal, Spain, and Greece will give a background to my understanding of this title, along with eventual comparisons to Portugal’s film production history. The trilogy will collectively be analyzed through its oneiric images and contrasting direct relation to the present political situation in Portugal, focusing on the way that the movie was conceived and produced - which took Gomes’ usual interplay of fiction and documentary all the way back to the film’s pre-production. On top of that, Bazin’s psychoanalysis of the visual arts’ will be used throughout the whole research, as his views on arts’ need to vanquish time can guide a whole reading of Tabu, and his understanding that film eliminated the distinction between the imaginary and the real is relevant for both Our Beloved Month of August and Arabian Nights.

One could claim that Gomes is a realist filmmaker - but only when his work is looked at through the link between his unique use of hybridity and realism. With realism being man’s search for a true representation of the world, and hybrid filmmaking including a partially untouched re-presentation of what the camera sees through its documental approach, the two are linked and often inseparable. But while realism assumes a seamless unity to what it presents, Gomes creates a tension between the perceived hybridity of registers that sometimes remain divided within his films - in the way he shows his audience the seams that hold the two together. In his movies the line between the two is often clear - keeping the sense of reality strong. When looked at through this lens, his body of work opens up, revealing more than what is immediately explicit on screen. By analyzing Gomes’ entire oeuvre, I hope to show how the work of a director evolves, while keeping within the essence of each title the same ideas that helps to stitch a body of work together, keeping everything tight, connected, and with no fear to show its own stitchings.

5 Chapter 1: Foundations - Shorts & The Face You Deserve

From the very birth of film, people have tried to make sense of it theoretically, philosophically, and critically. While in most arts the realms of artists and critics seem to be mostly separated, within filmmaking there seems to be eventual overlaps. Film history has seen some of its most important directors and creators coming from the world of criticism. This transition has created the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Paul Schrader and Peter Bogdanovich, and more recently, Olivier Assayas and Miguel Gomes. The latter of those, the Portuguese director born in 1972 in Lisbon, has become one of the most important names in Portuguese cinema, and has with each new film brought a fresh take on how movies are conceived, produced and presented. Whether this is due to his background in film criticism or not, he helps to prove how there is still space for experimentation and exploration within filmmaking. At the same time, it is interesting to note how all the names cited above have at one point or another of their careers been called auteurs. The auteur theory, though often and systematically criticized since not long after its implementation on film critics and scholars’ vocabulary in 1954 as it “carried with it the aura of elitism” (Andrew 77), is still of relevance when analyzing the collected work of a director. In the case of Gomes, who is an example of a professional who is constantly bringing back themes and techniques from one movie to another, it is even harder to escape it.

In his evaluation of the place of the auteur theory today, Dudley Andrew says that “the auteur has outlasted the industry” (80). The theory, though never perfect, is equally still alive and requires some consideration. Andrew Sarris rightfully said that “auteurism was born out of a passion for polemics” (63), something that was immediately apparent through the academic “war” between himself - an avid supporter of the theory - and people like Pauline Kael and Graham Petrie. While Sarris defends that “auteurism was never meant to be an exclusionary doctrine nor a blank check for directors” (63), Petrie argues that it served mostly to “bolster the self-respect and boost the egos” of directors (29), and Kael believed that it “offers nothing but commercial goals to the young artist who may be trying to do something in film” (25), being in sum “an aesthetics which is fundamentally anti-art” (22). All in all, “it is not the auteur theory which gives cause for argument, but only the application of it” (Staples 5). While in this chapter I will point out to techniques used and developed by Gomes throughout his career that could place him in the realm of auteurs, my goal is not to position him in one place or another, or to further the seemingly never ending discussion of the place of the auteur theory in film criticism. My goal is merely to analyze how his signature techniques developed through his initial explorations in short filmmaking, and what lead to what. As very little has been written about his shorts and his overall early career, I think it is crucial to read these shorts as a gateway to his eventual signature style and as the birth of his techniques. Additionally, it is important to understand the environment in which such shorts were produced.

6 Portugal saw a big change in its cultural landscape during the 90s. With a new political and economical situation - given in great part to its inclusion in the European Union in 1986 - new funds were allocated and invested in public culture. The creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1995, and of privately owned TV stations around the same time, saw as a result a steady growth of content creation for both entertainment and advertising. That cultural economical situation gave rise to a new generation of filmmakers, entitled the “Shorts Generation”, given their work in the world of short-films. The directors that were part of this so-called generation were helped not only by the financial support provided by the government, but by an overall change in the distribution circuit, that gave space for the growing number of productions. New strategies included the “exhibition of short-films prior to feature films (a method that was eventually abandoned in the early 2000s); the proliferation of film festivals […] and finally, film-clubs, that regained an intense activity” (Ribas 92). With the means to produce, and the space to be seen, the Shorts Generation in Portugal gained enough power to reshape the landscape of its national cinema, with a number of them gaining recognition in foreign film festivals, resulting on a new interest in Portuguese cinema, today “one of the most important aesthetic focal points in the international film scene” (Fernández and Álvarez 40). Miguel Gomes was an early addition to this group of filmmakers, and like all of them, his notoriety came from his first few short-films. In his analysis of tendencies of contemporary Portuguese cinema, Daniel Ribas lists three main tendencies that can be analyzed separately: “(1) a fantasy cinema, with intense use of dialogue; (2) a cinema with realist propensities, where visuals have a strong importance and the use of dialogue is little; (3) and a poetic-hybrid cinema, where the visual dimension dominates, with minimal narrative and a creative use of sound” (92). Ribas lists Miguel Gomes as being part of the first group, but I intend to show how he could fit in all such divisions.

After graduating from the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema do Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, and working as a film critic in the Portuguese press for a few years, Gomes released his first short-film, Meanwhile (1999). It’s telling how so early in his career some of the aspects he would later be known for were already taking shape and presenting themselves - as is the case of the interplay between fiction and reality. Here in his first effort as a director - and furthermore, in its very opening shot - we already get a taste of his interest on this hard-to-escape aspect of filmmaking, in the way he consciously addresses it. The film opens with a group of boys on a green field, getting ready to play a match of rugby. They stand in their positions like statues, not moving, but ready to do so at any minute (Fig. 1). A traveling shot, moving from left to right, gives an overview of all the players, until it finally rests Fig. 1: A group of boys stand like statues.

7 behind the one holding the ball. With the camera in its final resting position, and the framing set, the players finally begin their game (Fig. 2). This brief, simple and yet telling technique immediately positions Gomes as a director that is not after the true naturalism of the world captured by his camera, but in the place that lies in between the natural and unnatural. The way his characters wait for the camera to find the frame before acting - figuratively and literally, in both senses of the word - shows how they might be aware of the camera’s existence. They are enacting a game, acting out a script and following directions; but the documental feeling of it all, where the camera move seems to merely be registering a behind the scenes moment before action is called, is still implied. Gomes immediately sets what is perhaps the most

Fig. 2: The game starts once the frame is set. important and most revelatory aspect of his entire oeuvre - the interplay of fiction and reality.

With that established, Gomes’ second short-film, Christmas Inventory (2000), can be seen as his first true mixture of genres. The opening credits label it as a “musical film”, an aspect of it that is not settled through songs sang by its characters, but by the music - both diegetic and non-diegetic - that accompanies the images. At the same time, it could be mistaken for a documentary, in the way the camera, static and distanced, captures the gathering of a family at Christmas like a fly on the wall. Observational, and unstuck from a conventional narrative, with moments that are clearly unaccounted for, it only reveals itself as fiction once the audience realizes it is set in the 80s - in itself a characteristic that is subtle, shown through the costumes and select props. In his synopsis, Gomes acknowledges the fact that there are many genres at play, and adds even more layers to it, mentioning how the film is “a fake documentary and a fake animation film, a semi-fiction about children that go to war, play music and take over” (Curtas Pt.). His use of the word ‘fake’ in relation to the documentary and animated parts of it, and the word ‘semi’ in relation to its fictional part, is of interest here. One wonders if there is a difference, and if so, where the difference lies. If the film is semi-fictitious, we could assume its other part is semi-documental. And yet the choice to call it a ‘fake’ documentary raises questions that go further from the actual result of this particular film. Gomes hinted to his interest in the Fig. 3: A close-up of wrapping paper gives the film texture.

8 interplay between fiction and reality with his first short, and used his second one to solidify it. Be it fake or not, the documentary aspect of it is present, and recognizable until the very end - where we clearly hear the director call ‘cut’. A choice like that could be seen as an example of what Ribas calls “shooting accidents”, a resource used by Gomes where such accidents are incorporated into the main narrative, manipulating its verisimilitude (93). Many aspects are in play in this short, where even its title is brought to life, as the film inevitably becomes an actual inventory, in the way Gomes shoots close-ups of everything that is related to this particular Christmas dinner - the presents, the wrapping papers, the tree, and a vast and detailed nativity scene composed of various statuettes (Fig. 3, Fig. 4). Adding to this mixture the aspects of musicals described during the opening titles, and the ‘fake animation’ as described by Gomes in the synopsis, we are left with a huge amalgamation of genres - an idea that is further explored in most of Fig. 4: Part of the vast nativity scene that is detailed throughout the film. his features.

Kalkitos (2002), commissioned by the Curtas Vila do Conde festival - where all of his previous shorts had screened - showed yet another side of Gomes, one filled with an unusual humor, and brought with it another of his trademarks: an homage to silent films, that would gain full force in his third feature, Tabu. Kalkitos is in part a musical film - more so than Christmas Inventory, that self-described itself as such - but this quality of it gains an experimental edge by the way sound is edited. With loops and rewinds, the same song plays throughout the film, working non-diegetically, but playing the double role of the character’s voice. For the most part a silent film, the lyrics of the song double up as the sound coming out of the character’s mouths - which are then “translated” into title cards. While the dialogue is not comprised of the lyrics, the sound editing sometimes sinks the song to the (exaggerated pastiche) movement of the character’s mouths. Sound design would later become a crucial part of Gomes’ work, and here we can see the genesis of that aspect. It is not coincidental that Gomes himself is listed for the first time as the sound director in Kalkitos. With his fingerprint directly on the sound mixing and editing, the short’s surreal feeling is elevated, and becomes the main element of its final result. This film is an odd addition to his filmography, as it looks and feels cheaper than those that preceded it. But be this for the fact that it was a commissioned work or not, it still adds to Gomes’ repertoire of techniques that would evolve him as a filmmaker. After a couple more shorts, having found a style of his own, experimenting with genres and techniques, and after receiving various awards from short-film festivals around the world, Miguel Gomes was ready to make his first feature.

9 The Face You Deserve brought back some of the elements first explored in his shorts: the mixture of genres, the play with musicals, the interconnections of fiction and reality, and a keen attention to sound design, among others. He was evolving, and working with what he had already presented as his interests. But with more space to play, Gomes could bring more to the table, and more so than anything else, this feature brought to the forefront what is surely one of his main trademarks - one that would be used in all of his following feature films: the division of the movie into parts, or chapters. This is, putting it simply, two films in one. The first part follows Francisco, an irritable man who is coming to terms with reaching his 30s, making his best to delay this reality - which translates mostly on his childish behavior. In the second part, Francisco is bedridden in a cabin in the woods, where seven of his close friends are supposed to make him feel better. During its second part, the films becomes something else altogether. A semi- retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with direct references to the Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tale - both visually and thematically - it contains a twisted humor and many rules, followed by the characters, and employed on its very script. In his director’s statement, Gomes mentions that it was “necessary to transform the film into a universe, to invent an inner logic with its own working rules, to restructure it like a dream” (Festival Scope Pro). That is precisely what is delivered - a film that falls somewhere between a reality and a dream, but that given its inner logic, never fails to convince its audience.

The film is in many ways an adult fairy tale. This idea, while fully explored in its second part, is presented right at the very start of the film, with its choice of images and motifs. The very first image we see, that of an opulent magic mirror seen between red curtains, reminds one immediately of Snow White, a theme that will be played on throughout the entirety of the film. Appropriately, the first part of the film is entitled “Theater”, and before it all starts, we hear the clapping of an (unseen) audience. This sound effect choice points to the fact that the movie is aware of its own fiction, conscious that it is creating something for an audience. As the film acknowledges its understanding of itself as a fiction, the audience is in turn reminded of that fact, and therefore takes everything that comes after that as what it truly is - a fairy tale. To further pinpoint this aspect of it, a phrase comes on screen: “Up to your 30’s you have the face God has given you. After that you get the face you deserve.” This saying, that Gomes himself claims to be the originating idea for the film, works here as a moral to the story - the lesson that one is supposed to get, and that which gives the films its direction. From this very stylized and plastic opening shot, we are taken to an ordinary street in contemporary Lisbon, where the film gains its reality, if only momentarily. Francisco, the protagonist, is immediately portrayed as an Fig. 5: Francisco, as a cowboy.

