Cinema
Trás-os-Montes
Margarida Cordeiro · 1976
Synopsis
Almost empty villages, in a land of schist and cold, at the edge of the country. Children play and tell stories, old people remember, women come and go in the landscape. A legend surfaces, then a memory, then a gesture of work, without our ever knowing whether we are in the present or in a very ancient time. No one explains anything, and the two layers lie one on top of the other.
Context
The fruit of a whole year of research and filming, the film was made from village to village with a small crew, its two authors, Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis, choosing one by one the voices, faces and gestures they would keep. Produced by the Portuguese Film Centre, it was released in Lisbon on 11 June 1976. Jean Rouch wrote to the director of that centre that he saw in it the revelation of a new cinematic language, and Joris Ivens and Jean-Marie Straub both held the film in high esteem. Long difficult to see, it has been shown in a restored print in the United States, Spain and Brazil since the 2010s.
Who it is for
A feature film in Portuguese, nearly two hours; without plot or commentary, it superimposes the present and a legendary past.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the masterpiece of its authors and as one of the films that broadened the possibilities of ethnographic cinema.
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