April 17th | monday | 7:15 pm | São Brás Cineteatro Jaime Pinto
Original Title: Between Islands; Directed by: Amaya Sumpsi; Argument: Alberto Neves, Amaya Sumpsi; Photography: Amaya Sumpsi; Music: Ronda das Nove Group, Pedro Lucas, Carlos Martins Medeiros, Luís Senra, António Severino; Editing: Rita Figueiredo, Pedro Gancho, Amaya Sumpsi; Production: Renata Sancho; Interpreters: Carlos Martins Medeiros (voice), Amaya Sumpsi (voice); P.O.: Portugal; V.O.: English, Portuguese;
Synopsis:
Once upon a time there were nine distant islands, known as the Azores, which you could only reach after endless boat trips, and from which you could only leave when you lost your fear of facing the immensity of the sea. It is this place – sometimes real, sometimes imagined – that the filmmaker intends to reach when she embarks on her peculiar journey aboard the fast and modern ferries that today connect these islands in the Atlantic. On her journey, she finds old sea stories, lost diary pages and old photographs that hypnotize her: there are horizons full of ships, captains and foremen, there are pianos in the first class lounges, cattle that travel alongside third class and traveling salesmen, there are soldiers, lots of students, some love affairs and a lot of sickness, there are births on board and days of São Vapor, there are storms and a terrible fear of death. With each mile sailed, the slow wandering of ancient yachts and steamers casts a spell over the present image, and from the slow movement of the waves emerges this other sensorial world in which there are no low-cost planes or rush for anything. “Entre Ilhas” takes your breath away to imagine the Azores like this: central islands, periphery islands, isolated islands, cosmopolitan islands.ZERO IN BEHAVIOR
Director’s Note: The first idea for this film was born in 2016, on a trip between the islands of São Miguel and Faial aboard the passenger ship “Express Santorini”. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been in the habit of spending hours carefully observing what’s going on around me, imagining life beyond what I can see and hear, and projecting a possible off-field. This long sea crossing was in fact perfect for doing what I love most: walking around the deck or sitting in the lounges of the bar, studying the details of the spaces, contemplating the landscapes, observing the gestures of the bodies and listening to the conversations of the passengers, imagining the rest . Santorini is reminiscent of a decaying love boat that sails slowly, transporting us to an ancient rhythm where, under the effect of the swell of the sea, bodies relax and so do conversations. Tourists and locals make the boat their home and appropriate this space, which was once luxurious, to transform it into an improvised camp, with sleeping bags and lunchboxes, radios and guitars, cards and dominoes. The boat is indeed a place for human encounters, but not only that. His passage through the islands seems to establish a choreography that creates a dance-show where insularity is felt like nowhere else. When I finally arrived in Faial, I already knew that this would be my next film: the spell that Santorini had cast over me would only be undone when I managed to tell its story. My films are not born from places, people, or themes that can be chosen and planned a priori, but from the emotional and sensorial dazzle that certain encounters produce in me. It is from this initial and sudden fascination with people or objects and the world that surrounds them that I depart into a state of profound cinematographic restlessness, in which the camera is both a personal diary and an ethnographic field notebook. It is this double condition of the person-camera and a state of disquiet and shock that leads me to incessantly seek answers and explore new paths. From question to question I jump from modern Santorini to ancient steamers and yachts, and between conversations and old photographs I travel from a hyper-connected and frenetic reality to another ancient world, slow and peaceful. Like all ethnography, my cinematographic processes are also slow and time-consuming: it took five years of research, filming and post-production to arrive at this “Entre Ilhas”, a travel film between Madrid, Lisbon and the Azores, between the present and the past and between the real and the imagined. But every encounter needs its time, and what is a movie if not the sum of so many encounters? Amaya Sumpsi
Org.: Cinemalua – Cultural Association and Municipality of São Brás de Alportel | Supported by the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Algarve
Source: https://www.cm-sbras.pt/pt/agenda/13597/cinemalua—sessoes-de-inverno—entre-ilhas.aspx