10 outsider. That is given in the humorous way that he descends an ordinary street bus dressed from head to toe as a Cowboy - or the idealized image of a cowboy, as portrayed in Hollywood movies (Fig. 5). It is immediately clear that what he is wearing is a costume, and not his usual attire, but it all helps to position him as outside of reality - an unnatural element in the otherwise normal environment. He is out of place, not only physically, but psychologically, as we will understand later on.

This surreal feeling continues immediately after Francisco’s introduction. Every character that we see during the first few minutes is in costume, including his friend Marta, who picks him up from the bus stop dressed as a fairy. Once with him, she soon starts to sing. Gomes often identifies his short-films as musicals, but this time he goes even deeper on that idea, with characters singing their feelings and thoughts, much like the classical musicals of Hollywood’s Golden Era and beyond. The costumes worn by the characters at this point - the cowboy and the fairy - only intensify the dream-like quality that musicals often possess. Francisco, however, continues to stand in his own territory, as he refuses to take part of the musical act itself. While she sings, he talks. This distinction in actions furthers separates their own reality - isolating him - and the immediate mixture of genres - the drama and the musical - reflects back on how these characters are portrayed, as if each belonged to a different genre, or a different movie altogether. The interplay of genres hinted at is almost palpable. Constantly complaining, Francisco is clearly uncomfortable with the situation he finds himself, and wishes more than anything to change his present reality - escaping it. It is his 30th birthday, but he is forced to spend it at someone else’s party. Not only that, but a kid’s party. While still complaining, he nevertheless seems to take his being at a kid’s party full heartedly, in the way that he is clearly acting childish - jealous of other kids, challenging them, feeling superior. He tries to delay the reality of getting old as much as he can, even if it’s just through dialogue. When someone wishes him a happy birthday, he corrects them: “only at 6PM.” He wishes not to grow up, and it seems like the people around him understand that, in the way they treat him as a child - ironically or not. The first gift he gets from Marta is a huge plush alligator. Seemingly unsure of what to do with it, he is told to simply “play with it!” Small moments like these, along with the constant calls he receives from his mother, shows that maybe he is not coming to terms with the arrival of his 30s because those around him are also not ready to face the passing of time. Francisco, dressed as a cowboy, is still a kid - never to grow up.

The Face You Deserve marks the first collaboration between Miguel Gomes and the sound mixer/ director Vasco Pimentel, who would from that point on work on all of Gomes’ films. Vasco makes the sound in this film of particular interest, evolving the sound work that Gomes had started to develop in Kalkitos, and bringing it to a more realized state. Here, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds become one, in the way that effects are added to character’s actions, linking such “real” actions to the artificiality of the sound effects chosen. An example of such a device is heard at a moment still during the party where

11 Francisco pretends to shoot his (fake) gun. We immediately hear the sound effect of bullets flying and even ricocheting. The sounds here are not added for realist purposes - they are far from being foley - as they are extremely artificial. In turn, they create links between the reality of what we are seeing on screen to the imaginary world and actions in the characters’ minds. Additionally, the sound design and mixing is constantly used to emphasize small aspects of the environment created. We hear small details that are highlighted, thus gaining relevance, like the constant sound that the spurs in Francisco’s cowboy boots make. Mixed higher than other elements in every scene he is present, the spurs are given the role of a tracker, always pinpointing his location on and off screen. Surrounded by sound, a reality that never leaves, the characters and their interactions become grounded and genuine.

It’s finally night, and Francisco has reached his 30s. Alone in his apartment, he eventually gives in to the reality of the situation and - in a sign that he is ready to become someone else, someone closer to who his friend Marta already is - he breaks into his own song. Later however, on his way to the house in the woods where the second half of the film will take place, we hear Marta sing another song, one where Francisco’s life, and his state of being is explained through lyrics. At the mention of his sickness, he starts to sneeze and cough - almost as an allergic reaction to the lyrics, the song itself, or to his new reality. Having reached his 30s, he might be “getting the face he deserves”, as we see when he wakes up with measles’ skin rash all over his face, in what is the start of the films’ second part, “Measles”. We are told by Francisco himself, who becomes a narrator, that he is sick and that he needs the help of his friends (seven of them) to make him feel better. Each friend is then introduced by the way of children books’ illustrations, that name and give them each a trait that defines their personality - a simplification that has its similarities to the seven dwarfs in Snow White (Fig. 6). Much like the adult-kids from Kalkitos, the seven friends who are responsible to take care of him behave like kids, probably understanding themselves as such. Spending the day playing childish games (hide and seek, catch), and living a life governed by childish rules

Fig. 6: “Nicolau is a good boy and is always day dreaming.” imposed on them by Francisco, the reality of their age becomes irrelevant. In this house, away from most responsibilities, they can behave as they wish, as long as rules are followed. Alone, it seems that their over-imposing wish is to remain innocent, childish, and free. Their child-like behavior, one that gives strength to their beliefs - the tooth fairy for one - is never contested. Here, even the rules they need to follow - their only responsibility - are childish, like the “most important” one, as described by Francisco in

12 his narration: their strict bedtime. An idea that is so relevant in childhood, before dissipating in adulthood, is brought back - keeping their kid’s spirit alive and well.

As this is Gomes’ first use of his divided storytelling technique, where the film is divided in parts or chapters, he tries it in different ways. Besides clearly demarcating each part by naming it, we can see such divisions in the stories within stories that permeate the movie, especially at a long sequence at the end. One of the characters starts to tell a story that branches out into yet different ones that we see take shape on screen. This tale of tales mixes itself with the main storyline - as it features the same characters we have been following - and can in this way be confusing at first, as another character listening to it points out. For that he is told: “You need patience to listen to a story. The middle is the important part, not only the beginning and the end.” This could be directed at the audience itself, who in like many of Gomes’ films is invited to actively participate in the storytelling by keeping close attention to what is being presented, joining parts of the story by themselves and giving sense to what is not necessarily explicitly shown or told on screen. This method of storytelling, one that does not rely on the conventional structure of a beginning, middle, and end, is employed here to bring the spectator closer to the action. Ribas calls this a “cinephilic game, that reclaims a dialectic relationship between the director and the spectator” (94). This “game” is one that will be employed in all of Gomes’ future features, and that is present mostly due to the way his films are divided in parts, allowing the viewer to participate at a higher level.

The house where the characters find themselves during this second part of the film contains many mysteries. One of them is a dark, forbidden room where the characters cannot enter. At the end, this very room is revealed as the pathway to a different reality. Whether that is the reason it is forbidden or not, it shows how these characters are not to escape their present reality - one which is set on them. Rules are not to be broken, and the norm established is supposed to be followed, even if the “norm” might be so different than what an audience expects from a movie. The one character that actively escapes his initial reality within the film is Francisco. Set at the start of the film as being its protagonist, he “disappears” completely during its second half. While we know where he is, he is not to be seen again, and the other characters are not even allowed to say his name aloud. This is Francisco’s way to escape his own reality - one where he is getting older, reaching his 30s, and getting the face he deserves. During the second half, as he is in control of the rules that his friends are supposed to follow, he shift states in the narrative - from character to omniscient narrator. With this “power”, he is capable to control the characters to some extent, delineating their actions by the rules he establishes. At moments during his narration it is clear that he is aware of what the characters are thinking, and as he directly reacts to some of their actions, it is also evident that he is watching them, much like the audience is. This God-like quality that he obtains reflects back on the methods of storytelling that differ between the two parts of the film. In the first part he is a mere character, with his weaknesses and troubles. By becoming the narrator in the

13 second half, he becomes something more, as if his power acts outside of the realm of the film on screen and onto the exterior realm - that of the script. At moments, the characters seem to hear Francisco’s narration, following his directions. The interconnection and interplay within the seen and the unseen, the physical and the bodiless is given full strength at moments like these. Two plains of reality interact, as if Francisco, by leaving the screen, becomes a metaphorical screenwriter, taking control of the film. This physical move between reality and fiction, as portrayed by the characters, is put into contrast to Gomes’ own juggling of the real and the fictitious. While this film in in no ways documentary, as all of his following films are, the fact that he writes characters who are trying to, within their own fictional reality, escape such reality, says something of what was to come from the director.

With each of his short-films, Gomes established his own cinematic interests - visually and narratively. There are aspects seen in some of them that would come into play later in his career, but The Face You Deserve seems like the perfect start to set his career as a feature director going. It not only employs some of the ideas he had explored in his shorts - this time with ample room - but brings new ones that render the film a true beginning of his career. The Face You Deserve might be a great example if one was to follow Ribas’ denomination of the three tendencies of Portuguese cinema mentioned earlier, but the fact is that Gomes’ work could be placed at each and every one of those sub-divided tendencies - as his films are filled with fantasy, realist propensities, and a poetic hybrid where the visuals dominate. Ribas’ argument, one that delineates a structure within Portuguese cinema, brings back to mind the idea of auteurs, this time applied to the context of a national cinema. As Gomes is both within the context of a national cinema, and arguably an auteur himself, it is of particular interest to see how these two circles can overlap and intermingle. If the classic auteurs are those who fit within a specific genre, Gomes could be described as an auteur who works within the realm of hybrids, always in between fiction and reality. As I will explore in the following chapters, Gomes follows his first feature with three films that are as different in their production methods and presentation as they are paradoxically similar in their ideas and tendencies.

14 Chapter 2: Recognitions - Our Beloved Month of August

Much like “the image of the painter before an empty canvas” (Andrew 83), Miguel Gomes sits in front of his producer in a lateral, medium two-shot (Fig. 7). His presence in his own movie “retains the lure of pre-linguistic purity, the moment when representation and perception interact in ways that are potentially fresh” (Andrew 83). Discussing the casting for a movie he is attempting to make - the very one we are watching - he says, “I want people, not actors.” This simple and direct statement shows the confidence of a director who has a vision and who does not doubt his intuition. It is the sort of decision that can change the whole spirit of a movie, more often than not giving a different weight that grounds it in reality. In this Fig. 7: Miguel Gomes and his “producer” in scene. case, it is surely a decision that was made in the early stages of pre-production, but Gomes decides to incorporate it within the “plot” of the movie itself. Played in the midst of its narrative, it is as if he is finding the way to tell the story as he goes along, hand in hand with the audience - at the same speed. Our Beloved Month of August, Gomes’ second feature - and the one that put him on the map of contemporary directors that should be looked at closely - takes its audience along the process of finding a story and constructing a film. It is a movie about filmmaking as much as it is a documentary on small villages in Portugal and the story of a family who runs their own traveling band. Many things at once, it never loses touch with what it intends to do, but it requires of its audience a higher level of attention, so that no detail is missed, and so that they can put the pieces together. Gomes and his team lay out the pieces of the puzzle, but without the audience’s own gaze the pieces could seem to be merely spread out - not connecting. It needs its audience to recognize it. That is the strength of a movie that knows how to present itself with no fear of being misleading. In order to fully understand it, I will use as a reference Rancière’s Documentary Fiction (2006), reading the film through the author’s understanding of the blurring between documentary and fiction filmmaking.

Our Beloved Month of August is not precisely a diptych, given the way its two distinct parts are constantly overlapping, but it still holds two parts. Its first half, the documentary part of it, focus on Gomes and his crew. They have set out with the intentions of shooting a script in the rural region of Arganil, in Portugal, but due to lack of funds are unable to do so. Not to waste their time and energy, they start to shoot everything they see that interests them. The region and its citizens, their stories, and the music that drives them. The month of August in Portugal is a time for celebration, and the crew records the many

15 parties they encounter and the bands that entertain them. The second part of the film, the scripted one, turns its focus on a specific band, and the family that compose it - Tânia, her father Domingos, and her cousin Hélder - who is visiting from the big city. Soon, the two cousins get enamored with each other, bringing to the surface issues of trust, love and family relationships. The film, playing with both registers of fiction and documentary, is also interchangeable.

There are many ways in which this movie could be described, and many genres where it could be placed. To say that it is a documentary would not suffice. To say that it is a fictional drama would not be true. To simply say that it is a hybrid would be an oversimplification. In their introduction to the book Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking (2006), John Springer and Gary Rhodes create a diagram that exemplifies the four main results achieved when combining documentary and fictional forms and contents. They list them as: documentary, mockumentary, docudrama, and fiction (4). Our Beloved Month of August accomplishes the feat of being all of these at once. The interconnection of documentary form and content with fictional form and content in every direction is what makes it stand out. It is with this movie that Gomes proves to be one of the most innovative and exciting directors of his generation - not because he is inventing a new form, but because he is revitalizing it - giving new shape to cinema itself. In order to understand the way in which this is done, I will analyze its use of non-actors, the ideas behind its hybridization of registers, and the effects that this combination generates.

