NORTE/NORTH: TRIAL BY FIRE (2015)
HD video, 16:9, color, live music, 40 min., Portugal/Spain
In collaboration with Filipe Felizardo
Commission: Filmadrid
Production: Lamaland
Additional support: Screen
Support: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Filmadrid
In North: Trial by Fire, a daring group of boys fills the nightly woods with their Mirandês cries. Mysterious, hypnotic, and trance–like old rites are set around a bonfire by the Caretos. Wild musical loops, improvisation, and endurance set the mood.
The project was developed under the frame of a commission by Filmadrid.Lamland
Filmadrid
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Each year they dress up and immolate an effigy. Each year they listen to a testament that is written by them, dress up, read it out loud, and burn an effigy of the supposed au- thors, who will die and die again and again. This happens in the north of the country, where time is not city time, where there are no concert venues, where I would like to live and will die. I don’t think I’ll ever play a con- cert there. It’s already done, like this: they dressed up, we gave them wine, food, and the guitar amplifier I despise the most. They ate, drank, and burned it. Some of them were in a rush to go home early to quench their mothers’ complaints, as if they’d gone to a concert and had a curfew. It was all made up. Nobody would ever let me burn an amplifier during one of my concerts. I could never play guitar dressed like that. These men don’t like my music. Me and Salomé were guilty of hav- ing this idea and the only way of giving up on it was to do it like this, destroying the concert and the film to make them happen later as a mirage of a will to die and be reborn, put to the test by an act much older and more irra- tional than our witty performances.
Filipe Felizardo, Notes on Norte/North: Trial By Fire
Each year they dress up and immolate an effigy. Each year they listen to a testament that is written by them, dress up, read it out loud, and burn an effigy of the supposed au- thors, who will die and die again and again. This happens in the north of the country, where time is not city time, where there are no concert venues, where I would like to live and will die. I don’t think I’ll ever play a con- cert there. It’s already done, like this: they dressed up, we gave them wine, food, and the guitar amplifier I despise the most. They ate, drank, and burned it. Some of them were in a rush to go home early to quench their mothers’ complaints, as if they’d gone to a concert and had a curfew. It was all made up. Nobody would ever let me burn an amplifier during one of my concerts. I could never play guitar dressed like that. These men don’t like my music. Me and Salomé were guilty of hav- ing this idea and the only way of giving up on it was to do it like this, destroying the concert and the film to make them happen later as a mirage of a will to die and be reborn, put to the test by an act much older and more irra- tional than our witty performances.
Filipe Felizardo, Notes on Norte/North: Trial By Fire
Filipe Felizardo, Notes on Norte/North: Trial By Fire