The Daughters of Fire In 1951, a volcano erupted on Fogo, one of many Cape Verde islands. That incident is the place to begin for The Daughters of Fire, an experimental brief by the Portuguese director Pedro Costa.
Costa splits the display screen into panels portraying three girls—Adelaide, Clotilde, and Irodina—singing over an association of Biagio Marini’s “Passacaglia (Opus 22).” The movie ends with footage from A Erupcao do vulcao da ilha do Fogo, a 1951 documentary by ethnologist Orlando Ribeiro.
The movies are a part of Canción de Pedro Costa, a museum exhibition at the moment touring Europe. In museums the movies are projected individually in three completely different rooms. Costa selected to mix them in The Daughters of Fire as a form of “proof of concept” for a deliberate function movie.
Costa spoke by telephone with Filmmaker.
Filmmaker: What is the easiest way to view The Daughters of Fire? I needed to watch a screening hyperlink.
Pedro Costa: I’m the man who as soon as stated Bresson appears to be like superb on an iPhone, so I’ve no downside with the way you see it. Of course I noticed it on an enormous display screen in Vienna, and it appears to be like nice. But I prefer to go to the Louvre or the Prado simply to purchase some postcards of work I like within the reward outlets. It doesn’t matter.
Filmmaker: How did you initially intend to display screen this?
Costa: It was a take a look at. I used to be working with the singers, enthusiastic about the function movie we’re making an attempt to make subsequent 12 months. We went right into a small—not even a studio, a storage, the place we rehearsed the songs. Actually we did three checks with the three singers, then we had been modifying in our workplace and simply by mere curiosity put the three of them side-by-side in a cut up display screen. It’s straightforward to do this as we speak, it takes like 30 seconds.
The music is a Seventeenth-century music, a Baroque composition that employs counterpoint. So, there’s a form of dialogue, a query and reply in music, that the singers appear to answer. So we thought, why not perform a little miniature? They had been known as enluminare, medieval miniatures. The ultimate movie gained’t seem like this, it can focus extra on sound and music than this explicit type.
Filmmaker: You’re displaying them individually in museums?
Costa: Yes, however they weren’t conceived for the exhibition. As I stated, they had been a sort of take a look at for a function. We screened them in our workplace on separate partitions, they usually labored fairly properly. So when a good friend of mine in Spain requested if I wish to present them in separate rooms, I believed it is perhaps fascinating to see them in a three-projector setup.
Filmmaker: How lengthy did it take to movie?
Costa: It took sooner or later to shoot every singer. Actually two days for Adelaide, as a result of she walks and that was difficult. For opera singers, it’s very tough to behave and sing on the similar time. It was very tough technically for Adelaide to sing and stroll on the similar time.
Filmmaker: Wait a minute, you had been recording stay sound?
Costa: Of course.
Filmmaker: And they had been performing earlier than back-projected footage? That should have made it even more durable for you.
Costa: Why make it easy? We did it the old school manner. I shot a stone wall within the countryside, we manipulated the colour by grading, then I added some fireplace parts. That’s it. It’s rear projection like these Hollywood movies. It’s nearly a misplaced artwork now that 35mm is falling out of use. I feel it’s way more tough to do digitally. It was simpler with movie inventory. I imply the rear projection half—with CGI all the things’s so easy that it’s not enjoyable anymore. So, we had an actual display screen and projector behind every singer. I’ve the time and the endurance and the fervour, however not the cash, so why not do it difficult?
Filmmaker: How did you synchronize the performances?
Costa: We’ve been engaged on that for 3 days right here in Spain, and it’s nonetheless not there but. It’s difficult. When we recorded the performances, they had been singing to a recorded orchestral observe they heard by means of earpieces. Then we combined the sound. When you’re projecting them individually there’s at all times a delay, and the delay turns into longer the extra they’re separated.
Filmmaker: But even of their particular person performances you need to account for various inflections, completely different intensities.
Costa: Yes. This is a bit experimental. It was simply to see how the rear projection labored. The singers needed to get used to the phrases, the music, the digicam, to myself. It was a bit new to me as a result of now I’m working with musicians. I’m used to days and days of takes and reshoots and adjusting my actors, who’re normally non-actors. But singers can’t do 40 takes, you recognize? So, I’ve to be a bit extra financial. This movie is simply an method to what we can be taking pictures subsequent 12 months, which can be way more managed, a lot much less experimental.