Beyond the representation of the real world through images that belong to it, the one element that links reality and fiction in any movie is the body of the actor. Instantly recognizable as a mirror of ourselves, the actor links the character they are portraying to the reality of the story - be it real or not - and immediately links the two aspects of the film world - that which is being represented, and that which is being re-presented. This link goes further when directors decide to use “regular” people to portray scripted characters. People that are not trained in acting, and have no previous experience in the art form. These non-actors represent all of us. While the strength of a movie and its success might rely on how convincing the performances of actors on screen are, non-actors, when used correctly, bring to the screen a quality that not even the most experienced actors can - a different authenticity that is fresh for most audiences. The history of film is filled with examples of the use of non-actors, ranging from those that are portraying themselves, or versions of themselves, to those that embody characters much like a professionally trained actor would.

The choice to use non professional or amateur actors in movies can add traces of documented realities to its DNA, and that is precisely what happens here. This movie, being to some extent about the work behind filmmaking, also includes Miguel Gomes himself and the rest of his crew as actors. Acting as

16 themselves, performing the roles they would be doing behind the camera, they become the subject for a few select scenes that set the tone and idea behind the development of the plot. During its second half, the same choice is followed, with non professional actors selected from the region where the movie is set playing the scripted characters. This choice give the overall feeling of authenticity that professional actors achieve only at a very different level, and the inclusion of the crew as characters reinforce the documentary aspects of the film. If Gomes had decided to cast professional actors for the fictional part of the film, a concrete barrier between its two halves would be established and the movie would lose aspects of the link that holds those halves together. While the audience is told that part of what we are seeing on screen is scripted, the somewhat lack of distinction between such parts - provided partially by its use of non-actors - is an aspect of the film that helps it to be so distinguishable.

The movie has moments of fiction that are played as reality, and moments of reality that are played as fiction. This shared DNA helps it to become both a documentary and a fiction film, not only in between its combined parts, but simultaneously. With this is mind, we can look at Rancière’s arguments that fiction and documentaries are not as distinguishable, given the fact that documentaries are “a mode of fiction at once more homogenous and more complex” (159). Our Beloved Month of August is proof that the cyclical back-and-fourths that it presents can result in a new form of storytelling. One does not need to know the true nature of the images, as once on screen everything becomes real and with the same level of recognition. The constant overlapping of genres and methods opens the film “onto multiple paths and create a virtual space of indefinite connections and resonances” (Rancière 167). It could be argued that the very act of creating a documentary and a fiction film simultaneously would be enough to pave its way into a realm of indistinguishability, but the film also makes use of its technical and narrative structure to further play with that idea. Throughout the entirety of the film, Gomes uses blending techniques that not only becomes the driving thread between scenes, and between the two distinct parts of the movie, but ends up being a metaphor for what he is trying to create with it. One of the most important of such techniques is the overlapping of sound from one scene onto another.

The disconnected sound and image become one through editing - separate, but still one and the same. I’d like to argue that that this overlapping of sound reflects back on the overlapping of filmmaking methods, gaining extreme significance to the meaning of the film. Through its use of sound, what might not seem natural has to be understood as so, by its very existence and presentation. Gomes seems to verify this idea with an extended joke that makes up a sort of epilogue for the film. After the end of the proposed fictional narrative, we return our gaze to the crew itself - most importantly the sound mixer, who we have seen throughout the film, capturing sounds in a forest. Miguel Gomes approaches him with an issue that has been found with sound while the review of dailies. As he explains, sounds that were not supposed to be there are showing up in random scenes. The issue presented seems to point out that the

17 sound overlaps that we hear throughout the film are not editorial choices, but “phantom sounds” that intermingled somehow with the images. The mixing of elements from one scene to the other is described as accidental and uncontrolled. Vasco, the sound mixer, explains that such a thing is not technically possible, and yet still possible. Much like the mixture of genres, they are “two figures so close together, and yet so radically opposed” (Rancière 170) that their union ends up working. As a final punch to the joke, Gomes complains that there are no songs in the mountains. At that very moment a song starts to play, diegetically, for all the “characters” on scene to hear. With this epilogue, Gomes recognizes this altering of reality - and the altogether links between fiction and reality - to be not only natural, but unavoidable.

When reading this film with Rancière’s text in mind, it is also helpful to look at Nico Baumbach’s analysis of the same. In it he points out that, for Rancière, documentary is “a locus for experimenting with and creating contestation over the common” (59). Our Beloved Month of August seems to be the perfect case study to prove such a point. Gomes is constantly experimenting with the narrative, bringing fresh results to what the audience might understand as a documentary. If looked at solely as a documentary, the film would still remain a mixture of styles, as one could argue that there are many types of documentaries being intertwined in its production and presentation. At moments it resembles observational, fly-on-the-wall documentaries - keeping its distance and letting events unfold. We see different people on their day-to-day lives, working, entertaining themselves and others, giving us an overview of the lives and communities of these small villages. At other times we can see aspects of expository documentaries, in the way it features direct, talking head interviews, giving us further information on the backstory of the characters and, from their stories, a broader understanding of the region and their culture. Here, the “narration” so common to that type of filmmaking is not necessarily one of omniscience, but remains an exterior voice given the way sound is overlaid. And, as mentioned before, the film could be described as a participatory or reflexive documentary, focusing not only on the interaction of the filmmaker and his crew with the subjects, but on the making of the film itself. Even formally, the change from a static, observational camera, to a more fluid, handheld one, changes its feeling drastically.

This mixture, one that helps the film be may things at once - while remaining unique - helps to set the mood of an ever-turning wheel that could take us anywhere. The strength of the film lies heavily on its unpredictability. Even when perceived as an ordinary documentary on a specific region of Portugal and the people and customs that shapes it, the audience is not prepared for its shifts in both style and content. During one specific interview, a character mentions that it’s easy to lose “the knowledge of knowing or not knowing.” Independent of what he was referring to at the time, it feels like this is addressed directly at the audience, who throughout the film - from the beginning to its very end - is

18 unsure of what they are seeing, what is true and what isn’t, who are actors and who are not, what is scripted and what is real life. Even when dealing with the fictional aspects of the film, this doubt is one that is completely different from the one Springer and Rhodes describe concerning mockumentaries. They explain that for an audience to fully comprehend and enjoy such films, they need to recognize “that the standard conventions of documentary film are being placed in the service of a satirical or ironic examination of a fictional subject” (5). But that is not what this film is attempting to do. Even when what is being documented is not factual, Gomes is not trying to emulate a documentary. It remains one. Be the facts true or false, exaggerated or controlled, all other aspects of his filmmaking point to an authentic approach to what is being shot. That is why it’s a movie that truly falls outside of the standard understanding of hybrid filmmaking.

The first time we see the crew, documented in what is presented as reality, they are preparing what is later explained to be the opening credits for the film - a complicated and extensive line of dominos. The producer, looking for Miguel, accidentally knocks the dominos over, destroying the effort of the crew. While still part of the documentary half of the movie, the way this scene is shot and edited paradoxically points to an organized and premeditated shoot. We see the dominos falling from different angles, following their initial purpose - even if performed at the wrong moment. The staging of the scene is clearly visible, as an abrupt event such as the one portrayed could not have been recorded as we have just seen it happen. The opposition of filmmaking style to that of content disturbs the understanding of this sequence as documental. At moments such as this, where the fiction presented as reality is recognized, the “mockumentary” aspect of the film becomes immediately visible. Gomes is fictionalizing the interactions between him and his producer, as if they were captured in real time - but his filmmaking choices point in another direction. Slowly, the making of the movie and its own structure and narrative begin to take over the day-to-day life of the crew, intermingling ordinary life and the life on set. That is most noticeable in a quick but significant moment where we see an assortment of film equipment being used as everyday objects, serving different purposes other than those they are originally intended to - like the clothes that are seen drying on top of light flags (Fig. 8). Much like the crew that serves as actors, the equipment serves different purposes - linked to the everyday, as opposed to their official, professional use. The mixing of reality and fiction seen in small details like these shows how one works in favor of the other - reality helping fiction, and vice-versa. The interchangeability of purposes, as the interchangeability of registers is normalized, Fig. 8: The film equipment gains a different purpose. being from that moment onwards the true reality.

19 Other moments help to point out to the ever present clash of truth and fiction - perceived reality and its opposite - as when a cut takes us from a kid’s drawing of a fire truck, to an actual functioning fire truck. The change of states between fiction and reality is so hard to capture that an immediate cut take us from one realm to the other. It is not as if this change of states is literal, but it remains inevitable. The song that we hear at this precise moment talks about the dreams of boys in childhood. The abrupt cut from the drawing of the truck to its physical reality seem to say that the dreams we had, and will come to have, can always be manifested in reality. The same principle, acted out in a very different form, can be perceived at a later scene. Two character reenact the hunting of a boar. The reenactment is further fictionalized and abstracted by the way Gomes decides to shoot the scene. He point his camera not at the men acting out their own reality, but to the shadows they project onto a wall of shrubs (Fig. 9). The intertextual connections between this moment and Plato’s allegory of the cave are inevitable. Much like the characters in Plato’s tale perceived the shadows as being reality, we as an audience are presented with the reality of these shadows. Later, as if to free the viewers from “the cave”, we see an actual boar that has been hunted down being killed and skinned. While this scene does not immediately follow the shadow-play scene, the fact that we have not seen this boar being killed on camera makes us believe that the fiction portrayed by the two men and their shadows manifested itself into reality. While the dead boar is real, the imaginative hunt is what lead to his death. Once more, we see how “montage can play on two inverse functions: the Fig. 9: Shadows remind the viewers real becoming art and art becoming the of Plato’s allegory of the cave. real.” (Baumbach 67).

The narrative starts to slowly materialize as the movie progresses. At an earlier scene Gomes is seen promising his producer that he will find the people that will come to act in his movie. What we see happen is in turn a reversal of that - the people themselves going after the crew, interested in taking part of the movie. This particular scene is another that could be labeled as a “mockumentary”, given the fact that the two girls we see approaching the crew to inquire about the film had already been cast in real life, and in very different circumstances. The depiction of this moment, fictionalized and presented as documented reality, shows them trying their best to get the crew to recognize their wish to take part of the movie. While the crew plays a game between themselves, the two girls move from one member to the other, inquiring who is responsible for casting. The crew in turn sends them around, as if trying to get away from the responsibility of casting the actors and finally putting a start to the production of the actual movie that they are there to shoot. Eventually they reach Miguel, who says the positions are filled.

20 Determined, one girl - who does become the protagonist in the second part of the movie - suggests that the decision could be settled through a bet, and joins the game they are playing. The way the scene presents the casting of the films eventual protagonist as a result of chance and fate leads the viewer to believe that the only boundaries in the film are those established by the script and its characters. Before the start of the narrative, anything can be anything. Documentaries are usually caught in the “imperialism of the voice of the master” (Rancière 168), but here it is disconnected from such a voice, and in turn allowed to flow freely. Little by little the perceived documentary and the perceived narrative start to intertwine with each other. We first see people as they truly are and live, before finally seeing them as their respective characters.

Around the film’s halfway mark the narrative of the scripted characters begin to take shape and gain control of the film. The change of perspective that leads from one part to the next is manifested as if there was a literal change of lens. We see a shot where the camera’s own matte box is seen being put back into place (Fig. 10). This choice not only introduces the concept that the film we are watching is now a fiction, but paradoxically shows that behind the camera, reality is still active. The film and its very production are interlinked, never to separate. Truth and fiction, hand in hand, are what drive the story forward, for it is what creates the story. Here, the actual hand of the cinematographer is seen, and with a new filter in place, even the color temperature changes, filtering the reality that is positioned between the camera and the audience, Fig. 10: The matte box, about to be put back on the camera. between the physical plain of the landscape and the physical plain of the 16mm film. It is perhaps the most telling moment of the film, as it acts as the one true bridge between the division of this hybrid movie, linking them and making them one. Baumbach says that “documentary is taken to be a genre that even at its most shocking or spectacular tends to owe its pleasures to its ‘content’” (61). A moment like this, so connected to a technical choice, can be used to question this presumption.

