In 2017, despite tourism increasingly shaping the face of the city, I focused on its inhabitants. In each image, I center my attention on a single individual, as if portraying an empty city. This is my way of engaging with Lisbon, letting its light and shadows intertwine with my perspective, a dialogue where light and shadow transform everyday scenes into new histories.
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I’ve been directing movies for 37 years, such a long time! When I was asked by Luis Mileu to look at his pictures, a fair and reasonable enchantment came to me. I know that cinema deals with movement, with time and the inscription of the body in space, this “gestus” spoken by Brecht. What if everything is simpler? Just concerned human beings between the light and shadows which surround them? The optimistic looking for the light, the pessimists looking for refuge in the shadow. Luis Mileu pictures fixate outstanding moments where the violent light either hurts or saves, where the black shadow might hide scared souls or throw someone into the absolute evil. This ambiguity, not allowed by cinema, explodes here as a big triumph. Instead of the ordinary words, the merciless silence of the eye which discloses. Lisboa is known for its magnificent light which the sun and the reflection of the Tejo’s big estuary sculpt in cascades of light the buildings of its seven hills. But in his pictures Luis draws other thing. As if everything (people, trees, buildings) was just slippery shadows, as if everyone had their name engraved in loneliness and fear. And finally the fog, not pacifying nor less ambiguous: the reflection of the face of the girl which disappears in the blurry mirror, one unlikely and sinister black bird that Luis stopped in its fast flight. In this 28 spectra so may suspended stories that could explode!
Lisboa, 20th july 2017
João Botelho
This project was developed for an exhibition that took place at Kunstraum Botschaft/Camões Berlin, from July 7 to September 8, 2017, curated by the filmmaker João Botelho.
