01
OUR HOME WITH THE DOGS 2019, PT, 62 min
a film by MADALENA FRAGOSO & MARGARIDA MENESES
For five years, seven friends film their lives together and apart from each other.
As time goes by, a film begins to emerge when this archive is revisited; the house they shared in the first year no longer exists. A film shot through many hands, a reflection on creating images today.
As time goes by, a film begins to emerge when this archive is revisited; the house they shared in the first year no longer exists. A film shot through many hands, a reflection on creating images today.
Text by Maria Reis
Oh, the past.
The time when they accumulated
The slow days.
Japanese Haiku originally translated by Helberto Helder
Art is made, music is played and films are shot. We write poems and messages. We take pictures of ourselves and others. We either go out at night or stay home. We start a book or have lunch with our family. The suburban train rides. Red wine and Amber Leaf rolling cigarettes. Plenty of other things. And they're all describable. But to gaze attention is necessary. And sensibility.
The movie could be an emotional catharsis, the nostalgia of what was and isn't anymore. It could be a portrait of Lisbon, a depiction of our days. We could say it's an ode to friendship.
Ultimately, a minimal epic, like a flower bouquet, an affective puzzle, an essay of admiration of ourselves that at the same time doesn't belong to us.
This impossible and ambitious proposition of Margarida Meneses and Madalena Fragoso, of filming themselves, their friends and housemates, the dogs, of converting the mundane into a poem, into an emotional landscape of friendship - the chosen family - is, for me, a miracle.
Luiz Pacheco, in ‘The Community’, talks about a bed where everyone slept, his wife and many children, calling it a bed-raft. In this film, there’s the idea of a home-island – “The building is tall like an island”. There is a feeling of a secret group, of allies in life, complicit in each other's guaranteed successes and failures. What’s left to be said or what you don't need to say.
It's all done with delicacy and respect for the courage it takes to expose yourself and your loved ones as a way of being in life to give birth to the painting – the melodic portrait of the days passing by. They talk of philosophy with the perspective of buildings and spirituality on the beach house watching Pocahontas. The editing process of this film is in fact the great hero that makes this loose narrative possible, using the rhythm of consciousness and day dreaming. I had questions to ask them to better understand Margarida and Madalena's voices. They kindly answered me.
Maria Reis: In what way, formal and/or abstract, do you think of this film as a work of a pair? And also, since the film, in its origin, was just a series of records of your intimate life, how and when (was it while you were filming or when you were reviewing the videos) you thought 'here lies something special that can go beyond us?
Madalena Fragoso: This film has taken many forms over the years and I feel that we have gone through the entire spectrum of emotions and possibilities when thinking about it and building it, and we rarely thought about it as a film or a closed object that could someday end and we could say that it was done, much less that it could be something beyond us (...) Building something with these images was something that was present at all times, even if unconsciously, so we knew this archive would never get lost from the beginning, but we never knew what these images were or could mean exactly, outside our circle.
We felt that there was something very moving in them that would always make us laugh in the same way or cry with the same intensity, no matter how much we replayed and rewatched them. We would always discover something new in them - a clue to the present or a realization from the past.
It was really amazing and overwhelming to watch the same shots a thousand times ando only 2 years later or 4 years later or some months later, we would notice that someone was saying something under their breath that would change our entire perspective on that moment, or even a detail out of focus that would give it another meaning or raised a new question, as if the same images were reinventing themselves on their own. We spent 5 years in an almost schizophrenic way rewatching our memories, thinking about them and all of the moments that were recorded there, and as time passed, the moments we were rewatching changed as well as our memories and what we felt made sense to build in the film.
About this film being a work created by the two of us, I think that at an early stage and throughout most of the time, we saw it and felt it as a film that portrayed a joint perspective from all of us - us and them - and not just the two of us. That is still true but I think we’ve only been able to process how much this is our view of things, our view of them, of friendship, dogs, cinema, the city, everything. (...) Margarida and I met when we started film school in 2010. We've been with each other more than with anyone else in our lives for 9 years straight and it's a really organic thing, as if we were sisters. We hang out without having to speak to understand each other. Sometimes we spend 20 minutes in silence and all of a sudden we say the same thing at the same time as if we've been thinking about the same things in the same order of thought for 20 minutes, it's eerie and funny. In that sense, I think we could only have made this film and thought about these images together and never alone. We are different people with very different routines and ways of relating to others, but together we complement each other in a very special way. At the end of any conversation, invariably, the only thing that prevails is a meeting of thoughts that leads to the overcoming of an individuality or to a transcendence that is not spiritual or mystical, but that of two people who know each other very well and who love each other very much. We're also the only girls in this group, which I don't think is something worth mentioning as defining, but definitely worth thinking about. Nostalgically and quite fairly, as Margarida once wrote in a letter of intentions for a document about the film: 'What happened in that house was the awakening of a way of contemplating that took different shapes and proportions for each one of us, also leading us through different paths, but we will somehow forever live in that house, looking through that window.
directors MADALENA FRAGOSO E MARGARIDA MENESES cinematography DAVID LEAL, GONÇALO MATA, FLÁVIO GONÇALVES, FRANCISCO SOARES, MADALENA FRAGOSO, MARGARIDA MENESES, PAULO DINIS sound JOÃO POLIDO GOMES editing MADALENA FRAGOSO E MARGARIDA MENESES color correction AFONSO MOTA production MADALENA FRAGOSO E MARGARIDA MENESES cast DAVID LEAL, GONÇALO MATA, FLÁVIO GONÇALVES, FRANCISCO SOARES, MADALENA FRAGOSO, MARGARIDA MENESES, PAULO DINIS, EMA, FAÍSCA, SIMBA
Oh, the past.
