On Some Fragments of Trás-os-Montes: a Film by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro

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Abstract

In the two films I know best by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, Jaime (1973) and Trás-os-Montes (1976), we can observe the constant experience of not being able to reconfigure. That man, and those villages, those mountains, those animals, that cold, those voices, all resist reconfiguration, but are perhaps compliant to figuration, in that they allow that resistance to be felt again and again. It is the latter that I will address here. I intend to show that this film is a guide to disappearance, and at the same time a sea chart of the reunion with desires, gestures, and sounds that belong to the depths of life, awaiting only a glance to be awakened. First clarification: which fragments are those? Those that show the intolerable pain that António Reis claims was not imprinted in the photographs he took in Trás-os-Montes. Second clarification: I have mortified the original montage. My operation is not artistic, it has to do with the selection of scenes, fragments that created their own conceptual logic. Third clarification: I am writing an essay that might be called a “close reading”, but in a rather wild fashion, without taking the procedure as an attitré hermeneutical technique.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationRethinking the City
Subtitle of host publicationReconfiguration and Fragmentation
EditorsMaria Filomena Molder, Nélio Conceição, Nuno Fonseca
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherRoutledge | Taylor & Francis Group
Pages234-248
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781003452928
ISBN (Print)9781032590974
Publication statusPublished - 12 Dec 2024

Keywords

  • The city
  • Cinema
  • Trás-os-Montes
  • António Reis
  • Margarida Cordeiro

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