Mists (docufiction)

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Maria Jose feeding her great-grandson David Maria Jose + David.jpg
Maria José feeding her great-grandson David
Ricardo Costa
Born(1940-01-25)January 25, 1940
Peniche, Portugal
Occupation Film director, film producer, film writer, writer on vision [ disambiguation needed ] and language

Mists (Brumas), 2003, is a Portuguese feature film by Ricardo Costa. It Is the first of a sequel docufiction trilogy entitled Faraways (Longes). The second one is Drifts (Derivas) and the third one Cliffs (Arribas) [1]

Portuguese people ethnic group

Portuguese people are a Romance ethnic group indigenous to Portugal that share a common Portuguese culture and speak Portuguese. Their predominant religion is Christianity, mainly Roman Catholicism, though vast segments of the population, especially the younger generations, have no religious affiliation. Historically, the Portuguese people's heritage largely includes the pre-Celts and Celts, who became culturally Romanized during the conquest of the region by the ancient Romans. A number of Portuguese also can trace descent from Germanic tribes who arrived after the Roman period as ruling elites, including the Suebi and Visigoths in northern Portugal and central Portugal. Finally, also limited converted Jewish and Berbers as a result of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the Algarve region of southern Portugal.

A feature film, feature-length film, or theatrical film is a film with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole film to fill a program. The term feature film originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that also included a short film and often a newsreel. The notion of how long a feature film should be has varied according to time and place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute, a feature film runs for more than 40 minutes, while the Screen Actors Guild asserts that a feature's running time is 75 minutes or longer.

Ricardo Costa (filmmaker) Portuguese filmmaker

Ricardo Costa is a Portuguese film director and producer.

Contents

The film premiered commercially in Portugal at the Quarteto cinema in Lisbon on 9 November 2006, on 16 November at the Palmeiras cinema in Oeiras, as well as at the cinema Quarto Crescente, in Peniche (Portugal), where it was shot.

Lisbon Capital city in Lisbon metropolitan area, Portugal

Lisbon is the capital and the largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 505,526 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits with a population of around 2.8 million people, being the 11th-most populous urban area in the European Union. About 3 million people live in the Lisbon metropolitan area, including the Portuguese Riviera. It is mainland Europe's westernmost capital city and the only one along the Atlantic coast. Lisbon lies in the western Iberian Peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean and the River Tagus. The westernmost portions of its metro area form the westernmost point of Continental Europe, which is known as Cabo da Roca, located in the Sintra Mountains.

Mists was screened in the US in New York at the Quad Cinema on March 23, 2011, with subsequent screenings in other US cities.

Quad Cinema movie theater in New York City

The Quad Cinema is New York City's first small four-screen multiplex theater. Located at 34 West 13th Street in Greenwich Village, it was opened by entrepreneur Maurice Kanbar, along with his younger brother Elliott S. Kanbar in October 1972. It has been described as "one of the oldest independent cinemas in the city" and "a vibrant center for art house films."

Synopsis

More than fifty years later, the protagonist eventually discovers Maria José, maid in his parents' house, who would tell him senseless stories when he was a child. She was about eighteen. The young woman became a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Now she has deep wrinkles and the sea in her soul. She has always lived in Peniche, a fishermen town, homeland of the 'hero'. Now she inhabits in the neighborhood Janelas do Mar (Sea Windows) which consists of tiny whitewashed houses erected on the edge of a cliff close to an old fortress that became a sinister prison for resistants under António de Oliveira Salazar´s dictatorship.

António de Oliveira Salazar Prime Minister of Portugal during the Estado Novo

António de Oliveira Salazar was a Portuguese statesman who served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He was responsible for the Estado Novo, the corporatist authoritarian government that ruled Portugal until 1974.

Now she tells the story of her life and, at the same time, repeats ancestral gestures of someone who lives to give life, to illuminate childhood dreams. The camera's eye travels these paths, backs and then advances, revealing situations that are much talked about those days, such the September 11. The boys she lives with tell the same story their way. A switch knife, a handsaw, a broomstick, two or three bamboo branches, some sardine fishing net buoys and a few magic tricks are all they need.

September 11 attacks Attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001

The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,977 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Additional people have died of 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacks.

Seduced by the hero, Maria José's grandson and great-grandson thus participate with some friends in an extraordinary adventure. Just kidding. The intense blue of the sea. The Atlantic, uncertain, roaring through the splendor of the mists. Time". (Cit.: synopsis by the producer).

