“I made a musical that celebrates unrecognized music at its fair value.”
– The Swiss-Portuguese director, whose film pays homage to the women of the Ribolera region, speaks to us passionately about the close connection between life and cinema
Four years later Hey femme du mundo [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Basil Da Cunha
fiche film]And Basil da Cunha Back to Locarno Film Festival Where he presents, and is still in international competition, his latest feature film Manga Dietera [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Basil Da Cunha
fiche film]. The film, an atypical musical that pays homage to the voices of Cape Verde, plunges into the reality of the women living in the Ribolera region where the director has settled. We spoke with him after the movie premiere about how he works with his actors and the importance of feeding his stories into the everyday realities of his protagonists.
Cineuropa: How did you manage to gain the trust of the people of Reboleira, where many of your films are set?
Basil da Cunha: Trust is built on films, and we’ve been together for thirteen years. Life blends with cinema a lot, that is, the scenes begin before the shot and continue after the camera is turned off. Over the years, people inevitably felt that the area was part of the national narrative. As a principal, I wanted to leave an impact on their community. I live in this neighborhood, sharing people’s daily lives and writing my movie scenes for these people according to their personality and history. Of course I’m adding the novel as well but it’s not completely free writing, it’s based on reality. The director is by no means a god or a puppeteer. It is a work of bringing together stories and people. Thanks to this, the residents of the neighborhood feel free to be present within the film, to suggest things. I think they recognize themselves in the movie and participate in it because they are so generous. Although it is not a participatory writing process where everyone contributes their ideas, the photography is made for people I know well.
Where does the idea of making a musical come from? Can we say that music plays a therapeutic role for the hero in the movie?
What I did is a non-existent musical that I wanted to see, a musical that pays homage to the music I love that doesn’t get recognized at its fair value. In Cape Verde, there is a lot of traditional music, a lot of genres. There I did not meet a musician who was not exceptional. Many of these brilliant musicians came to Portugal, in neighborhoods like mine. I dreamed of making a musical in honor of this music which is a mixture of traditional music, jazz and rock. Music also allows me to tell what the pictures don’t show and to touch the depths of my characters’ soul. The fact that the movie is poignant also comes from the music which is no simple trick to add feeling.
Your film often shows faces in the foreground, where does this desire to examine corpses come from? What do the bodies tell about the characters’ lives?
There are several things, first, I would say, since my film is made from the inside, we necessarily show what we usually hide. Journalists, when they photograph neighborhoods like Reboleira, often do so with the same lenses they use for wildlife documentaries. This is being able to shoot from afar, without having to get too close. Unlike them, we, with the tools we use, 50mm, 35mm, are really in the middle of the people. This also stems from the desire to paint these faces, as they are faces and bodies that tell a lot about the history of the people of the area.
