11 - Interview with João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata

Summary

I had the honor and pleasure of conducting this interview with the Portuguese filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues (JPR) and João Rui Guerra da Mata (JRGdM) in Lisbon in June 2019. The text below evolved from a series of productive encounters that I had with João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata in Lisbon and Los Angeles over the preceding two years. I believe that these encounters have been transformative and galvanizing. Rather than offering clear-cut answers, they enabled me to explore several important questions with them, with regard to the aesthetic, ethical, or political significance and distinctiveness of their cinema.

Cinema could be considered a dying medium, or one that metamorphoses into other media. I wonder whether you conceive of filmmaking as a heroic act of resistance to the death of cinema, as, perhaps, a disavowal of the obsolescence of the film medium, or as a tragic act that makes us conscious of our inevitable confrontation with the death of cinema.

JPR—I do think that I make films in an “ancient way.” New cameras, for instance, make everything easier, so people think less about what they are doing. Making films on film is very expensive, as cinema is, indeed, a very expensive medium. This is why I think very carefully about the way that I am shooting. I believe that having filmed my three first feature films on film made me more precise. I always make films the way I know how to make them. For each film I direct, I always try to find the best way, or at least the only way I think that it is possible and plausible to tell the story, so each film for me embraces this uniqueness. Even when I am writing the script, I am also thinking about how I am going to shoot a particular scene. I am thinking in a visual manner, and I am also writing in a visual (and of course aural) way. For instance, I pay a lot of attention to sound descriptions. When I am thinking about the music included in my films, this is written on the script.