The 'hero' together with Rudolfo Ricardo + Rudolfo.jpg
The 'hero' together with Rudolfo

Historical background

Mists is filmed in a neighborhood of Peniche commonly known as the "Bairro do Visconde" (Viscount quarter). Certain of its inhabitants prefer to call it the "Janelas do Mar" (Sea Windows). It is, in its origin, a slum, a core of clandestine buildings, inhabited by poor fishermen, who erected it on the cliff. Little by little, on their own initiative, working hard, the residents rebuilt and improved their neighborhood. High on the cliff, it is today a good example of popular urbanism, which honors the landscape. Halfway between these places, also facing the sea, lies the Peniche Fortress, [2] the prison he visited as a child, taken by a friend, the illegitimate son of a bad memory sergeant whose mission was to torture the prisoners. It is there, in this discreet white-and-blue corner, that, after more than fifty years, "the protagonist" tells of having discovered Maria José : right there, just some steps from her parents' house. . [3]

Peniche, Portugal Municipality in Centro, Portugal

Peniche is a seaside municipality and a city in Portugal. It is located in Oeste Subregion in formerly Estremadura Province. The population in 2011 was 27,753, in an area of 77.55 km2. The city itself has a population of about 15,600 inhabitants. The present mayor is Henrique Bertino, elected by the independent coalition GCEPP.

Peniche Fortress 16th Century fortress in Portugal

The Peniche Fortress is located in the municipality of Peniche in Leiria District, Portugal. Built on the site of the former Castle of Atouguia da Baleia, of which only a few vestiges remain, initial construction took place in 1557 and 1558 but there have been numerous subsequent modifications. Its defensive walls surround an area of two hectares, divided into upper and lower parts. The fortress has served a number of functions including that of a political prison during the authoritarian Estado Novo regime.

There was a small, bare cell in the fort called "the secret" for extreme punishment where the most rebellious prisoners were placed. Right next to the secret was a well that roared, blew, and spat from its gut the prisoners' caps and berets, who had fun throwing them into the well. The well consists of a natural vault, dug in the rock under the cliff. When a stronger wave enters this vault, the air comes out violently. As in a dream, Mists 'heroes' play in the midst of this wind that blows from the bowels of the earth.

At the avant-première of Mists at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, Ricardo Costa mentioned that his film had been made without the usual financial state-mediated support for independent filmmakers, just with the help of friends, after a forced break of several years in his professional activity. Changes associated in Portugal with the dramatic breakdown of independent film production from the mid-1980s, that would only be mitigated in the following decade, and the sinking of a fiction feature film (Land of Stones, an adaptation of the Port Wine trilogy by Alves Redol) supported by official funds and by the Media Programme of the European Union, which was eventually not produced mainly due to serious errors of its producer, will partly explain this stop. In short: Mists would be a film made under even more precarious, more radical conditions than those in which Ricardo Costa worked when he began his career (Avieiros and Changing Tides (Mau Tempo, Marés e Mudança).

Filmed in 2001, completed in 2003, aired commercially in Portugal in 2006, captive until December 2010 by a 'no consequences' distribution contract, Mists will be taken over by the producer in early 2011 for a new release. Having been produced with no financial support, it can be classified as Guerrilla filmmaking, as it is on the fringes of mainstream (MSM) production.

The 'hero' offering a switchknife to Rudolfo Canivete.jpg
The 'hero' offering a switchknife to Rudolfo

Credits

Cast

Festivals

See also

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Bread and Wine (docufiction)

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Drifts (docufiction)

Drifts (Derivas) is a Portuguese feature-length film by Ricardo Costa.

References

  1. ↑ "/cliffs". cliffs.name. Retrieved 2019-09-14.
  2. ↑ Notorious Portuguese political prison becomes museum of resistance – news by Sam Jones, The Guardian, 31 Mar 2019
  3. ↑ How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture – article by Christopher Reed at CounterPunch, May 21, 2004] (See : CounterPunch)
  4. ↑ Nuno Rebelo at DISCOGS
  5. ↑ "Peniche Fortress > Sea Tunnel | Flight of Dias Lourenço from prison". cm-peniche.pt. Retrieved 2019-09-14.
  6. ↑ Lisbon Debates the Fate of an Empty Building With a Dark Past – article at The New York Times by The Associated Press, March 24, 2002
  7. ↑ "2017 | International Heritage Film Festival 2018/19". heritales.org. Retrieved 2019-09-14.
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