For Rancière, the real difference between documentaries and fiction films is not in the type of images they work with with, but the way the images are treated. Meaning the content plays a smaller part. In his understanding, documentaries do not treat the real “as an effect to be produced” but rather as a “a fact to be understood” (158). In a hybrid film like Our Beloved Month of August, where the two realities - be they opposed or not - are composed of the same images, Rancière point is of extreme value for the understanding of what it tries to propose. Within the documental part of it, or its scripted reality, the

21 audience is supposed to understand it as fact, not merely an effect. The blending of genres allows for both to act in the same form, as the same inseparable entity. It does not matter that part of it is scripted, fictionalized and acted out, as the results obtained through this form of filmmaking are fundamentally the same as those obtained by the portion of the film that is recording actions as they happen. The reality of one and the other - transcribed into images - is indistinguishable. Or reversible.

Much like the film’s own form, the characters presented in it are fluid - moving from one state to the next and from one reality to another with ease. That is seen not only on the main protagonists - who we first meet as their “true selves” in the context of the documentary, and then later as the scripted characters - but in smaller aspects as well. From the use of karaoke (the emulation of a skill that is not necessarily yours), to the development of scenes and the way things are shot. At a specific moment, Hélder and Tânia are helping their friend write a love letter. This collective activity, with ideas being thrown back and forth aloud, swiftly change from one moment to the next in the way their suggestions to what their friend should write becomes self referential and directed at each other. Almost instantaneously, the words that were meant for others are now mean for themselves. It’s a smart moment that serves the purpose of solidifying the incestual interest between the two cousins, but that connects back to the form of the film and its shifts in tones, perspectives, and methods.

This fluidity of ideas and identities can be further seen on the other hinted incestual relationship of the movie - that between Tânia and her father. While never confirmed, different scenes make the audience suspect - through other characters’ suspicions - their relationship. This not only allude to the turbid relationship between Tânia and her mother (who has run away with a lover (or was abducted by aliens)) in an emotional level, but a physical one as well. At different moments we are told how much alike she and her mother are - even to the point of an uncle (drunkenly) confusing the two. The shape-shifting form of people, from non-actor to character, and one character to another, is instrumental to the development of the film’s narrative and structure. Later, during an extreme long shot that captures one of the parties, the frame includes at the bottom left corner another of the cameramen, who eventually abandons his post to go dancing with the crowd. Captured on film, and therefore thrown back into its narrative, the cameraman immediately takes the opportunity to act as the rest of those on screen, fully grasping his new reality - that of character. Rancière argues that “[f]iction means using the means of art to construct a “system” of represented actions” (158). The actions described here are used to create such systems - those that further the genre fluid nature of the film through narrative choices.

Important to its development is also the manifestation of truth in its physical form. As anything can be understood as true when seen on screen, Gomes pushes that idea further, confirming the “true nature” of some aspects of the story formally. This technique is used mostly during the fiction part of the film - as

22 when Tânia, about to conceal her lovemaking, decides to leave proof of it behind, so that her father can see, and so that the act itself becomes real. Without proof, the act could remain fiction - only true within the memory of the characters. Her father’s knowledge of her lovemaking with her cousin makes the whole action true to life, as it now involves a “witness”. The same can be said of the fact that Hélder’s heroic act during a forest fire is printed in the village’s newspaper for all to see. It makes his actions real, concrete. During an even subtler moment at the end of the movie, Gomes decides to shoot the trees in a forest by framing not only their bodies, but the small plaques that specify their scientific name and species (Fig. 11). Confirmed by them, the trees become real trees, in this moment that mixes the reality of the wind on their leaves with the actual reality of their scientific properties. It’s a small detail that sums up the whole idea of the film: everything can be two things at once. Decisions such as these, minute and yet heavy with significance, shows the confidence Gomes has on his work, where he is constantly exploring “the tension between the idea of the image and imaged matter” (Rancière 170). At the very end, the crew is introduced and credited one by one. Their name and professional position is given, much like the trees right before them. Giving each function a face and a name makes them real - in turn making the movie real, and the moviemaking experience true to life. Fig. 11: The trees are identified by their scientific names.

Cinema, as an art, “seems almost to have been designed for the metamorphoses of signifying forms” (Rancière 165). Rancière’s use of the word metamorphoses is of extreme relevance here, as he is acknowledging the abrupt changes that can - and do - happen in film. The metamorphoses seen in Gomes’ second feature goes both ways, as it abruptly changes states in waves - becoming and unbecoming something else, something more. If cinema was truly designed this way, Gomes is making use of one of its intrinsic qualities and putting it to the test. The cyclical changes that the film goes through from one state to the other, and back again, could be seen as his way to test its limits. The perceived success of this experiment might vary from one spectator to the next, but I do believe that what is achieved is undeniable proof that documentary and fiction can work together with no need to distinguish them. It takes a certain level of background knowledge to truly know what in its structure belongs to one medium and what belongs to the other. As this knowledge is not one that the audience possess, the point of it is exactly to keep wondering, trying to recognize in its actors, narrative, and structure, the traces of reality that are innate to a film like this. Our Beloved Month of August proves the metamorphosis quality inherent to filmmaking by pointing to a further quality it can possess - its amalgamation of styles.

23 Chapter 3: Recollections - Tabu

Documentaries and fictions are registers that play with the representation of reality, and the demarcations between reality and non-reality. As Gomes is constantly mixing such registers, he ultimately brings his work to the question of realism in film, and the demarcation of what is real and what isn’t. The reproduction of real life is arguably one of art’s most sought after results since antiquity. As André Bazin argues, artists were always looking for ways to embalm time (Ontology 8) - preserving it for the future - and “cinema satisfied once and for all […] the obsession with realism” (Ontology 6). But this act of embalming, of preserving, serves an even larger purpose - that of remembering. We try to capture reality, be it by freezing time on paintings, sculptures, and photographs, or by recording it with moving images - fictional or documentary - not to forget the moments and elements of the natural world that make life what it is. With that in mind, Siegfried Kracauer is not wrong to so intently discuss the differences between a photograph and our memory-images, as memories can in this way be understood as the true goal of all arts. Even “full of gaps” (Photography 425) and being easily manipulated, memories are the most complete method of preserving time - for not only they preserve its sensorial realm, but all the emotional feelings connected to it. Rancièce sees in memory a reflection of the work documentary plays on filmmaking, saying cinema itself was “designed for the metamorphoses of signifying forms that make it possible to construct memory” (165). Just as Gomes’ movies lie somewhere between fiction and documentary, film falls somewhere in between the realms of representation and remembering, of spatial and time conformities - servicing both worlds and bringing results unachievable in other arts. How would a movie concerning human memory add to the discussion of reality in film? And how would that same discussion change the way such a movie could be interpreted? Miguel Gomes’ Tabu is such a movie, and I intend to show how its themes and overall conception are in constant dialogue with questions of the representation of reality, the understanding of memories, and the axis where these two meet.

Tabu concerns itself not only with the memory of its characters, but with the memory of film history itself, serving both as an homage and a reflection on how we comprehend the medium. These two levels, the conceptualized and the meta, work hand in hand in the way the movie is constructed. As I intend to go back and forth within its narrative during my analysis, it is helpful to establish how the movie is divided, and its overall narrative. A diptych, it tells the story of Aurora, her illicit love affair, and the calamitous consequences of her actions. The first part, entitled “Paradise Lost”, is set in contemporary Lisbon, and presents Aurora as a supporting character, somehow forgotten from her own story. It focus instead on Pilar, a middle aged woman who on the last days of the year start to get involved too closely to the problems or her neighbor - Aurora - an old woman slowly falling towards dementia, whose understanding of reality, memories, and imagination are in constant shift. The second part, “Paradise”, goes back in time to Aurora’s youth, and her days living in the Portuguese colony of an unnamed (and

24 fictional) African country. This part of the movie, entirely narrated by Gian Luca, who we learn to have been her secret lover, serves the dual purpose of memory mentioned before - that of the characters and that of film itself - while at the same time allowing a “subjective dialogue between the film and the spectator, wherein both form part of the discourse that will be built in relation to reality” (Pereira 336), as the spectator needs to remember the first part of the movie in order to make sense of the second.

Besides its two-part division, Tabu starts with a prologue. Set around the 19th century, it does not mention the film’s actual protagonists, but does set its tone, giving direct hints to some of the arguments I will present throughout this chapter concerning its understanding of realism and how it should be dealt with in films. It opens with the image of an “intrepid explorer”, alone and immobile in the center of the frame (Fig. 12). For a moment, we could understand this as a 19th century colonial photograph, one that according to Kracauer would be “devoid of meaning” (Photography 434) - like all photographs. But not long after, other bodies enter the frame from both left and right and, with movement, the “picture” comes to life. A smaller moment later in the movie repeats this idea of the superior reality of the moving image over photographs, when the picture of a retirement home, seen on a postcard, appears to gain life

Fig. 12: The lonely intrepid explorer. when a cut takes us straight to the same depicted location, now in moving glory. What was a representation of reality becomes its reproduction. This distinction between representation and reproduction, one made throughout Bazin’s Ontology of the Photographic Image (1945), is an important concept that is materialized in different ways throughout the movie, as it time and time again shows how only with images can reality truly exist - be it within the story, or in the spectator’s mind. As Maya Deren suggests, film requires “of its subject matter, only that it exist; and of the audience, only that they can see” (60). Tabu is a movie about stories and memories, and I’d like to propose that a fine line delineates the fiction of the former and reality of the latter. This delineation is achieved by the images of the movie itself. As I will point out with different examples extracted from it, words are not enough to reproduce reality, even if they are true and precise descriptions. Once images are combined to the same words, reality comes to the forefront. Factual or not, reality is represented by images, while fiction and stories remain on the realm of words, not physicalized. Thus, the movie establishes a link between figures invested in the question of realism, such as Bazin, Deren and Kracauer.

25 The first instance that proves this point occurs during the prologue. A narrator describes the fate of the explorer, who is devoured by a crocodile. We hear the splash of the water as he jumps to his doom, but do not see him being devoured, or the crocodile that does so. As an illustration of what has been described is not presented, the consequences are not yet real. It remains a fictional story until, not long after, we are presented with the image of a crocodile accompanied by the ghost of the explorer’s wife, and understand it to be true. The image, an illustration of what has been described by the narration, turns fiction into reality. What we see is real, not only within the story, but in terms of its reproduction of reality. And then, to subvert that somewhat, the prologue ends with a cut to the inside of a movie theater where we see Pilar sitting alone, presumably watching what we have just watched, at the start of Tabu’s first part (Fig. 13). Revealed as a movie, the prologue loses its reality within the film itself, but nonetheless remains a represented depiction of the natural world, captured by a movie camera, as it “not only testifies to the existence of that reality […] but is, to all intents and purposes, its equivalent” (Deren 64). Rancièce might say that it retains “the “real of fiction” that ensures the mirror recognition between the audience in the theaters and the figures on the screen” (159). Curiously, in Fig. 13: Pilar: spectator of the prologue, protagonist of part one. this case this reflects both on Pilar as an audience and us as a physical audience of the film. At this moment the movie loses its documentary fell and dives head first into the realm of fiction. But within this fiction lies the exploration of the character’s own realities and their attempts to escape or change such realities. From side characters (the polish girl who lies about her identity so she can escape the arranged stay at Pilar’s house), to Pilar herself, who takes parts of activities to try to present an image of who she would like to be but in reality is not. At one point, Pilar participates in an organized demonstration against the UN. The demonstration itself is presented as insincere, as “the actions, the arrangements and the props of the scene are far from realistic and expose that the supposedly democratic act is only a fake” (Ferreira 38), and Pilar herself is not sincerely present, breaking a suggested moment of silence in order to pray for Aurora, showing how “her religious values are stronger than her democratic ones” (Ferreira 38). Part One presents us with a fiction, where the characters try to escape their own reality, but it never ceases to be a reproduction or the real world, as “fictional doesn’t mean false or nonexistent. […] Even if everything one invents weren’t true, it would become so” (Epstein L’intelligence 314). The characters we meet on the second part are, much like those of the first, isolated from the reality of where they are living. Self centered, rich, and spoiled, the majority of the characters ignore the political situation they live in, and the culture of the colonized country they reside. The music they hear, so connected to their emotional states, are all foreign, and everything

26 revolves around the present (“the future seemed like a vague and stupid concept”). Paradoxically, in the future seen during the first part, the past is all that matters (for Aurora at least).

