Foto: Aline Belfort

FILMOGRAPHY

Fui à Guerra e não te Chamei - (2010, 20min)
Europa - (2011, 20min)
Charizard - (2012, 15min)
Mauro em Caiena / Mauro in Cayenne - (2012, 19min)
Lição de Esqui / Ski Lessons - (2013, 23min)
A Era de Ouro / The Golden Era - (2014, 20min)
O Completo Estranho / Two in the Shadow - (2014, 25min)
A Festa e os Cães / The Party and the Barking - (2015, 25min)
História de uma Pena / Story of a Feather - (2015, 30min)
Vando Vulgo Vedita / Vando aka Vedita - (2017, 20min)
António Um Dois Três / António One Two Three - (2017, 96min)

TRAILER

SITE

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Lucretius: Of the nature of things

Ah! miserable minds of men, blind hearts!

In what darkness of life, in what great dangers ye spend

this little span of years! To think that ye should not see that nature

cries aloud for nothing else

but that pain may be kept far sundered from the body and that,

withdrawn from care and fear, she may enjoy in mind the sense of pleasure!

And so we see that for the body’s nature but few things at all are needful,

even such as can take away pain.

Yea, though pleasantly enough from time to time

”On the nature of things" (De rerum natura) is a poem written in the first century BC. In the six books that make up the poem, Tito Lucretius Caro articulates various ideas, many of which anticipate modern theories, such as the materiality of light, or the existence of parallel universes. Influenced by Democritus and Epicurus, Lucretius explains, in a way that is easy to understand, that everything that exists is made of tiny particles. And that such substances, atoms, are eternal. With this, he tries to take away the fear of the gods (taking from them the responsibility for the creation of everything), and of death (since both the soul and the body, after death, return to the land from which they came) from men.

Inspired by the poem, and by the legend that it was written between fits of madness, the French writer Marcel Schwob composed a biography in the form of a tale, largely imaginary, in which he describes the life of the young Roman poet. Instead of mythifying the figure of Lucretius, Schwob focuses on the emotional states of a boy, at the age of twenty and thirty, as he meets love for the first time. Marcel Schwob delves into the fictional universe freed from historical precision, and reveals the anxieties of his time, all the while lighting obscure moments in the biography of a classical poet. He ends up revealing Lucretius as our contemporary, either in the nineteenth century, when the tale was written, or now, in the twenty-first century, when we are reading it.

My first contact with Marcel Schwob's story came up in an impactful way. Endowed with a real urgency in relation to mortality and the beauty of the world, the words that are written there called me to transcribe these thoughts into images. Marcel Schwob's Lucretius is an ordinary boy invaded by the real fears of a human being who realizes for the first time that what he loves will one day perish, and, harassed by such a suggestion, he makes up his mind to go crazy and embrace love and death. Lucretius is a curious human being, confident in an aesthetic apprehension of the world, but disturbed by the experience of finitude. More than documental, the mysterious image of a Lucretius who drinks a magic formula and goes crazy is a metaphor of a human being in the deadlock between two types of existence: as a thinking being, afraid but oblivious to what surrounds him, or as a living being, full, an integral part of the whole. To paraphrase Kafka, in the confrontation between himself and the world, Lucretius chooses the world.

TRANSLATION OF MARCEL SCHWOB'S STORY BY LEONARDO M. ALVES

I came across Marcel Schwob's story one night in April 2018. I still feel the blow of that meeting.  I never wanted to make any story into any sort of movie. If I've changed my mind it was because I wanted more people to hear what I was told.

“I DON’T LIKE BEING GREAT: JOHN CAGE’S EARLY LETTERS TO MERCE CUNNINGHAN - LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY

This note, contained in a very small envelope, without postmark, is fragile and has been cut up into small pieces, some of which, folded, have over time broken in two. The fragments, comprising everything extant, have been pieced together. 

Undated, 1944

i am in a world you make with recherches: and the leaf is suspended by a pin near the little wooden saint. these things mean very much to me; but i think it is not to my credit that they do. i am beginning to think that the reason i “give so much” is that i am so poor in spirit, hoping through leaning on every little gesture, thought, word, and mood of other to get my empty spaces filled. so my giving is really demanding. where shall i go and what shall i do: read a book? how to benefit by what can be said by oneself!

not being spontaneous and relaxed about natural things, i get ideas about people connected me lewith art, fashion little pedestals, love them and bring the public in. a rather disgusting scene.

i love you always.

xenia went all alone.

beauty.

i am in a muddled state.

calliope calls.

soul-searching; i did it once before, about 12 years ago. i’m not very good at it.

louis and satie at breakfast, what did that mean? 

***

Miguel Rio-Branco: Notes on the Tides Groninger Museum, Editora Sol, 2006 http://www.miguelriobranco.com.br

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 POEMA “BERLIN” DE MARINA TSVETAEVA

TO BERLIN

Rain hums a lull-a-bye to pain.
To downpours like quickly descending shutters
I sleep. Horses’ hooves on the quavering
Asphalt sound like the clapping of hands.
‘Congrats’ were said – and died out.
In gold-dawned having-been-left-ness
On the most fairy-tale of orphan-hoods
You, barracks, have taken mercy!

10 July 1922

Sapphires Under Cotton, 2013. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Collection SFMOMA. Foto de Thomas Hawk: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/29615450978/

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ARTICLE “A Portraitist Whose Subjects Are All in Her Head” - THE NEW YORK TIMES 

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Creating is an ongoing act of remembering. From the beginning, from the start, since forever, it is chance, the accident, that brings back that very high moment in which an invasion of eternity, emptiness, music, interdict, dominates us and completely absorbs us. Temporal and spatial sensations put into view a hidden reality beyond the visible world.

Imagination, fantasy... even a dream is a breath.

BRESSANE, Julio. Coleção Pequena Biblioteca de ensaios, p.46. Rio de Janeiro: Zazie Edições, 2018


READ THE BOOK. 

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WATCH AND LISTEN TO THE VIDEOCLIP OF “LICKING AND ORCHID”, BY YVES TUMOR (ft. James K), directed by Daniel Sannwald.

“Buenas noches córnea buenas noches
uñas negras buenas noches muñecas
buenas noches cuello mordido buenas
noches ano buenas noches nariz roja
de frío buenas noches estómago peludo
buenas noches líneas de la mano
buenas noches rodillas buenas noches
mandalas ocultos buenas noches verga
buenas noches hombros huesudos buenas
noches ombligo perfecto buenas noches
dientes buenas noches lóbulos
buenas noches fuego oblicuo de la
cintura buenas noches nu(n)ca.”

La Universidad Desconocida, Roberto Bolaño, pág. 143; Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona, 2007.

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Photo Terre Thaemlitz
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Terre_Thaemlitz.jpg

Crédito: Música: Name have been changed (Sprinkles’ House Arrest)”. Artista: Terre Thaemlitz / Dj Sprinkles. Álbum: Deproduction EP 1

https://clone.nl/item50864.html

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“El 19 de agosto de 1942, Brecht pega en su cuaderno una imagen de campesinos ucranianos obligados a ser esclavos por el ocupante nazi; pero al lado escribe: ‘alrededor de la 1, como en la oficina los sándwiches que me he llevado y un trago de vino blanco californiano. hace calor, pero tenemos ventiladores.’ Justo antes -dos días antes-escribió esto: ‘la casa es muy linda. neste jardín puedo volver a leer a Lucrecio.’”

DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. Cuando las imágenes tomam posición, p.88. Traducción de Inés Bértolo. Madrid: A. Machado Libros, 2008