Interview
Luísa Sequeira / TEP
November
2022
Thu
3
Taking into account the research project you developed on the Novas Cartas Portuguesas [New Portuguese Letters] that resulted in your film O que pode as Palavras, with Luísa Marinho, how did this collaboration with Teatro Experimental do Porto (TEP) emerges?
This collaboration with TEP appears in a very organic way. Recently, I have collaborated with TEP: I participated in Antigona and ESTRO/WATTS. And, in ESTRO/WATTS, I worked in both expanded cinema and real-time image manipulation. Then, the director of TEP, Gonçalo Amorim, knowing that I had been working for a long time with Novas Cartas Portuguesas, invited me to create a piece related to the project that I was developing.
Ana Luísa Amaral referring to the Novas Cartas Portuguesas says that it’s a “dismantling [of] the boundaries between narrative, poetic and epistolary genres, pushing the limits to fusion points”. In a risky parallel with your piece that combines different genres and references how do they actually merge? What borders have been diluted?
I think borders are meant to be crossed. And, in a way, Rosas de Maio is a piece that, in addition to being related to the Novas Cartas Portuguesas, is linked to my academic research on the way we relate to the moving image. A piece that is closely linked to cinematographic editing and the work I develop with visual, sound and animation files. And all this material is full with meaning. I also have a special interest in the archive that has been erased, forgotten, burned, left in the margin and what it can reveal to us. Rosas de Maio is another fragment of this cine-constellation. An expanded cinema and hybrid piece that works as a place of memories and possibilities in order to articulate times and fragments, deconstructing the continuum of history and oscillating between documentary and performance.
Fifty years after the publication of the work, in a society still markedly patriarchal, what force, what readings and echoes can these texts have? And other texts by other women that History has sought to silence?
Novas Cartas Portuguesas is a book with an enormous literary wealth, which can be read in multiple ways. The work is very current. Fifty years after the book was published, we still live in a patriarchal society. There is a setback on many issues: abortion, women's rights, freedom of expression, the pandemic and economic crisis increase gender disparities, leading to an increasing feminization of poverty. History is not crystallized, it is necessary to look back and rescue stories of countless women, who were silenced and who are not inscribed in the traditional narrative.
In addition to the words of Maria Velho da Costa, Maria Isabel Barreno and Maria Teresa Horta ( the “Three Marias”), what other sayings, and Marias, Marianas, Anas, Luísas, can we find in your piece?
In addition to the words of the three writers, we can find other voices that were of enormous importance to the cause of the “Three Marias”. Among them, we can listen to the dearest Ana Luísa Amaral, Marinela Freitas, Gilda Grillo, Natália Correia, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, Simone de Beauvoir, Christiane Rochefort, Marguerite Duras, Ruth Escobar, Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, Rosa Luxemburgo or Angela Davis. On one hand, we can hear the collective that was so important to the cause of the “Three Marias”. On the other hand, through the voices of the interpreters, Carolina Rocha and Mia Tomé), we also remember the voices of anonymous women who were forgotten. In another layer, we can even hear the Earth’s heart beating.
This collaboration with TEP appears in a very organic way. Recently, I have collaborated with TEP: I participated in Antigona and ESTRO/WATTS. And, in ESTRO/WATTS, I worked in both expanded cinema and real-time image manipulation. Then, the director of TEP, Gonçalo Amorim, knowing that I had been working for a long time with Novas Cartas Portuguesas, invited me to create a piece related to the project that I was developing.
Ana Luísa Amaral referring to the Novas Cartas Portuguesas says that it’s a “dismantling [of] the boundaries between narrative, poetic and epistolary genres, pushing the limits to fusion points”. In a risky parallel with your piece that combines different genres and references how do they actually merge? What borders have been diluted?
I think borders are meant to be crossed. And, in a way, Rosas de Maio is a piece that, in addition to being related to the Novas Cartas Portuguesas, is linked to my academic research on the way we relate to the moving image. A piece that is closely linked to cinematographic editing and the work I develop with visual, sound and animation files. And all this material is full with meaning. I also have a special interest in the archive that has been erased, forgotten, burned, left in the margin and what it can reveal to us. Rosas de Maio is another fragment of this cine-constellation. An expanded cinema and hybrid piece that works as a place of memories and possibilities in order to articulate times and fragments, deconstructing the continuum of history and oscillating between documentary and performance.
Fifty years after the publication of the work, in a society still markedly patriarchal, what force, what readings and echoes can these texts have? And other texts by other women that History has sought to silence?
Novas Cartas Portuguesas is a book with an enormous literary wealth, which can be read in multiple ways. The work is very current. Fifty years after the book was published, we still live in a patriarchal society. There is a setback on many issues: abortion, women's rights, freedom of expression, the pandemic and economic crisis increase gender disparities, leading to an increasing feminization of poverty. History is not crystallized, it is necessary to look back and rescue stories of countless women, who were silenced and who are not inscribed in the traditional narrative.
In addition to the words of Maria Velho da Costa, Maria Isabel Barreno and Maria Teresa Horta ( the “Three Marias”), what other sayings, and Marias, Marianas, Anas, Luísas, can we find in your piece?
In addition to the words of the three writers, we can find other voices that were of enormous importance to the cause of the “Three Marias”. Among them, we can listen to the dearest Ana Luísa Amaral, Marinela Freitas, Gilda Grillo, Natália Correia, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, Simone de Beauvoir, Christiane Rochefort, Marguerite Duras, Ruth Escobar, Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, Rosa Luxemburgo or Angela Davis. On one hand, we can hear the collective that was so important to the cause of the “Three Marias”. On the other hand, through the voices of the interpreters, Carolina Rocha and Mia Tomé), we also remember the voices of anonymous women who were forgotten. In another layer, we can even hear the Earth’s heart beating.
© José Caldeira / TMP
