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luís soares

Blog do escritor Luís Soares

The Gaze

The Gaze from Barry Jenkins on Vimeo.

In my years of doing interviews and roundtables and Q&A’s for the various films we’ve made, there is one question that recurs. No matter the length of the piece or the tone of the room, eventually, inevitably, I am asked about the white gaze. It wasn’t until a very particular interview regards The Underground Railroad that the blindspot inherent in that questioning became clear to me: never, in all my years of working or questioning, had I been set upon about the Black gaze; or the gaze distilled.

I don’t remember when we began making the piece you see here. Which is not and should not be considered an episode of The Underground Railroad. It exists apart from that, outside it. Early in production, there was a moment where I looked across the set and what I saw settled me: our background actors, in working with folks like Ms. Wendy and Mr. and Mrs. King – styled and dressed and made up by Caroline, by Lawrence and Donnie – I looked across the set and realized I was looking at my ancestors, a group of people whose images have been largely lost to the historical record. Without thinking, we paused production on the The Underground Railroad and instead harnessed our tools to capture portraits of... them.

What flows here is non-narrative. There is no story told. Throughout production, we halted our filming many times for moments like these. Moments where… standing in the spaces our ancestors stood, we had the feeling of seeing them, truly seeing them and thus, we sought to capture and share that seeing with you. The artist Kerry James Marshall has a series of paintings of ancestors for whom there is no visual record but for whom he has supplied a visual representation of their person. For me, most inspirationally, "Scipio Moorehead, Portrait of Himself, 1776."

Of the painting, from the Met Breuer exhibit KERRY JAMES MARSHALL: MASTRY – “In this painting Marshall created an imagined self-portrait of a real African American artist, Scipio Moorhead, who was active in the 1770s. Few if any images of Moorhead exist in the historical record. Everything we know of his legacy is based on Phillis Wheatley’s first book of poetry, published in 1773 while she was a slave [sic] in Boston. The book’s title page illustration is an engraving of the writer, reportedly modeled on a painting by Moorhead. The engraving remains the only visual proof, however tenuous, of Moorhead’s existence."

In the way that Mr. Marshall sought to honor Mr. Moorhead through this imagined physical representation of the artist, we have sought to give embodiment to the souls of our ancestors frozen in the tactful but inadequate descriptor “enslaved,” a phrase that speaks only to what was done to them, not to who they were nor what they did. My ancestors – midwives and blacksmiths, agrarians and healers; builders and spiritualists, yearn’ers and doers – seen here as embodied by this wonderful cast of principal and background actors, did so very much.

Housekeeping: From end to end what you are hearing here is Nick’s original score. And yet even at fifty minutes, this is barely twenty percent of the score for the show. The same with the images; maybe five of these shots are in the actual show? There are no spoilers here. Other images in this format appear there but not here. All told, we archived four hours of these portraits. They flow in story order, from Georgia to Indiana. NOTE: one of these things, you’ll notice, is not like the others. In the context of the show, its presence will make sense.

A FEW SHOUTOUTS – None of these shots are planned. Occasionally, when the spirit moved us, we stopped making the planned thing and focused on making THIS thing. So shoutout to my brother James for sure; we had a show to film and yet he never questioned, he brought his best to this. Always. Caroline Eseline. Our costume designer. The majority of the souls you see here are inhabited by background actors. Which meant at any moment, the camera could go from a close-up of number one on the call sheet to… a portrait of number 500. It did not matter. Every soul needed full embodiment. And every damn time I saw someone and was moved to portraiture, there was no doubt of their readiness. The same goes for Lawrence Davis and his wonderful group of hair stylists. And Doniella Davy and her makeup team. Mark Friedberg. Liz Tan, Spoon, Jesse and the directing team. Jarrett Morgan, aka Da’ Possum. Alex Bickel. Daniel Morfesis, who cut this and all the teasers that came before. OUR BACKGROUND ACTORS. My most humble thanks.

This is an act of seeing. Of seeing them. And maybe, in a soft-headed way, of opening a portal where THEY may see US, the benefactors of their efforts, of the lives they LIVED.

Much love to you. And so much love to THEM.

-B

Cinema em confinamento

Cumpriram-se ontem oitenta dias em confinamento. Nesses oitenta dias vi ou revi quarenta e oito filmes. De todos os formatos e géneros, para confortar, interrogar, perturbar ou disparatar. Ficam os cartazes, por ordem alfabética do título original, abaixo. A imagem é do Henrique.

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The Most Beautiful Boy In The World

In 1971at the world premiere of Death in Venice in London, Italian director Luchino Visconti proclaimed Björn Andrésen, the teen star of his latest film, "The most beautiful boy in the world.” This is the story of a boy who was thrust to international stardom for his iconic looks and lived a life of glamour. 50 years later, Björn looks back.

Vinte Vinte

2020 foi o que foi e talvez ainda não tenha passado tempo suficiente para percebermos o que isso é e, mais importante ainda, o que será. Com todas as dificuldades, barreiras, esforços, lutas e outra vez dificuldades, foi um ano em que vi, li, ouvi coisas excecionais.