If the “knowledge of the original” (Kracauer Photography 431) and the understanding of temporal history missing from photographs (and not film) is what distinguishes it from memory-images, perhaps Kracauer sees film as the closest manifestation of memories, and therefore of the natural world itself. Gian Luca, narrating his story with Aurora, possesses the knowledge of the original and thus holds the key to reality. Aurora is dead, and he becomes our only link to the past. Truthful or not, a good representation of reality or not, his tale becomes real for the spectator, as it is what is offered. By understanding the rules of what is being proposed, our option is to believe that which we see (and hear). In real life, stories and lies have always a sense of disbelief, as we are not presented with visuals to “prove” what is being told. Film provides the visuals, and therefore allows a perceived reality to sink its roots in anything that is visually represented on screen. Without the visuals, the sense of deception and disbelief still lingers. At the start of Gian Luca’s narration, the characters are sitting down in the food hall of a mall. Though an urban and commercial environment, the frame is filled with plants which foreshadow what is to come, already giving a sense of reality to his story, by partially illustrating its setting. To enhance this illusion, the sound of birds replace the sounds of the mall. Though brief, this sound bridge meant for the audience serves a purpose for the characters, as it overlaps and interacts with them in present day Lisbon, perhaps proving that they too believe what is being told. Quite immediately, the narration starts, we are transported to Africa in the 1960s, and what were once artificial memories become the reality reproduced on screen. Thus the whole second part of Tabu could easily be summed up in Deren’s words: “As we watch a film, the continuous act of recognition in which we are involved is like a strip of memory unrolling beneath the images of the film itself” (64). Gian Luca’s memories, unrolled on the screen, become our own.

An example of the opposite can be found during the first time we see Aurora, as she narrates the dream that lead her to spend all her money at a casino. While the scene itself is given a dream-like feel in the way that it is shot - with Aurora’s surroundings revolving around her, deepening the sense of instability projected by the character and her elaborate story filled with inventive description - the dream remains only a dream, as we are not seeing the images in her head (Fig.14). Her rambling is mirrored in the circular, spiraling movement of the background, but in the end, Aurora herself recognizes that dreams and reality cannot intermingle, saying: “I’m a fool, because people’s lives aren’t like dreams.” The dream might have lead her to the casino in real life, and her belief in it might have been authentic, but when narrated out loud and devoid of visual representations, it loses its reality, and all that is left is the physical world seen on screen. A later scene could be used as definite proof that Gomes himself believes in this proposed idea that stories cannot be real unless some sort of physical, material, or in our case filmic

27 proof is given. Pilar and her friend are visiting a cave with a group of tourists. They are accompanied by a guide, who narrates and explains various facts related to the cave itself. By the end of his description he says quite bluntly: “What I’m telling you are not facts, but made up stories.” The idea is then reinforced by the way he ends this speech: “If proof was found, they would

Fig. 14: Aurora during her long dream monologue. become facts.” The idea of reality coming from proofs is thus confirmed and reiterated, for both the characters and the audience. Words, without a physical link, are not enough to turn fiction into reality. Once linked to images, any fiction can become real. As Bazin says concerning the surrealists’ use of photography, “[t]he logical distinction between the imaginary and the real was eliminated” (Ontology 9). If photography has such a power, film solidifies it. Aurora, so linked to her own past and weary of the present, shows at another short scene how her personal taste is one linked to reality - be it her own perception of what reality is, or a standard representation or reality. At a visit to Pilar’s apartment, she notices an abstract painting hanging on the wall. “It’s modern. And weird” she says, as this modern abstraction, so linked to the lost paradise of modern Lisbon, is not agreeable to her. Pilar then replaces the painting by what originally hanged on that spot - a realist depiction of a farm. Be it for its approximation of reality, or a nostalgic feeling for her own farm, Aurora approves of it with joy: “Oh, this one is much better.” Her understanding of life needs to be figurative, much like this painting that brings some sort of illustration to her memories of Africa.

This concept is further proved in the movie’s own construction. Divided in two parts, what was only Aurora’s nonsensical rambling about crocodiles and Africa in the first, dismissed by those around her, and overlooked by the spectator, becomes reality in the second - even if such a reality is presented with the look and feel of a memory - for as Kracauer says, “the greater the artwork the more it approaches the transparency of the final memory-image in which the features of “history” converge” (Photography 427). Even fictionalized, Tabu’s representation of Aurora’s and Gian Luca’s memories serve as an embalming of time and personal history. The film works out a narrative that “creates a memory in the present as the intertwining of two histories” (Rancière 165). In Tabu, the images retained in the characters’ minds are materialized on screen and from there re-enters the realm of memories – now within the spectator that remembers the film itself. This constant recycling of images and memory-images between the characters, the film, and the spectator, could continue ad infinitum. Bazin suggests that the “reality that cinema reproduces at will and organizes is the same worldly reality of which we are a part” (Death 30), by which he means that independent of the boundaries of fiction, what is seen on screen is a reproduction of

28 reality. Rancière gives a similar point when saying that “[f]iction means using the means of art to construct a “system” of represented actions” (158). Scripted or not, trees are still trees, and people are still people. Once such an image enters the consciousness of the spectator, and is understood as reality, it is reality.

Kracauer believes that memories contain a person’s truth, even when its “records are full of gaps” (Photography 425). It is with these gaps that Gomes invokes his own memories of film history. The second part of the movie is devoid of all dialogue, while the ambient sound is still heard. What is created is a quasi-silent film that pays an homage to the silent era of cinema (complementing the film’s black and white cinematography and academy ratio), while serving the purpose of showing how memories are never complete. Gian Luca might remember minute details of his past and everything that composed it, but aspects are always lost in time. Kracauer says that “memory-images retain what is given only insofar as it has significance” (Photography 425). For Deren, “reality is first filtered by selectivity of individual interests and modified by prejudicial perception to become experience” (63). Gian Luca filters his memory, and what is immediately lost along the way are the dialogues that were exchanged between himself and all of those who resided in Africa at that time. But as we soon learn, the actions of the characters, not their words, are what shaped their fate - so words can be forgotten. While speech is a prominent part of our own reality, the reality (re)presented in this section of the movie is no less true for its lack of dialogue. That becomes an aspect of the internal reality presented, and therefore acts as fact. Rudolf Arnheim says that “everyone who goes to see a film accepts the screen world as being true to nature” (15). That is precisely what happen here, and we are left with the gestures and expression of the characters, that Béla Balázs calls the true “mother tongue of mankind” (11) and that surely serve the purpose of representing their emotional and factual exchanges. While the lack of dialogue seems to alter the reality we are watching, diminishing its effect somewhat, all other aspects of the sound design serve to connect us with it. The foley work created for this sequence is astounding, and all encompassing, making us soon forget about the lack of dialogue, as the sonic environment of the world we are watching is present and in tune with the codes of reality proposed. Even the narration that guides us through the visuals might be understood as an acousmêtre. This concept coined by Michel Chion describes a voice, that when released from the physical being, becomes its own self - a disembodied ghost of sorts (156). Even though we know that Gian Luca is the one providing the narration, his voice can be perceived as all powerful and omniscient. In this way, the disembodied narration itself becomes a character and thus is given back its purpose in the real world, becoming as real to the spectator as the voiceless bodies seen on screen.

But Tabu’s play with film memory goes even further than paying homage to an era, as it directly references a specific film, F. W. Murnau’s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931). Beyond its title, Murnau’s Tabu influenced Gomes in various levels, including the movie’s theme of colonialism, its focus on an illicit love affair, its mixture of fictional and documentary images, and even the diptych structure it

29 established. Gomes goes as far as naming each part of his movie the same as Murnau's - “Paradise”, and “Paradise Lost”. However, Gomes reverts this order. “Paradise” is shown only after its “loss” - and therefore becomes a memory. Film shares memories’ understanding of time, one that is malleable and capable of stretching temporal order - as it consciously does here. As Epstein points out, “anyone who makes films without playing with temporal perspective is a poor director” (295). Gomes might show his worth in Epstein’s eyes by playing with time inside the narrative of his movie, and prove it by playing with time within the medium’s own reality.

Another method employed by the film to deal with reality is linked to the way the spectator is responsible for composing its own reality in their minds, through an understanding of how things connect. Following a detached and reversed order of events, Tabu could be seen as an ambiguous puzzle at times; but by filling the lacunas, the spectator constructs the meaning of the real. I propose that that is not only done in between parts, but in between shots as well. The meaning is implicit in the junction of images, and not everything needs to be shown for us to believe what the eye does not. As Deren proposes, we can “believe in the existence of a monster if we are not asked to believe it is present in the room with us” (65). At a specific moment during the second part, we see Aurora hunting. As she takes aim at a bull, the camera lingers and takes its time with her, but the next shot already shows her riding back to the village with the dead animal on the back of a pickup truck. In this case, we do not need to see or hear Aurora shoot it to believe in the fact that it happened. The reality is implicit (hidden or not) in the cut. “The editing of a film […] gives particular or new meaning to the images according to their function” (Deren 69). The images, as one shot follows the next, propose the death of the animal by Aurora herself. That is their function, and therefore a particular meaning - a particular reality - is created.

The final way Tabu plays with its own concepts of how we perceive the real is its flirtation with documentary imagery. The prologue, given its historical nature, aesthetic choices, and use of narration “makes us think of documentaries and ethnographic films” (Pereira 338). This is emphasized by some specific moments, such as when a group of people start a ritualistic dance as if cued by the director from behind the camera, with some even making direct eye contact with it (Fig. 15, Fig. 16). This “hybrid form, halfway between documentary and fiction” (Pereira 338) is perhaps the film’s most direct link to realism - as documentaries, could be seen as the most faithful Fig. 15: A tribe waits for their cue to act their dance. way to reproduce the world around us. This

30 feeling returns with strength on the second part of the movie. Shot mainly without a set script, ideas would flourish daily, and some scenes were shot spontaneously. This levity gives it a freer form, not bound to preconceptions, and for that very same reason set even more on “the real”. A clear example comes during one of its final sequences, where a group of kids is seen running towards the camera. Benefiting the documentary feel,

Fig. 16: The camera is acknowledged. Gomes allows them to be be themselves, and many of the kids wear contemporary t-shirts - some with brands clearly visible (Fig. 17). This controlled accident, meaning “the maintenance of a delicate balance between what is there spontaneously and naturally […] and the persons and activities which are deliberately introduced into the scene” (Deren 66), gives rise to the links between fiction and reality. Gomes takes advantage of that, quite literally following Deren’s explanation of a controlled accident, as he deliberately puts the fictional character of Gian Luca walking in between these “documented” kids, who are there naturally. Kracauer says that “everything depends on the “right” balance between the realistic tendency and the formative tendency” (Theory 39). Gomes’ film is a fiction, but he knows how to Fig. 17: Ventura surrounded by kids hint at the ever-present connections between wearing contemporary clothes. fictions and documentaries (and vice-versa).

Tabu, half of which is told through the memory of a man, set in an unnamed and imaginary country, is in any case a reproduction of the real world, one that “penetrates deeply into its tissue” (Benjamin 116), creating reality even from what would be imaginary in its meta level. If art is truly searching for a way to cheat death, embalming time so that it can be remembered by generations to come, Tabu comes very close to being a complete achievement of such terms. Exploring and reproducing three different times in history, and depicting men’s own memories, illustrating them in ways that in turn represent and reminisce the history of film itself, it creates an interdisciplinary and intertextual dialogue that grounds reality and proves how everything that is visible is a true representation of the natural world. Gomes’ entire oeuvre, one that is constantly playing with the connections between fiction and documentaries, the real and the imaginary, fables and Portugal’s own history, both incorporates the ideas

31 brought up by people such as Bazin, Deren, and Kracauer, and brings new concepts that could complement the never ending argument of film in relation to reality. Aurora’s final letter to Gian Luca emphasizes that if men’s memory is limited, the world’s is eternal, and no one can escape it. With Tabu, Gomes shows how filmic memory, sitting somewhere between men’s own memories and the world’s, is fundamental to the understanding of works like his. While creating new memories for his viewers, he is reminiscing about his own understanding of the works that made him the artist he is today.

32 Chapter 4: Dreams - Arabian Nights

In his most ambitious movie to date, Miguel Gomes decided to take his role as a storyteller to heart, putting himself in the shoes of the greatest storyteller of all - Scheherazade. Arabian Nights elevates most of the aspects of his filmography to extreme levels, culminating in a film that can be watched in various forms. That is due to the fact that the film is in itself divided into three. A whole trilogy at once, it could be watched as a six and a half hour movie, or it could be watched - and understood - as three different, isolated films. While clearly part of the same shared universe, with a thread that connects them all, it is a possibility to watch each one by itself, with each providing enough to satisfy a viewer. When watched in succession though, it is possible to notice the aspects that make them a beginning, a middle, and an end to a whole - even when such aspects do not affect them individually. The film possesses “the power of expression whereby a sentence, an episode, or an impression can, even in isolation, represent the sense, or nonsense, of the whole” (Rancière 160). Proof of this inherent individuality is that Portugal, when deciding on how to represent itself for the 2016 Academy Awards, selected the second volume of the trilogy. Consisting of three different movies, the complete work could not be selected - but it is the fact that they still decided to chose one of them independent of it being a part to a whole that could be surprising for some. For the sake of simplicity, in this chapter I will consider the film as a single entity - eventually moving back and forward between its three parts, and in this way analyzing the whole of what this trilogy represents. I will argue that the fractal mode of storytelling usually seen in Gomes’ work goes further here, as it references Portugal’s own fragmented relationships - those between its civil and public powers, and even within their cinema history.

