SYNOPSIS Paulo works as a night guard in a building site. He lost his daughter in dramatic circumstances and no regret would ever give him a sense of closure. He often sleeps in his lover’s house where he witnesses the repeated transgressions of an unstable neighbor. Everything threatens to crack.
DIRECTOR´S NOTE We will see knives, rifles, preys and hunters, monsters and nightmares, in a pendular alternation, from movement to stagnation. Places to which we return without mercy, spontaneous deposits of the affective memory of its occupants and symptoms of their disintegration. Mainly dawns and nights, urgent and amnesic like in a werewolf film, deferred. From blood to body - wrap and container. I retain in particular, from horror, fantastic, or western films, their capacity to suspend the spectator’s disbelief, inaugurating a touching availability to accept the natural properties of the cinema to propose it’s realities; to grasp the world from a territory that is not ours.
CREDITS written, edited and directed by
Sandro Aguilar
cinematography
Rui Xavier
sound
Miguel Moraes Cabral
mix
Tiago Matos
color grading
Paulo Américo
art director
Nádia Henriques
producers
Luís Urbano, Sandro Aguilar
production company
O Som e a Fúria
DCP | 2.39:1 | 5.1 | Color | 86’
DIRECTOR`S BIOGRAPHY SANDRO AGUILAR IMDb.com
FILMOGRAPHY MARIPHASA [feature, 2017] UNDISCLOSED RECIPENTS [short, 2015] BUNKER [short, 2015]
The director Sandro Aquilar investigates the narrative boundaries of cinema, especially those of the short film genre. He conveys the so-called “shorts generation” of a group of Portuguese filmmakers, which has granted the short film a new sense of authority. Sandro Aguilar likewise influences his homeland’s film scene as a producer, editor, and video artist. The production firm he founded in 1998, “O Som e a Fúria”, offers with Miguel Gomes and Manoel de Oliveira a forum for many of today’s influential filmmakers in Portugal.
FALSE TWINS [short, 2014] JEWELS [short, 2013] DIVE: APPROACH AND EXIT [short, 2013] SINAIS DE SERENIDADE POR COISAS SEM SENTIDO | SIGNS OF STILLNESS OUT OF MEANINGLESS THINGS [short, 2012] MERCÚRIO | MERCURY [short, 2010] VOODOO [short, 2010] A ZONA | UPRISE [feature, 2008] ARQUIVO | ARCHIVE [short, 2007] A SERPENTE | THE SERPENT [short, 2005]
Sandro Aguilar was born in 1974 in Angola and grew up in Portugal. In Lisbon he studied in the Film Academy’s Montage department.
His work appears regularly at the most important international festivals. Recent retrospectives were celebrated in festivals held in Rotterdam, Bafici, and Brooklyn. Sandro Aguilar was nominated twice for the “UIP Prize” for best short film at the European Film Prize celebrations. His work received awards at the Biennale in Venice, Film Festival in Locarno, Bahia, Gijon, Vila do Conde, Indie Lisboa, and several other festivals.
Text: Maike Wetzel
REMAINS [short, 2002]
CAST Paulo
António Júlio Duarte
Filipe
Albano Jerónimo
Luísa
Isabel Abreu
Nuno
João Pedro Bénard
Bia
Cláudia Éfe
Teacher
Luísa Cruz
Security Guard
Gonçalo Waddington
ACTORS` BIOGRAPHIES ISABEL ABREU (Luísa) IMDb.com Born 1973. Studied acting at the portuguese Theatre School. Works in theatre (performing authors as Tchekhov or Strindberg in all major Portuguese stages), cinema (with directors such as Tiago Guedes, Jonas Rothlaender) and TV. Several times awarded for her performance. It’s her 7th film with Aguilar.
ANTÓNIO JÚLIO DUARTE (Paulo) IMDb.com António Júlio Duarte, born in 1965, is a photographer born and based in Lisbon, Portugal. He studied photography at Ar.Co, Lisbon, between 1985 and 1989, and at the Royal College of Art, London UK, as a Gulbenkian scholar in 1991. He also acted in short film by Sandro Aguilar BUNKER (2015). ALBANO JERÓNIMO (Filipe - the neighbour) IMDb.com Born in 1979, Albano Jerónimo is an award-winning Portuguese actor. Studied acting at the Portuguese Theatre School. Works in theatre, cinema (with directors such as Luís Galvão Telles, Edgar Pêra, Raúl Ruiz, Stan Douglas) and TV, where he participated in dozens of series (such as History Channel’s Vickings) and soap operas.
PLAYING WITH GHOSTS
About Sandro Aguilar’s MARIPHASA by Daniel Ribas
Displacement The film begins with an end: a funeral and a crashed car. Gradually we see signs of extreme violence
and
es.
atmosphere
An
a
sense of
of
absence.
apathetic
Rumours
despair
are
gradually
heard, forms.
in
We
whispered enter
a
voic-
kind
of
Along two decades, Sandro Aguilar has been one of the most singular voices in Portuguese
‘zone’, a place out of the world, a non-place, a limbo close to post-apocalyptic.
