How did the four characters that populate this island come about – the woman, the archaeologist, the capitalist, and the child?
The Island is a place that lies between fiction and documentary and refers to Ilha dos Pretos [The Island of Black Men], an oral name given in the 18th century to a community of people of African origin who settled on the banks of the river Sado. These characters emerged from the forgotten stories of this community, and from my research on the archetypes that shape our identities and the idea of otherness.
Through the development of these characters, I try to contemplate the multidimensional search for individuality – constituted through memories of the colonial past, through independence and post-independence liberation movements.
All characters refer to the various dimensions of time – the archaeologist connected to the past, the capitalist to the present, and the child to the future.
The woman is a mother, a warrior, who represents the strength of the continuous acts of maternal care, which sustains life, but also fights for her own individuation.
The archaeologist has a role to observe time and space, to mediate between various elements of time from the earth, the soil, and the stories it carries.
The capitalist has the role of exposing the place of now. The character arises from the criticism of current extractive systems.
The child is the future, she brings to the Island the power to imagine futures in the present moment. She keeps the stories of the past in her body, but her innocence brings the possibility of imagining futures beyond current conditions.
The text of the film is articulated between poetry, fable, manifesto. What was it like to build this network of symbols and narratives?
The text and script of the film was co-created with Yara Nakahanda Monteiro, based upon the creation of the story of the “Island” I was imagining. The film is a fabulation of real stories and, in a way, a manifesto to find another space and future that oppose hegemonic power structures and the continuity that these systems of oppression have today.
Symbols and narratives contain within them a safe place where new ecologies of care can be built, between ourselves and the earth. The diversity of symbols, characters and modes of articulation comes from an eco-feminist position that puts diversity and care first. As human beings, we impose uniformity on the land, walls of division and separation, notions of property and private property that distance our species from the disordered law of diversity of which all beings are a part. Nature does not work in linear, one-time extractive flows, but is a circular regenerative flow where each party gives and receives. Our current catastrophes and wars are rooted in a greed and incomprehension of the Earth and its inhabitants, and in the extractivist control of the flows of life. I believe that we need to move more towards natural flows of circular regeneration of life, towards ecologies of care where the flow of knowledge and freedom is not controlled in one sense, but rather allowed for all beings to live in diversity.
You are a multidisciplinary artist, also working with drawing, photography, and sound. How does cinema fit into your practice?
Yes, I work with several media because what interests me is the idea of artistic expression as a form of research, and how it stands in relation to issues of identity, memory, and place. Cinema is a means of reflecting on these themes, more collaborative, it encompasses various means of creative expression, which I have been working on as a visual artist – such as photography, sound, text, performance, video, drawing and artistic direction. In a collective way, cinema allows me to put into place different areas in communication and action.
For me, cinema is an expanded art form because it explores more diverse visual and sound practices than the gallery world, it opens up to other articulations of expression and reaches a more diverse audience.