To help understand what the film intends, it is crucial to see how the film industry has behaved in these times of crisis. In their collective article, Olga Kourelou, Marina Liz, and Belén Vidal explore the impact of the Eurozone crisis in the cinemas of Portugal, Greece and Spain. While their conclusion is that the effect of the crisis “have begun to ripple out to their respective cultural industries” (134), in the case of Portugal they relate that the crisis is “business as usual” and “does not have a strong impact on the film sector because cinema was already, or has always been, in crisis.” (137). In any case, the economic crisis that affected Portugal between 2011 and 2014 has been reflected in various different factions of the country’s cultural scene, as “social criticism and political activism were explicit components of several artistic works and performances” (Silva, Guerra and Santos 32). In the field of cinema, Miguel Gomes was responsible for taking the reins with Arabian Nights. As the film itself points out, Gomes’ latest is not an adaptation of the book of the same name, despite drawing on its structure. Like the book, it tells many different stories, but the inspiration for these are facts that occurred in Portugal between August 2013 and July 2014, when the country was “held hostage to a program of economic austerity executed by a government apparently devoid of social justice.” As a result of this harsh economic period, almost all

33 Portuguese became more impoverished. While developing the script, Gomes put together a team of journalists that would make a daily selection of news stories found in the country’s newspapers. From those, the tales that would eventually compose the script were developed. In the veins of the original Arabian Nights, most of these stories gained fantastical and magical elements, but the truth - one filled with a harsh political commentary - is still present in each and every one of them, becoming a “carefully constructed mixture of times, a pluralization of memory and fiction (Rancière 164). The result of this is a film filled with enough magical realism to enchant its audience, while at the at the same time painting a just and needed picture of the trouble Portugal found itself in - financially, socially, and above all politically. It is not an overall criticism of the situation, but a reading of it. To summarize this almost seven hour work composed of at least eleven different plots (most of which branch out into other strands) is not sensible - or easy - so I will mention plot related aspects when necessary. Suffice to say that the film results in a tale of epic proportions, given its scope and objectives, becoming within Gomes’ filmography a perfect summation of all that he has explored before.

Volume One, entitled The Restless One, starts with a prologue that sets the circumstances in which not only this film takes place, but in which this film was conceived, written, and produced - the economic crisis in Portugal. Documenting the last days of a bankrupt shipyard in Viana do Castelo, the images are accompanied by the voices of those who lost their jobs. The dislocation of the voices, unconnected to the images we see on screen only doubles the impression that there are many stories to be explored - too many to tell. The faces we see in the crowd seem to give the voices a body to belong to, but in the end it doesn't matter who is speaking, for each of them could speak for all of the 600 workers who share the miserable situation of being laid off. They are all one. The lack of “talking heads” prove that this is both a story without a face and a story with many faces. The latter of which could be said of the whole project - one that contains many different facets. Gomes acknowledges this fact in an interview with Francisco Ferreira. Speaking simultaneously about the original Arabian Nights and his own, he says that “[t]he central character is a collective, a community, not an individual” (Ferreira 48). Among all of these individuals lies Gomes himself and his crew, who soon appears on screen accompanied by his own narration (Fig. 18). He describes how it is impossible to make a film about Portugal and ignore the situation at the Viana do Castelo shipyards. He is there for that reason, but also to follow yet another story - that of an exterminator who is trying to save the region’s honey production by burning the nests of the hornets Fig. 18: Miguel Gomes - the restless, that are invading the area. Anguished, unsure of desolate, and enchanted director.

34 how to create a connection between such distinct stories, Gomes soon runs away form the set. Throughout his career, Gomes has at numerous times told separate stories simultaneously, and made connections between genres, registers, and plots that could be considered difficult. It is interesting to see how his anguish only manifests itself in this situation. Is it the nature of the stories he is telling what prevents him to work as before? Is facing Portugal’s present situation too overwhelming? While he has dealt with documentaries before, this is the first time that we see him question his own motives and techniques.

But while Gomes says that he can’t find a connection between the burning of the hornets’ nests and the closing of the shipyard, the two eventually start to intertwine, with the voices of those involved in each case being overlaid onto images of the other. There are so many stories and characters that is hard to initially keep them separated. They affect each other - even if only on the realm of the edited film. Characters that would be distant in real life can share the same space when brought into the context of the film, and with that Gomes gives them a certain power to act more than they could in reality. The reality thus created on the film plane is one that, while documental, exists only within the film itself. Simultaneously, we continue to follow the film crew, who is now looking for its missing director. These scenes are clearly exaggerated, a pastiche that adds a layer of fiction to this documental prologue. But though clearly scripted, by seeing the crew - much like we did in Our Beloved Month of August - the life in front and behind the camera share a link, and in that form, become one. The fiction and the documentary is therefore linked by the very existence of a film crew. Being a director who is always diving his stories into fragments, Gomes is well aware that such a method serves a greater purpose, saying how “what counts is not the the strength of each fragment but the strength of the bond that unites them” (Ferreira 45). This statement, one that can be applied to his whole filmography, can be understood here as a reference to the crew within the film. As Bazin says about the photographic image, “the only thing to come between an object and its representation is another object” (7). Here, the crew is the link between reality and fiction, much like the film camera is the only hurdle between the real and the represented. This link (the camera, the crew) is inevitable, and essential to create - the ‘bond’ that unites the ‘fragments’.

During his narration, Gomes also addresses his own techniques of joining fiction and documentary by mentioning how it is impossible to make a militant film that starts to escape its own reality. “That is betrayal. Disengagement. Dandyism.” But to anyone who knows his work, such a statement sounds contradictory, as that is what he is always seeking in his movies. While none of his previous films could be called militant, the documental reality that soon delves into fiction is present throughout all of his works. Would this militance by the only reason behind a ‘betrayal’? Again, Gomes seems to be questioning all that his oeuvre has presented before. While the context of the crisis “does not change the meaning and significance of rooted and lasting motives of various oeuvres […] it impregnates

35 them with a specific tone of colour, both regarding their “textual structure” and its interpretation” (Silva, Guerra and Santos 37). But in a clear inversion of what he is saying, this very narration is fictitious, as in reality Gomes does believe that “it’s essential to bring the harsh reality of a society closer to the realm of fable” (Ferreira 44). It is curious to note how Gomes only places himself within his own films in moments of crisis - be it the film’s own production crisis in Our Beloved Month of August, or his personal crisis as a director (during the country’s own economic crisis) in this case. At the same time, as Dudley Andrew points out, a director’s “literal appearance in the midst of their films” could be seen as a sort of author’s signature (83). Looked at through this lens, maybe Gomes’ inclusion of himself hints at such a signature - that of an auteur, or just an author. By positioning himself in such moments, not taking himself too seriously, he hints to the fact that the film is in control of itself - not necessarily needing his guidance. In the film, he furthers his argument by saying how his idea for it is perhaps “the most stupid he’s ever had,” as one can make a film filled with fantastical stories, or another about the current socio-economic situation in Portugal, but not both at the same time. With this impossibility set, a challenge to be faced, the movie is ready to start. In the next seven hours, Gomes will prove himself wrong, bringing to fruition one of the most imaginative and complex movies of his career.

The prologue eventually ends with the introduction of the film’s true narrator - Scheherazade. Gomes gives her not only the word, but control and responsibility over what is to come, stepping out of the shoes of the storyteller, and disappearing behind the camera once more. Still, the choice of having him narrate until this point creates a tight link between the prologue and the first tale, where his narration ends, and hers starts. At this point the documentary reality could dissipate, giving way to the scripted fiction of the film, but given the way this film was conceived, the two continue to coexist simultaneously. We catch up with Scheherazade over 400 nights into her life with the King. This choice serves to point out how many stories came before the ones we are about to hear - with many more to come. The reality of the situation in Portugal is therefore inescapable, long, and convoluted. Scheherazade, in order to save herself from the murderous King she is married to, tells him a story every night, never finishing it on a single evening, thus sparking his curiosity and living to see another day. Much like Scheherazade’s plan of breaking stories into parts, so is Gomes’ in Arabian Nights. The mere existence of a second (and third) volume raises questions about how to understand it. Is Volume Two - entitled The Desolate one - a sequel, or something else entirely? Is it part of a whole, or does it function by itself? The film allows for different methods of viewings, one that can quench the viewer’s curiosity instantly after Volume One, or be kept for a later date. Volume Two also brings out sides of Gomes never seen before. As Baptista argues, “contrary to other countries, Portuguese cinema never had a predominant film genre, nor had it developed any specific film style that managed to gain any international relevance” (3). With no film genre to conform to, Gomes is free to explore all that he can. While he has always done so, unafraid to mix

36 genres and registers, here he really let’s himself free to explore different genres that were yet unique to his filmography.

Perhaps to further set the context of most of the stories that we are about to hear, the first of them focus on those responsible for the precarious economic situation that Portugal finds itself in - the members of the European economic troika and the Portuguese government. This tale is already full of fantastical and surreal elements, never questioned by those within it, which gives it a level of magical realism. Some tales are more embellished then others, with this being one of the most affected, as it immediately intertwines the reality of Portugal with that of Scheherazade’s Baghdad. The politicians are seen riding camels in the Portuguese countryside, interacting with an African shaman, being enchanted by magical sprays, and much more. Again, none of these elements are questioned. Much to the contrary, when a member of the troika sees the shaman leaving his hut he points and says, “very typical.” A quick moment like this might serve to further comment on how the foreign banks have no true knowledge about the country they are about to affect so intently. The shaman, speaking french, seems to be understood by all, but during the meeting between the troika and the Portuguese government a translator is needed, furthering this idea of miscommunication between the two realities. Later, the shaman himself explains how the situation in Portugal will most probably happen in Spain, Italy, and possibly even Germany. With the fortune of the poor in the hands of fools, not much can be done. This tale is perhaps the one that most diverges from the actual reality. Having been re-written several times and containing only professional actors, it also sits somewhere outside the rest of the film. Still, Gomes believed that it “would have been a serious omission” not to include the people in power” (48). As they inhabit one of the most abstract moments of the whole trilogy, their existence paradoxically hints at the nightmarish reality.

The second fable takes us to a small village in Portugal where a few connected stories seem to branch out from the same origin - a talking cockerel. This particular bird was condemned to death for waking up the inhabitants of Resende. What they don’t know is that he was merely trying to warn the citizens of the incoming forest fires, set by a jealous girl. This is all explained by the cockerel himself, to a judge who “understands the languages of animals.” These absurd details are played with the same naturalness as the rest of this very quotidian tale of a village. But the magical realism in this scenario acts even stronger with the choice Gomes makes of who should play the arsonist and her friends. Going as far as presenting themselves and the characters they are about to play to the audience, three kids step in the shoes of the adult characters in this bit. These non-actors, by presenting themselves, root the sequence into the fiction of what they are doing and what the film is, but their very presence brings a level of documental authenticity. The mere shooting of images could be regarded as the documentation of a reality, an instant in time. Whether these children are acting out a script or not, the film is documenting this moment of their lives. This point feels stronger when dealing with non-actors, and even stronger here

37 as children are in the spotlight. Other small details in this tale seem to connect the real and the artificial in different ways, like the neon signs in the shape of flames that adorn the streets of Resende, a village that is constantly stricken by forest fires. This symbol that seems to be a constant reminder of what the village residents need to go through on a recurring basis seems to be the perfect mise-en-scène detail to show up on a film by Gomes, who is constantly making connections between the real and unreal. This tale is also a perfect example of how Gomes conceived and produced this movie. As mentioned before, along with a group of journalists, he would select stories of Portugal’s day-to-day from news outlets. After an initial selection, a group would then investigate the story further, visiting the place and the people involved. If approved, a second group would then start shooting the story. Gomes says that a “normal week’s work involved debates with journalists, scriptwriting, filming, and editing” (Ferreira 44). This whole process means that the film is filled with many of the real characters, in real locations - as with Mrs. Fernanda Loureiro, the owner of the cockerel, in this case. The sense of reality achieved by such a method is unlike any in Gomes’ previous films, even with talking cockerels involved. One can say that in Arabian Nights, the very overlay of distinct production phases (pre-production, production, and post- production) gives way to a hybridity in the films’ very own conception. By writing, shooting, and editing simultaneously, truth and fiction become intertwined both in front and behind the camera. This unique process makes the film unique within Gomes’ oeuvre, becoming a true representation of all that he believes in.

