Arquivo > Silence Course two films by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes and Vera Mantero, 2007

Silence Course

two films by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes and Vera Mantero, 2007

Vera Mantero and Miguel Gonçalves Mendes were invited by the Festival Temps d'Images, in a co-production with the Circular-Festival of Performative Arts, to present a joint creation where they were asked to cross the areas in which each one works - Cinema and Dance.

From this invitation emerges “Silence Course', two films based on the imagetic universe of Maria Gabriela Llansol.

The development of this screenplay set off from different books and interviews by the author that allowed not only a transversal approach to her work but also alloed working on one of the author’s main ideas, the so called 'glow scenes'. These are nuclear images where temporality or spatiality are inexistent. The logic of the sequence in which these scenes are organized escapes the reader (here spectator), therefore disabling its classification.
The text of Maria Gabriela Llansol isn’t carried out by thematic developments, nor through a plot, but through a thread that binds the different glow scenes that compose it. It’s this type of writing that we seek in the construction of these films. The nucleus of the glow scenes can be an image, a thought, or an intensely emotional feeling. Thus, more than to search for a story, we’re looking for gestures, actions, sensations and emotions that once explored may carry us into the possible 'edenic space' that Llansol talks about. These films, as her books, refuse the metaphor. Everything is fragments only understandable in the globality of the reading.

After a process of shooting in common, Miguel Gonçalves Mendes and Vera Mantero materialized the present co-creation in two different versions with the same name 'Curso de Silêncio' (Silence Course).
Therefore, in spite of the same shooting material, the editing of each one of the films corresponds to the personal vision of each one of these creators on the work of Maria Gabriela Llansol.

Ficha Artística

Script and direction
Vera Mantero and Miguel Gonçalves Mendes

Photography direction
Edmundo Diaz

Art direction
Paulo Reis

Editing
Claúdia Rita Oliveira

Sound direction
Filipe Tavares

Production
O Rumo do Fumo and JumpCut

Co-Production
Festival Temps d’Images and Circular - Festival de Artes Performativas

Support
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Duration
45 min

Cronologia

14 December 2019, Birthday Party - O Rumo do Fumo 20 Years, Espaço da Penha, Lisbon/Portugal
21 and 24 November 2017, KINANI festival, Centro Cultural Português, Maputo/Mozambique
10 - 13 November 2016, Festival Temps d’Images, Teatro da Trindade, Lisbon/Portugal
9 March 2014, Teatro Virgínia, Torres Novas/Portugal
11 April 2013, Teatro de Almada, Almada/Portugal
7 November 2012, International Dance Theatres Festival, Lublin/Poland
3 November 2012, Festival B.A.D., Bilbao/Spain
2 - 6 February 2011, Museu Reina Sofia/Festival Escena Contemporanea, Madrid/Spain
24 October 2010, Fundação de Serralves, Porto/Portugal
28 February 2010, Fundação de Serralves, Porto/Portugal
30 November to 31 January 2010, Museu Colecção Berardo/CCB, Lisbon/Portugal
15 and 19 September 2009, Centro de Artes Visuais, Coimbra/Portugal
5 and 6 September 2009, Centro de Memória, Vila do Conde/Portugal
26 October 2008, Chocolate Factory Theater/LIC, New York/USA
8 and 9 July 2008, Centro Cultural de Vila Flor, Guimarães/Portugal
13 and 14 June 2008, Festival In-Transit, Berlin/Germany
11 and 12 January 2008, Auditório Municipal de Vila do Conde, Vila do Conde/Portugal
3 and 4 November 2007, CCB, Festival Temps d'Images, Lisbon/Portugal