Once was fire António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro “I envy all of you, now about to discover these treasures. As it happened to me more than thirty years ago, I know you’ll ‘stop breathing, suddenly’ as the screen lights up with the children of Trás-os Montes, with Jaime’s nightmares, with the face of mother Ana. Those evenings, I’m sure a lot of dazzed, happy creatures will be wandering the streets of Gent.” - Pedro Costa “For me, this film reveals a new cinematographic language. As far as I know, a director has never committed, with such obstinacy, to the cinematographic representation of a region: that is to say, to the difficult communion between men, landscapes, and the seasons. Only a foolish poet could produce such a disquieting object.” - Jean Rouch on Trás-os-Montes
In the midst of the end of the world Serge Daney
Where are we in Ana? In Portugal, since the filmmakers are Portugese. But this small country is still too big. In the North of Portugal, in the region of Miranda do Douro, where Reis and Cordeiro have already shot a film a few years ago, another wonderful and unclassifiable film called Trasos-Montes. Here and nowhere else. Here and anywhere else. Because the strength of Ana, which discourages in advance all lazy classifications, is just that. It’s been a while since a film has reminded us so clearly that cinema is at the same time an art of the singular and the universal, that images float so much better if they dropped their anchor somewhere. Ana-fiction? Ana-documentary? This distinction is really too crude. Documented fiction? Not even.
Originally published as ‘au milieu du bout du monde’ in Libération, June 1983.
Nothing is lost. Beyond the beaten track of the media and the summoning appeal of presold films, still occur a few aerolites. One every year, that is not so bad. The year 1982 was that of Paradjanov’s Sayat Nova, 1983 could well turn out to be, by way of dazzling surprise, the year of Ana. Completely unclassifiable, this second feature film of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro; how wonderful this journey into the world calmly pierced from our perceptions, between the accuracy of dreaming and the inaccuracy of waking, all through the vertigo of the present. Perhaps there are not enough films left that make you want to whisper, in delight, “Where am I?”. Less of fear for being lost or astray, then to recover the emotion of the sleeper who, while waking up, does not know where he’s coming from, in which refuge he has just rested, and which world he’s waking up to. Out of gratitude for this disoriented moment and the pleasure to be able to say this archaic formulation of an archaic emotion: “where am I?”. For the verb “to be” that comes before this little overestimated name: “I”. For the awakening.
Fiction means putting oneself in the middle of the world to tell a story. Documentary means going to the end of the world not to have to tell. But there is fiction in documentation as there are insects in fossile rocks, and there is documentation in fiction for the good reason that the camera (it cannot help itself) records what you put in front of it, everything that you put in front of it. Ana-end of the world? Ana-midst of the world? There’s a strange scene in this film. In the family home where Ana lives (and where
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