Cinema. Since the beginning, with his short films, the director created a special universe, both in
But we do persist with Paulo, the main character – if we may call him so – and the only one
terms of a cinematic world and haunted characters. Since he first emerged in the short film uni-
to be named. For Aguilar, this atmosphere is built to give an idea of “displacement”, that is,
verse, in the end of the nineties, Aguilar suggested a filmic space of fragmentation and absence,
“of being out of place; each character appears to fill the place of another, and each one has
playing with narrative and reality, image and sound. His films are always experiments in human
someone missing. I wanted this idea of omission, of someone who has disappeared and who
behaviour, attempting to scan those ghosts behind what we are and what drives our desires.
is no longer there, and another person is mistakenly occupying this place, but it is what makes
MARIPHASA is his second feature film, after fourteen shorts and his feature debut UP-
everything go forward”. MARIPHASA is, definitely, a film of characters and a film of bodies and
RISE, from 2008. For MARIPHASA, Aguilar wanted to go back to his early career and espe-
faces. They struggle with something that we never know, even if we see glimpses of conflicts.
cially to IN BETWEEN (2001). In that short film, the director presented a male character who
Here, in these ruins of civilization, there are men wandering - a woman and a child, inside
wanders between his home and his work. He seems as if has lost something – in fact, we
an apartment, will also appear - through remnants of human existence, like zombies roam-
do know that someone died, maybe his wife. As Aguilar states, “I tried to explore a vaguely
ing with no apparent reason. From time to time, there is a kind of return to a vague normality
narrative thinking with a particular oscillating aspect: a kind of linear path of a character that
– Paulo talks to a preschool teacher who reveals the death of his daughter. As usual in Agu-
goes from one space to another and then returns and what is transformed on that return.”
ilar’s films, there are only small narrative clues that lead us to what is essential: the experi-
In Between is particularly linear in the work of Aguilar: most of his oeuvre deals with narra-
ence of men abandoned in these ruins. Even the child, in its candour, seems only a ghost,
tive fragmentation, or what he once called parenthetical narrative, which means both an epi-
a spectre of something that has already disappeared. For Aguilar, MARIPHASA is a film of
sodic story and a type of editing that doesn’t allow for a cause and effect construction. That’s
many layers, but two ideas are stronger: the fragmentation of a man through different charac-
what arises in Mariphasa, especially in the development of its characters. For Aguilar, “one
ters; and the contrast between the interior and exterior spaces. For him, it is the way to set out
of the first ideas was to make a strange remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1931, Rouben
how human nature can be monstrous: this duplicity isn’t just deep down in the narrative, but
Mamoulian]: the idea of having in one character a dividing line between a more domesticated
it is something that exists in each of us, this tension between the domesticating energy and
or civilized personality and a wilder force, and these could cohabit inside the same character.”
a wild instinct. The characters – and ultimately the film – are always displaced, out of order.
Nightmares
character inhabits it, it seems to be as if it was left, a kind of portal to the past of that character.”
The friction between reality and fiction is even more important in the work of the director. The
In fact, the three distinctive spaces are rather specific in the portraying of Paulo, the main
non-linearity, the arbitrary behaviour of the characters, even the editing, concur for a constant
character. In the factory, we see, clearly, the ruins of life, of a future that contains the terri-
intentional misunderstanding. One of the most significant scenes in MARIPHASA is when a child
ble memory of the past. That’s why it’s there we see the older character of the film. In con-
calls for his mother because of a nightmare. She, eventually, picks the child in her arms, lis-
trast, in Paulo’s apartment, everything seems ordinary. However, the place is completely
tening to him: he remembers vividly that nightmare, and the mother calms him down, saying
turned inside out (destroyed things; papers all over the floor; a door locker being fixed). It’s,
that it was just a dream, it was not real. However, nothing in the film clarifies what can be a
in a way, the representation of the inner turmoil of the character. Finally, the other apartment:
dream – or, most significantly, what can be a nightmare – or what it is real. For Aguilar, the
a carefully constructed old space, filled with old photographs and where the foolish neigh-
nightmare is crucial for the understanding of the film: “In a nightmare, sometimes a small ges-
bour inhabits. It’s there, in a place full of history, that the music plays on an old turntable…
ture would be enough to get out of the condition you are in. For some reason, the characters can’t make this gesture; it is part of the mental nature of the nightmare to keep us in that situ-
We’ve got tonight
ation. That’s why the film creates, between the two apartments, a logic of a labyrinthine space
As Aguilar explains, MARIPHASA doesn’t have a chronological time. It seems that there is no past
that has to do with this nature of a nightmare. And so, if the film is a nightmare, it is one of
or future, but an eternal present. This creates a constant narrative tension that allows everything
those nightmares that have characteristics of our reality, but that does not fully resemble it.