The third and final tale of this volume, “The Swim of the Magnificents”, brings back the documental aspects of the prologue, but embellishes it with the fiction seen in the previous stories. It is, more so than the rest of this volume, a true hybrid of fiction and documentary. It follows Luís, who organizes an annual mass New Year’s Day swim for the community, now mostly unemployed. To select his group, Luís interviews them, and a few of these documented testimonies are included in the film. Their personal stories are told to Luís, but also to us. Being the story of unemployed people and their hardships, and therefore linking directly to what the film is about, we are put on the same level as the characters on screen who are listening to their personal stories. Furthermore, the way the testimonies are shot - in uninterrupted takes that resemble the talking heads in documentaries - crosses the lines that divide fiction and documentaries. These stories are real, even if told within the context of a fictional tale, in itself within a film that is both. Other element of interest within this tale happens close to its end, when a countdown appears on screen, on top of the Fig. 19: The countdown. What could it lead to?

38 filmed images (Fig. 19). We are aware that something will happen at the end of this countdown, even if we don’t know what it shall be. This premeditation is curious, but shows how some things are simultaneously expected and unexpected - much like the situation of the unemployed in Portugal, who might have known their unemployment was impending but were still

Fig. 20: The swim of the magnificents. surprised and saddened by its arriving reality. The tale finally leads to the swim of the magnificents, a scene that is filled to the brim with a sense of hope unseen in the stories that came before (Fig. 20). The camera allows us to look at these people as they truly are - an aspect that is only heightened by the lack of sound of the whole sequence. The camera is present, and those on screen are aware of it, interacting directly with it and thus confirming the documental nature of the film at this point. The melancholic beauty of this final sequence almost asks for a break between one volume and the other, so that is precisely what we are given.

In “Chronicle of the Escape of Simão Without Bowels”, the opening tale of Volume Two, Gomes usual interplay between fiction and documentary plays a part in his understanding of the actual social reality of the country - as “the lines between fiction and reality account for the strangeness and excess of the documented real lives” (Silva, Guerra and Santos 32). To further this point, Gomes brings back his use of non-actors and this time integrates them with the work of the professional actors. In this film, both are interchangeable, with non-actors playing both themselves and, at other times, different scripted characters. Sharing the same weight on screen, Gomes gave actors and non-actors the same spotlight when publicizing the film at the Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere. In the printed material distributed at the festival, both professional and non-actors where given their space, with no hierarchy - a choice that is not usually seen, but that respects and values the work of all, a position of extreme importance given the harsh reality that some of those present in the film deals with in their own true lives. Within the film, a clear case of the use of a non-actor for different purposes can be seen in the case of Chico Chapas. While in Volume Two he plays the part of Simão Without Bowels, an outlaw who gained the status of celebrity after being able to escape from the authorities for weeks, he “plays himself” in Volume Three, being an essential part of the final tale. The recurrences of familiar faces in between stories and/or volumes thus blur the line of what is an actor and a non-actor, especially in the case of Chico Chapas, who at different moments is either acting or simply being. While this was a technique that Gomes used in Our Beloved Month of August, it gains a different status here, as certain people are not only playing themselves, but doing so within stories pertinent to their own lives.

39 The pacing of each tale varies conforming what they are about - giving the movie its own unique general pace, one that is in constant shift and allows for different perspectives and understandings. Along with this diverse set of paces, we are presented with a diverse set of locations, which prove how diverse the country of Portugal can be. We can find within it vast landscapes like these depicted in the tale of Simão Without Bowels and, not too far, a metropolis like Lisbon. The country is as diverse as the stories we are being told, and for that very reason allows for such stories to take place, simultaneously and in contrast with each other. It is a land of many, and so the only way to explore it is to include a vast number of micro-universes. This is only enhanced at instances where the main storyline is divided into smaller side stories, like in the final tale of Volume Two, “The Owners of Dixie”. While set almost entirely inside a residential building, the reality of each character presented here is so diverse that the building becomes a world in itself, especially during the scene where stories of the various residents are told. This particular moment highlights how there are infinite ways to tell stories, with a short succession of accounts that grasps the life of many, and in many distinct forms - like the rapper who tells his own story through lyrics. It’s a beautiful and insightful moment that reminds us how all around us there are stories that can be fascinating, no matter how small they are. The movie becomes an ode to the people of Portugal, and also to what it means to be human - besides being an ode to storytelling. Arabian Nights also marks the first time Gomes works with a foreign director of photography. Having Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s trusted cinematographer) by his side allows the film to have a new view over Portugal, one that is not necessarily guided by preconceptions and which adds to the many “looks” within people’s lives. Gomes is very aware of what he is showing us, but Mukdeeprom had to discover each story and each location, bringing in this way a new angle to each of them.

The narration, an element that was so present in Tabu, back here in the voice of Scheherazade, contains again a lyrical quality that makes it very pleasing to hear. If Arabian Nights is about telling stories, Gomes allows exactly for such stories to be told, and not only seen. The whole movie contains numerous voices that narrate either their own story or stories related to their lives. Be it Gomes himself, Scheherazade, the talking Cockerel, or the magnificents, these voices - that sometimes act much like a chorus would, as in the prologue - give a sense that we all have something to share, no matter how distant our reality might be from the reality on screen. The narrations also serve different purposes. While the narration of the stories by Scheherazade functions as your standard movie narration, there are instances where the voices are there to give the movie its documental aspect back - be it during the prologue, the story of the magnificents in Volume One, or the story of Hot Forest in Volume Three. Rancière argues that documentaries have “greater leverage to play around with the consonance and dissonance between narrative voices” (161). When these literal dislocated voices accompany images that are clearly not staged, the sense of reality is heightened by their testimonies, constantly bringing back the reality within the “narrative voices” of the fables.

40 Another amalgamation of voices, “The Tears of the Judge”, part of Volume Two, might be a perfect microcosm of the society portrayed in Arabian Nights - bringing together all the aspects of Gomes’ film. In an unconventional open air court of law located in a forest, a judge tries to understand the case presented to her. What starts as a seemingly simple case spirals outwards to Fig. 21: The judge at her exterior court. involve every single person in the court, in a never ending chain of small crimes. The more the story continues, the more tired the judge gets, losing her control (Fig. 21). The despair is great, for there is no way to reach a true and fair judgement, as there are no innocents or cells enough to incarcerate the guilty. This tale serves the purpose of commenting on the overall situation of Portugal, the many guilty ones that lead the country to its present position, and the lack of control that those in power now face. The amount of interconnected crimes present in this story reflects back to the film’s own abundance of stories, and to the probable “impossibility of ever reaching a conclusion, of ever being able to read, in the facts and their juxtaposition, a meaning of one story” (Rancière 158).

Gomes seems to point to the fact that in the situation Portugal finds itself there are no true villains or heroes - the victims are also to be blamed, and the perpetrators feel the results of their own actions. This position shows how Gomes is worried about his country in a different degree. While talking about the crisis, this reading goes much further. In this tale, the very abstraction of the location and the whole mise- en-scène in this tale is reflected on the absurdity of the situations described on this court, and the swirling guilt of all of those present. Here, story after story is told, but we never get to see what is being told to us. As the images of their tales are not materialized on screen, we gain back the position of the King, or those on screen who are simply listening - and only listening - to the stories. Until, that is, we hear the account of a talking cow (Fig. 22). Speaking to the court’s audience she says how pitiful it is that they can’t see what she is referring to. It is at this precise moment that the audience is given that chance, with the film cutting to the real cow and the olive tree of which she speaks. This subtle choice of bringing reality to the tale of the one being which in real life would not be there is fascinating and speaks of the unreliability of people’s memories, that which “encompasses Fig. 22: The cow during the trial. neither the entire spatial appearance nor the

41 entire temporal course of an event” (Kracauer 425). All the spectator has is his own ability to trust what is being said.

Volume Three, The Enchanted One, shifts its focus and decides to tell the story of its own storyteller - Scheherazade. With this change of perspective, it places the narrator as character, and with that, her ‘voice’ is lost from the plane of the film. The narration vanishes, and in its place we are presented with a series of intertitles that are used to tell the stories (Fig. 23). This choice, one that approximates the film to classic silent films, further intertextualizes the whole by giving it a sense of literature. As the film is loosely based on the actual Arabian Nights, it seems fitting that from now on we are reading the tales, as opposed to hearing them. This approximation of the film to the book, or the method of understanding the film Fig. 23: One of the literary intertitles. through a process often related to literature, is an unusual but highly effective one. Since the beginning, Scheherazade is telling her stories to survive. If one takes that literally, it is possible to understand that any storyteller needs to do so in order to “survive”, including filmmakers. With that, Gomes is making his movies and telling stories for his own survival. So by telling the story of the storyteller, it is as if he is pointing the camera at himself. It is therefore not a coincidence that he returns on screen for a brief cameo at this point. Adorned with a turban and dressed with the costumes of the Baghdad characters, he is introduced briefly on screen as one of Scheherazade’s servants (Fig. 24). This position of a director as servant to his character is an interesting one, which fits perfectly with the idea of surviving through stories. One is working in favor of the other. Fig. 24: Miguel Gomes: servant to the Queen.

While “the presence and effects of the economic and social crisis show up as a sort of background for descriptions and narrative deployed on different topics” (Silva, Guerra and Santos 34), the choice of setting this whole tale in Baghdad distances the film from its main objective of being a commentary on Portugal’s crisis. Delving deep into the true fiction of it all, it becomes something different than the two previous volumes, and with that gives the viewer some time to breathe and take in the fable for what it truly is: just a fable. Gomes says that he has “no belief in an approach to cinema that tries to

42 convince viewers that what they’re seeing and hearing is reality. Because it isn’t. It never is” (Ferreira 46). By fictionalizing the true stories into the tales shown on the film, he is adding layers of abstraction, but the reality remains. Not trying to convince us that what we are seeing is the truth, the truth remains. Curiously, it is possible to say that at this point of the movie the opposite is done, with layers of reality being added on top of the fiction, as in the moment when archival footage of a concert by the Brazilian band Novos Baianos is overlaid on a party scene Scheherazade is having with her friends. The sequence starts with the song playing as soundtrack, non-diegetically, but by showing us footage of the band playing, it becomes part of the film’s action, inseparable from the narrative. Furthermore, the mixing here of two forms of filmmaking - documental in the part of the archival footage and fictional from the part of Scheherazade’s party - dialogues with Gomes’ constant interplay between the two registers. It remains however Gomes’ only use of archival material in his features, and thus, while brief, becomes a significant moment in his career.

Out of all the volumes, this one eventually becomes the one that mixes fiction and documentary the most. Not like the previous ones did by mixing them into one within each story, but by acting as a hybrid. Volume Three is clearly divided in two parts: the one focused on Scheherazade’s story in Baghdad and the one that follows - a documentary on a group of men from Musgueira who capture chaffinches in order to “train” them for singing competitions. The origin of this part of the film, so improbable in itself - grown men keeping birds, “teaching” them new songs by re-editing their choruses in computer softwares to them compete between each other - seems like the perfect territory for a director like Gomes, who is interested in the interplay of fiction and reality. This is a fantastical story that enchants and intrigues with its own reality. Even if not embellished, its curious nature is so unusual that it fits within the whole like a glove. This observational documentary takes over the film and, besides a brief cut to a different (also documental) story, lasts the remainder 85 minutes of this third volume. With that, it becomes the longest of all the tales within the whole three volumes. Still, with the help of intertitles to tell the the story - especially those pertinent to the lives of the characters presented within it - this tale is as much a part of Gomes’ Arabian Nights as it could be an isolated movie in itself. To tie everything up, Gomes eventually sprinkles some magic dust onto this tale as well, finishing this volume - and therefore the whole trilogy - with an encounter between Chico Chapas, the main bird keeper (seen before as Simão Without Bowels), and a Genie, who has become trapped in one of Chapas’ bird nets (Fig. 25). Chapas saves him, refuses any reward, and we are told through the intertitles that that was his

Fig. 25: The trapped Genie. last encounter with any genie. His life, like that of

43 all other Portuguese like him, will remain ordinary, devoid of magic, but filled with its own internal mysticism.