Também foi um ano em reli e revi sagas para conforto próprio e, é claro, ouvi de novo discos que volto sempre a ouvir, mas isso não entra aqui. Tenho saudades de ir a concertos e não há nenhum nesta lista. Não é tudo deste ano, mas foi neste ano que cheguei ao que aqui está e foi neste ano que me ficaram na memória.

A lista não não é, obviamente, completa, mas estas foram algumas coisas de que gostei muito (está tudo por ordem alfabética):

Séries:

  • Devs – Alex Garland
  • I May Destroy You – Michaela Coel
  • Normal People – Sally Rooney / Allice Birch / Mark O’Rowe
  • We Are Who We Are – Luca Guadagnino / Paolo Giordano / Francesca Manieri / Sean Conway

Livros:

  • A Perfect Spy – John Le Carré
  • Agency – William Gibson
  • Balada para Sophie – Filipe Melo e Juan Cavia
  • Berlin – Jason Lutes
  • Cleanness – Garth Greenwell
  • Flights – Olga Tokarczuk
  • Hurricane Season – Fernanda Melchior
  • Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
  • Rusty Brown – Chris Ware
  • Spring / Summer – Ali Smith
  • The Lost Pianos of Siberia – Sophy Roberts

Filmes:

  • A Metamorfose dos Pássaros – Catarina Vasconcelos
  • His House – Remi Weekes
  • Mank – David Fincher
  • Martin Eden – Pietro Marcello
  • Never Rarely Sometimes Always – Eliza Hittman
  • Nomadland – Chloé Zhao
  • O Fim Do Mundo – Basil da Cunha
  • Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu – Céline Sciamma
  • Possessor – Brandon Cronenberg
  • Sound of Metal – Darius Marder
  • The Human Voice – Pedro Almodóvar

Discos:

  • Cenizas – Nico Jaar
  • Debussy-Rameau – Víkingur Ólafsson
  • Fetch the Bolt Cutters – Fiona Apple
  • S. Bach: St John Passion, BWV 245 – Bach Collegium Japan & Masaaki Suzuki
  • Mordechai – Khruangbin
  • Raiashopping – David Bruno
  • Róisín Machine – Róisín Murphy
  • Rough and Rowdy Ways – Bob Dylan
  • The Lost Berlin Tapes – Ella Fitzgerald
  • Untitled (Black Is)/Untitled (Rise) – Sault

Já agora, apenas dos livros mantenho um registo anual, hábitos. Li isto (ainda ando a ler mais três, mas ficam para o ano):

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A Metamorfose dos Pássaros

Recipient of the FIPRESCI Award (Encounters 2020) by the international film critics association.

The trailer for "A Metamorfose dos pássaros" (The Metamorphosis of Birds) by Catarina Vasconcelos, starring Manuel Rosa, João Móra, Ana Vasconcelos, Henrique Vasconcelos and Inês Melo Campos.

Beatriz and Henrique fall in love and get married. He goes to sea while she raises their children. Their oldest son Jacinto is the father of Catarina Vasconcelos, who together with him brings her family history to life in this intimate and very personal film.

Dune

Oscar nominee Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049”) directs Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ “Dune,” the big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal bestseller of the same name. A mythic and emotionally charged hero’s journey, “Dune” tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive.The film stars Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name,” “Little Women”), Rebecca Ferguson (“Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep,” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”), Oscar Isaac (the “Star Wars” franchise) Oscar nominee Josh Brolin (“Milk,” “Avengers: Infinity War”), Stellan Skarsgård (HBO’s “Chernobyl,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron”), Dave Bautista (the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, “Avengers: Endgame”), Stephen McKinley Henderson (“Fences,” “Lady Bird”), Zendaya (“Spider-Man: Homecoming,” HBO’s “Euphoria”), Chang Chen (“Mr. Long,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), David Dastmalchian (“Blade Runner 2049,” “The Dark Knight”), Sharon Duncan-Brewster (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” Netflix’s “Sex Education”), with Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling (“45 Years,” “Assassin’s Creed”), with Jason Momoa (“Aquaman,” HBO’s “Game of Thrones”), and Oscar winner Javier Bardem (“No Country for Old Men,” “Skyfall”). Villeneuve directed “Dune” from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth based on the novel of the same name written by Frank Herbert. Villeneuve also produced the film with Mary Parent, Cale Boyter and Joe Caracciolo, Jr. The executive producers are Tanya Lapointe, Joshua Grode, Herbert W. Gains, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt and Kim Herbert. Behind the scenes, Villeneuve reteamed with two-time Oscar-nominated production designer Patrice Vermette (“Arrival,” “Sicario,” “The Young Victoria”), two-time Oscar-nominated editor Joe Walker (“Blade Runner 2049,” “Arrival,” “12 Years a Slave”), two-time Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert (“First Man,” “Blade Runner 2049”), and Oscar-winning special effects supervisor Gerd Nefzer (“Blade Runner 2049”). He also collaborated for the first time with Oscar-nominated director of photography Greig Fraser (“Lion,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”); three-time Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West (“The Revenant,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Quills”) and co-costume designer Bob Morgan; and stunt coordinator Tom Struthers (“The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Inception”). Oscar-winning and multiple Oscar-nominated composer Hans Zimmer (“Blade Runner 2049,” “Inception,” “Gladiator,” “The Lion King”) is creating the score. Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Present “Dune.” The film is slated to be released in theaters on December 18, 2020.