The time when they accumulated
The slow days.
Japanese Haiku originally translated by Helberto Helder
Art is made, music is played and films are shot. We write poems and messages. We take pictures of ourselves and others. We either go out at night or stay home. We start a book or have lunch with our family. The suburban train rides. Red wine and Amber Leaf rolling cigarettes. Plenty of other things. And they're all describable. But to gaze attention is necessary. And sensibility.
The movie could be an emotional catharsis, the nostalgia of what was and isn't anymore. It could be a portrait of Lisbon, a depiction of our days. We could say it's an ode to friendship.
Ultimately, a minimal epic, like a flower bouquet, an affective puzzle, an essay of admiration of ourselves that at the same time doesn't belong to us.
This impossible and ambitious proposition of Margarida Meneses and Madalena Fragoso, of filming themselves, their friends and housemates, the dogs, of converting the mundane into a poem, into an emotional landscape of friendship - the chosen family - is, for me, a miracle.
Luiz Pacheco, in ‘The Community’, talks about a bed where everyone slept, his wife and many children, calling it a bed-raft. In this film, there’s the idea of a home-island – “The building is tall like an island”. There is a feeling of a secret group, of allies in life, complicit in each other's guaranteed successes and failures. What’s left to be said or what you don't need to say.
It's all done with delicacy and respect for the courage it takes to expose yourself and your loved ones as a way of being in life to give birth to the painting – the melodic portrait of the days passing by. They talk of philosophy with the perspective of buildings and spirituality on the beach house watching Pocahontas. The editing process of this film is in fact the great hero that makes this loose narrative possible, using the rhythm of consciousness and day dreaming. I had questions to ask them to better understand Margarida and Madalena's voices. They kindly answered me.
Maria Reis: In what way, formal and/or abstract, do you think of this film as a work of a pair? And also, since the film, in its origin, was just a series of records of your intimate life, how and when (was it while you were filming or when you were reviewing the videos) you thought 'here lies something special that can go beyond us?
Madalena Fragoso: This film has taken many forms over the years and I feel that we have gone through the entire spectrum of emotions and possibilities when thinking about it and building it, and we rarely thought about it as a film or a closed object that could someday end and we could say that it was done, much less that it could be something beyond us (...) Building something with these images was something that was present at all times, even if unconsciously, so we knew this archive would never get lost from the beginning, but we never knew what these images were or could mean exactly, outside our circle.
We felt that there was something very moving in them that would always make us laugh in the same way or cry with the same intensity, no matter how much we replayed and rewatched them. We would always discover something new in them - a clue to the present or a realization from the past.
It was really amazing and overwhelming to watch the same shots a thousand times ando only 2 years later or 4 years later or some months later, we would notice that someone was saying something under their breath that would change our entire perspective on that moment, or even a detail out of focus that would give it another meaning or raised a new question, as if the same images were reinventing themselves on their own. We spent 5 years in an almost schizophrenic way rewatching our memories, thinking about them and all of the moments that were recorded there, and as time passed, the moments we were rewatching changed as well as our memories and what we felt made sense to build in the film.
About this film being a work created by the two of us, I think that at an early stage and throughout most of the time, we saw it and felt it as a film that portrayed a joint perspective from all of us - us and them - and not just the two of us. That is still true but I think we’ve only been able to process how much this is our view of things, our view of them, of friendship, dogs, cinema, the city, everything. (...) Margarida and I met when we started film school in 2010. We've been with each other more than with anyone else in our lives for 9 years straight and it's a really organic thing, as if we were sisters. We hang out without having to speak to understand each other. Sometimes we spend 20 minutes in silence and all of a sudden we say the same thing at the same time as if we've been thinking about the same things in the same order of thought for 20 minutes, it's eerie and funny. In that sense, I think we could only have made this film and thought about these images together and never alone. We are different people with very different routines and ways of relating to others, but together we complement each other in a very special way. At the end of any conversation, invariably, the only thing that prevails is a meeting of thoughts that leads to the overcoming of an individuality or to a transcendence that is not spiritual or mystical, but that of two people who know each other very well and who love each other very much. We're also the only girls in this group, which I don't think is something worth mentioning as defining, but definitely worth thinking about. Nostalgically and quite fairly, as Margarida once wrote in a letter of intentions for a document about the film: 'What happened in that house was the awakening of a way of contemplating that took different shapes and proportions for each one of us, also leading us through different paths, but we will somehow forever live in that house, looking through that window.
directors MADALENA FRAGOSO E MARGARIDA MENESES cinematography DAVID LEAL, GONÇALO MATA, FLÁVIO GONÇALVES, FRANCISCO SOARES, MADALENA FRAGOSO, MARGARIDA MENESES, PAULO DINIS sound JOÃO POLIDO GOMES editing MADALENA FRAGOSO E MARGARIDA MENESES color correction AFONSO MOTA production MADALENA FRAGOSO E MARGARIDA MENESES cast DAVID LEAL, GONÇALO MATA, FLÁVIO GONÇALVES, FRANCISCO SOARES, MADALENA FRAGOSO, MARGARIDA MENESES, PAULO DINIS, EMA, FAÍSCA, SIMBA