to happen. The incidental music helps this anxiety mood, from which we can’t escape. But a hint
This balance is also what pleases me most in the film: it is having the nightmare aspect, but
of an ultraromantic love is seen, first as a small possibility and, at the end, a loud impossibility:
not having anything that signals what is real and what is not real. That is, even when the kid
MARIPHASA ends with Bob Seger’s We’ve Got Tonight, reminding us that love can be
wakes up from the nightmare and describes it, that nightmare is maybe the most real thing in
the last salvation. For Aguilar, “the lyrics very explicitly alludes to this: ‘We have got tonight / Who
the whole film. What seems most realistic in the whole film is a kid waking up from a nightmare.”
needs tomorrow’; it’s as if the narrative is a free transit for flirting: in that night, anything can happen; and then tomorrow, we’ll see. But, coincidentally, the characters do not have much
Faces Places
more than one night and so it seems that they only have effectively tonight to make it happen.
The cinematographic construction of MARIPHASA– the framing of the shots, their layers of light,
So, after tonight, they look like they’re going to dissolve, they’re going to fade away, and they’re
and the insistence on filming mirrors or just silhouettes – demonstrates the elusive, impression-
going to disappear as characters and as a film.”
istic qualities of Aguilar’s aesthetic, accentuating a living dead atmosphere that the characters
But for the film, and for these characters, there is no salvation. Not surprisingly, the title of the
incorporate. For the elaboration of these aesthetics, there is a meticulous work of mise-en-scène,
film refers directly to an imaginary plant - the mariphasa - which has the power to prevent a
especially in the contrast between the different landscapes: the two very unusual apartments
man from becoming a werewolf (this plant is merely cinematic, appearing in the 1935 classic
and the old and abandoned factory. The three are places of ruins, collecting trace elements of
WEREWOLF OF LONDON, directed by Stuart Walker). In fact, Aguilar’s film seems always
what those places used to be. As Aguilar explains, “The spaces of the film are extensions of
on the verge of crossing the barrier between the human and the nonhuman, but only a vague
the characters, extensions of their personalities that are almost sub-themes of the film itself.”
idea of avoiding destruction can be glimpsed. However, we cannot escape a memory previ-
For him, these spaces had to be realistic: “an apartment devastated by a robbery; a factory
ous to the film and that has in the narrative a destructive apotheosis: this memory is some-
made of remnants of an activity that happened there and now no longer exists (there are still
thing that hangs over the characters, without them being able to escape from themselves.
traces, ruins, acid, corroded stone); the neighbour’s apartment is a cosy 70’s flat, and although the
It won’t be tonight.
PRODUCER`S BIOGRAPHY LUÍS URBANO IMDb.com
Luís Urbano was born in Portugal in 1968. He graduated in Economics at the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. In 1996, he founded the cultural production cooperative Curtas Metragens, CRL, the organisation behind the renowned Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival. He has been one of the Festival’s directors and spearheaded the Portuguese Short Film Agency from 2000 to 2005. In 2005, he joined Sandro Aguilar’s production company O Som e a Fúria as partner and general manager. Since then, he has produced 19 features and 40 shorts (aside from projects in development and production), including films from directors such as Manoel de Oliveira, Miguel Gomes, Sandro Aguilar, among others. In 2007, he participated in Producers on the Move, Cannes 2007 ― European Film Promotion.
PRODUCTION COMPANY O SOM E A FÚRIA osomeafuria.com O Som e a Fúria has been producing Art-house films since 1998, working with directors with very unique artistic universes. In the recent years, the company has been producing an average of five films per year (feature films, documentaries and shorts). Co-productions with France, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil or Argentina are essential for the internationalization of the company. Its feature films have been commercially released from Europe to America and Japan. O Som e a Fúria has been working with renowned directors such as Miguel Gomes, Manoel de Oliveira, Eugène Green, Lucrecia Martel, Sandro Aguilar, João Nicolau, Ivo M. Ferreira, F.J. Ossang, among others. Its work has been presented and awarded in film festivals all over the world. ARABIAN NIGHTS and OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST, by Miguel Gomes, had their premiere at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight; LETTERS FROM WAR by Ivo M. Ferreira and TABU by Miguel Gomes at Berlinale Official Competition; MARIPHASA by Sandro Aguilar, ELDORADO XXI and NO MAN’S LAND by Salomé Lamas at Berlinale Forum; ZAMA by Lucrecia Martel, GEBO AND THE SHADOW by Manoel de Oliveira in Venice. In 2003 O Som e a Fúria began distributing part of the work that it has been producing. The company is managed by Luís Urbano (producer) and Sandro Aguilar (director and editor).
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CinemaxX 6 (P&I) (EN)
Mon / 19. February 2018 / 20:00
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CONTACT
O Som e a Fúria Av. Almirante Reis, 113 – 5º, Esc. 505, 150-014 Lisboa office: geral@osomeafuria.com festivals: fm@osomeafuria.com