Filmmaker: So the function gained’t use three panels?
Costa: I don’t assume so. The cut up will happen within the sound, in the event you can think about that. One singer within the picture, and the opposite two reply within the sound. Technically, I can’t compete with Batman movies. I imply, I wish to, however I feel our recreation is one thing else.
Filmmaker: When you’re working with three panels, how do you identify the place the viewer’s eyes will land?
Costa: I didn’t actually take into consideration that. When we had been filming I used to be very centered on the person pictures. So, I’m considering, this girl walks down this street, this girl is mendacity down. Of course there’s a rhythm, a dynamic to every shot and to the singers.
I hope the attention travels with the phrases. I’m undecided how you can say it. There are questions and solutions, there are recitations, whispers, cries. I hope the viewer follows the sound and never the picture.
In some movies previously, you comply with what’s sung and stated. I used to be curious what would occur right here due to the format. You are likely to comply with the girl who sings, proper? But you first must move this shock of an uncommon format with extravagant settings. Slowly you focus on the music, then the voice, then the which means of the lyrics.
You could also be late, it might take you three or 4 minutes to be with all three singers. I hope this fusion of screens and pictures will happen so that you just merge all three settings, the mountain and home and street, into only one setting in your creativeness.
Filmmaker: You make it a bit bit simpler on your self as a result of Clotilde is motionless for the opening two minutes.
Costa: I don’t know if I agree with that. We had plenty of work to do with the rear projection, the piano, the lights, the microphone. Loads to get completed earlier than enthusiastic about how one singer would reply to a different during which minute and second and microsecond. That half escapes me. It at all times escapes me. And thank God, as a result of I can’t be enthusiastic about issues like that on a regular basis. I’ve an excessive amount of extra to do. We had been fortunate with this movie as a result of the triptych wins. The music wins.
When you’re employed with music in a movie, it instantly elevates what you’re doing to a different airplane. It’s a special recreation. Everything is exaggerated, extra passionate. The instruments are completely different, the mindsets are completely different, my vitality and the vitality of my crew are completely different. It’s nearly an enchantment. It’s nearly simpler in a manner.
The movies I’ve been doing, and I feel that each one filmmakers are doing, it is advisable to be on on a regular basis. You must preserve the hearth burning on daily basis, each morning, each scene. But once they begin singing …
Filmmaker: The music does plenty of the work?
Costa: That’s why they’ve a lot music in dangerous movies. Well, no, I reward these composers. When I used to be in Vienna, I went to the Arnold Schoenberg Studio. He was a bit too unusual or strict or one thing for Hollywood, however plenty of his pupils actually sweated in Hollywood—Hanns Eisler, Erich Korngold. Their music equipped plenty of emotion to films, emotion that typically wouldn’t be there in any other case.
For the function we’ll be utilizing music from the Baroque to as we speak, if I can clear the rights.
Filmmaker: Can you speak in regards to the documentary footage on the finish of the movie?
Costa: Orlando Ribeiro was one of many nice minds in Portugal. He was an ethnologist, a good friend of the filmmaker Jean Rouch, and my trainer in faculty. He was a progressive Catholic and a cinephile who wrote about cinema for magazines. Because he was my trainer, I started to fall in love with cinema. I learn his texts on Playtime by Tati and Voyage to Italy, and I obtained to know him a bit higher. He informed me that he shot 16mm footage of the Fogo volcano, which he screened for me. His widow, Suzanne Daveau, gave me entry to the footage. We used the morning after the eruption in 1951.
In the final shot you see this home made from stone, folks coming outdoors. Some are bare, others in rags. They are amazed, bewildered, shocked. Every time I flip the TV on as we speak, one thing like that is occurring. Gaza has the identical feeling for me. They are astonished, surprised. It’s like, “What happened?” Now I’d go a bit additional and say, “What did we do to ourselves?” I’m very touched by this final shot. It explains lots about what the ladies are singing. When they ask, “What happened?” How can we all know? Will we all know? Why? Why? Just this query of “Why?”
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