At the end credits, Gomes dedicates the film to his daughter, and wishes that she “derive from it what she well pleases.” Though directed at his daughter, this wish could easily be said to any of his viewers - concerning this film or any of his previous ones. Gomes is a believer of a close relationship between creators and their audiences, and allowing them to take what they wish from his movies is perhaps his greatest gift. By allowing us to understand his work as we please, he liberates us from any constraint, thus freeing his films from expected formulas. During the brief tale that interrupts the story of the bird trappers, a character quotes the Chinese poet Yu Xuanji, who said: “all that happens in life is a succession of pairing opposites: joy and sadness, pleasure and pain.” It is significant that Gomes decides to use this one particular quote, as it fits so closely to his own work - one that is built on pairing opposites: fiction and documentary - and within this specific film that is in constant shift between times, emotions, and realities. Though they might sound like hyperbolic statements, Ferreira’s claims that Arabian Nights is a “vision of cinematic possibility” and “so contrary to a contemporary cinema that does little to change the way stories are told” (42) are easily defensible.

44 Conclusion

This extended analysis of Miguel Gomes’ movies has focused mainly on his methods of intertwining different registers into a single product, creating his own hybrids of fiction and documentary filmmaking. As this aspect of his work is recognizable to some extent in all of his features, and some of his shorts, it can be said that the case of Miguel Gomes is similar to certain auteurs - but it remains in its own terms something unique. To start with, there is an inherent blur between what one calls the work of a foreign auteur and the recurring themes and techniques of a national cinema. Gomes is certainly not the only Portuguese director to mix registers - a technique that seems to be more and more present in the international arthouse and festival circuit. At the same time, as I hope to have demonstrated, his style of doing so is unique and at times revolutionary. Secondly, while his movies share aspects that could be marked as his own contributions to what we understand as auteur choices, each and every one of his movies is extremely different from the rest, making it a unique and thought-provoking body of work that challenges the understanding of the auteur today. Gomes could be described as an auteur who works within the realm of hybrids, as others have worked within specific genres. Pauline Kael is right to say that “repetition without development is decline” (13), but that is not the case with Gomes. While his movies share between themselves important aspects - as the aforementioned hybridization of registers - they vary greatly in approach, taking different forms for different purposes. Repeating, but constantly mutating.

The Face You Deserve, while not formally mixing documentary into its fairytale fiction, uses different methods of rearranging the registers of reality, as in an early scene where one character sings as if being part of a musical while the other behaves normally, forcing the viewer to consider how could these two realities - and genres - coexist. Our Beloved Month of August is a true hybrid, mixing fiction into documentary and documentary into fiction, creating a movie that is both and none at the same time. Its clearly divided structure, one that appears to separate the documentary from the fiction is not sufficient to truly isolate its parts, joined by a shared DNA. It’s a film that knows its own strengths and is not afraid to be misleading, becoming in its own way undeniable proof that both registers can work together with no true distinction. Tabu gains a documentary feel in the way Gomes tells his story, most prominently during its second part. Entirely narrated, shot in black and white, and using an academy ratio, it looks and feels like a documentary - going as far as including footage that is clearly not manipulated, allowing for controlled accidents to take over. Its clear dialogue with the question of realism in film also places it at a different level within Gomes’ filmography. And finally, Arabian Nights takes this trope and injects it directly into the film’s own pre-production, which reflects on its actual production and eventual post-production. The reality of what is being dealt with, along with the use of real people acting out their tales, is embellished with a large amount of fantasy, but it remains a response to the economic crisis in Portugal as strong as a more conventional approach to it would achieve. Militant or not, it is a reflection of its time.

45 Applying such different approaches, Gomes managed to create with four films enough material to re-evaluate the impact of hybrid filmmaking in the contemporary film scene. While that is a technique that has been employed by different directors throughout film’s history, I believe that his use of it asks one to consider further aspects which are inherent to the mixing of registers - such as how realism plays a crucial part for its overall success. While his oeuvre is a playful one, which is not trying to convince its viewer of the “reality” they are seeing on screen, it is unquestionable that - as discussed - he brings to the forefront specific ideas concerning realism that have been discussed by many theorists and academics, simultaneously allowing his voice and ideas to be part of the discussion. Overall, the reality of his movies lie more on his methods of filmmaking than the film’s actual content - and thus are embedded in their core, inseparable from the results projected on screen. That is strongly felt in a work such as Arabian Nights, given the intricate and fresh way in which it was conceived. Hand in hand with this aspect of it is the director’s extended and recurring use of non-professional actors. Whether portraying scripted characters - evolving their acting skills as the movie progresses - or playing themselves, these people are responsible for a layer of the reality present, and are crucial for one’s understanding of how Gomes is interested in the relationship between Portugal’s reality and the worlds he creates. One works in favor of the other, as much as his audience works in favor of his movies.

Miguel Gomes needs his audience. His movies need an audience. While that can be said of most artworks, his films possess a quality that require people to “finish” them with and within their conscious mind. He is a director who strongly believes in the connection between films and their spectators, allowing his work to be understood on different levels - liberating his audience from the expected. The “game” proposed by him is one where the spectator’s activity in the dark is of an intellectual nature - where they gain a more active role and thus become a “part” of the reality shown on screen. As Dennis Lim puts it, Gomes “often enlists his characters and the audience in a kind of mutual quest, a search for the story that is being told” (Los Angeles Times). This is given mostly with his method of clearly dividing his films into chapters and parts, and structurally showing the eventual seams between his hybridization of fiction and documentary. A conventional use of realism often does the work for the audience, as it attempts to show the world as closely as we see it, erasing the film’s own construction. Such films require of their audience only their standard relation to daily reality. In comparison, Gomes’ divided hybrids - that which constructs his unique form of realism - require a completion. He shows us the seams so that we can erase them in our minds, putting pieces together, integrating the films, and understanding their reality. His fractal method of storytelling thus serve a dual purpose - one within his films, and another outside their own content, affecting his audience on a personal level. I hope that this analysis of his body of work not only answers some of the questions proposed by his movies, but that it raises other interesting concerns - so that more can be discussed and extracted from these titles. With that, the “game” will continue beyond the dark screening rooms and into the light.

46 Bibliography

Andrew, Dudley. “The Unauthorized Auteur Today.” Film Theory Goes to the Movies. Eds. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, Ava Preacher Collins. Los Angeles: AFI Film Readers, 1993. 77-85. Arnheim, Rudolf. “Film and Reality.” Film as Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. 8-34. Balázs, Béla. “Visible Man.” Béla Balázs: Early Film Theory - Visible Man and The Spirit of Film. Ed. Erica Carter. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. 9-15. Baptista, Tiago. “Nationally Correct: The Invention of Portuguese Cinema.” Portuguese Cultural Studies 3 (2010): 3-18. Baumbach, Nico. “Jacques Rancière and the Fictional Capacity of Documentary.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 8.1 (2010): 57-72. Bazin, André. “Death Every Afternoon.” Rites of Realism: Essays on Corporeal Cinema. Ed. Ivone Margulies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. 27-31. Bazin, André. “Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What is Cinema? Montreal: Caboose, 2009. 3-12. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935-1938. Eds. Micheal W. Jennings, Howard Eiland. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2002. 101-133. Curtas Pt. 2018. Curtas Metragens, CRL. 27 March 2018. . Chion, Michel. “The Acousmêtre.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan et al. Hamilton: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 156-165. Deren, Maya. “Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality.” The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism. Ed. P. Adams Sitney. New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1978. 60-73. Epstein, Jean. “On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie.” Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations. Eds. Sarah Keller, Jason N. Paul. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. 292-296. Fernández, Horacio Muñoz, Iván Villarmea Álvarez. “Aesthetics Tendencies in Contemporary Portuguese Cinema.” Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema 3.6 (2015): 39-45. Ferreira, Francisco. “True Fiction.” Film Comment 51.6 (2015): 42-50. Festival Scope Pro. 2018. Festival Scope. 4 April 2018. . Kael, Pauline. “Circles and Squares.” Film Quarterly 16.3 (1963): 12-26. Kourelou, Olga, Marina Liz and Belén Vidal. “Crisis and Creativity: The New Cinema of Portugal, Greece and Spain.” New Cinema: Journal of Contemporary Film 12.1 (2014): 133-151. Kracauer, Siegfried. “Basic Concepts.” Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. 27-40. Kracauer, Siegfried. “Photography.” Critical Inquiry 19.3 (1993): 421-436. Lim, Dennis. “A Second Look: Fusing Reality and Fiction in ‘Our Beloved Month of August’.” Los Angeles Times. 2013. 24 June 2018. . Pereira, Ana Cristina. “Otherness and Identity in Tabu from Miguel Gomes.” Comunicação e Sociedade 29 (2016): 331-350. Petrie, Graham. “Alternatives to Auteurs.” Film Quarterly 26.3 (1973): 27-35. Rancière, Jacques. “Documentary Fiction: Marker and the Fiction of Memory.” Film Fables. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006. 157-170. Rhodes, Gary D. Springer, John Parris. “Introduction.” Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking. Eds. Gary D. Rhodes and John Parris Springer. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2006. 2-9. Ribas, Daniel. “Algumas Tendências do Cinema Português Contemporâneo.” Cinema em Português 8 (2016): 87-102. Sarris, Andrew. “Auteurism is Alive and Well.” Film Quarterly 28.1 (1974): 60-63. Silva, Augusto Santos, Paula Guerra and Helena Santos. “When Art Meets Crisis: The Portuguese Story and Beyond.” Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas 86 (2018): 27-43. Staples, Donald. “The Auteur Theory Reexamined.” Cinema Journal 6 (1966): 1-7

47 Filmography

Arabian Nights: Vol. 1 - The Restless One. Dir. Miguel Gomes. Kino Lorber, 2015. Arabian Nights: Vol. 2 - The Desolate One. Dir. Miguel Gomes. Kino Lorber, 2015. Arabian Nights: Vol. 3 - The Enchanted One. Dir. Miguel Gomes. Kino Lorber, 2015. Christmas Inventory. Dir. Miguel Gomes. O Som e a Fúria, 2000. Kalkitos. Dir. Miguel Gomes. O Som e a Fúria, 2002. Meanwhile. Dir. Miguel Gomes. O Som e a Fúria, 1999. Our Beloved Month of August. Dir. Miguel Gomes. Cinema Guild, 2008. Tabu. Dir. Miguel Gomes. Kino Lorber, 2012. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. Dir. F.W. Murnau. Kino Lorber, 1931. The Face You Deserve. Dir. Miguel Gomes. O Som e a Fúria, 2004.

48 List of Illustrations

Fig. 1: A group of boys stand like statues. (from Meanwhile). Page 7. Fig. 2: The game starts once the frame is set. (from Meanwhile). Page 8. Fig. 3: A close-up of wrapping paper gives the film texture. (from Christmas Inventory). Page 8. Fig. 4: Part of the vast nativity scene that is detailed throughout the film. (from Christmas Inventory). Page 9. Fig. 5: Francisco, as a cowboy. (from The Face You Deserve). Page 10. Fig. 6: “Nicolau is a good boy and is always day dreaming.” (from The Face You Deserve). Page 12. Fig. 7: Miguel Gomes and his “producer” in scene. (from Our Beloved Month of August). Page 15. Fig. 8: The film equipment gains a different purpose. (from Our Beloved Month of August). Page 19. Fig. 9: Shadows remind the viewers of Plato’s allegory of the cave. (from Our Beloved Month of August). Page 20. Fig. 10: The matte box, about to be put back on the camera. (from Our Beloved Month of August). Page 21. Fig. 11: The trees are identified by their scientific names. (from Our Beloved Month of August). Page 23. Fig. 12: The lonely intrepid explorer. (from Tabu). Page 25. Fig. 13: Pilar: spectator of the prologue, protagonist of part one. (from Tabu). Page 26. Fig. 14: Aurora during her long dream monologue. (from Tabu). Page 28. Fig. 15: A tribe waits for their cue to act their dance. (from Tabu). Page 30. Fig. 16: The camera is acknowledged. (from Tabu). Page 31. Fig. 17: Ventura surrounded by kids wearing contemporary clothes. (from Tabu). Page 31. Fig. 18: Miguel Gomes - the restless, desolate, and enchanted director. (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 1 - The Restless One). Page 34. Fig. 19: The countdown. What could it lead to? (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 1 - The Restless One). Page 38. Fig. 20: The swim of the magnificents. (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 1 - The Restless One). Page 39. Fig. 21: The judge at her exterior court. (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 2 - The Desolate One). Page 41. Fig. 22: The cow during the trial. (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 2 - The Desolate One). Page 41. Fig. 23: One of the literary intertitles. (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 3 - The Enchanted One). Page 42. Fig. 24: Miguel Gomes: servant to the Queen. (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 3 - The Enchanted One). Page 42. Fig. 25: The trapped Genie. (from Arabian Nights: Vol. 3 - The Enchanted One). Page 43.

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