Director Marta Mateus Wanted to Disrupt the ‘Banal Image of War’ Presented by Mass Media With Her Locarno Player ‘Fogo do Vento’
variety.comMarta Mateus‘ first feature, “Fogo do Vento,” asks a lot from cinema. Having taken more than four years to complete, the film does not lack ambition or a sense of concision; it runs barely 70 minutes.
Both qualities lend the film a particular intensity and focus. As Variety sat down with Mateus at the Locarno Film Festival, where this beguiling first work is premiering in the main competition, she insisted right away that she sees her work of making films “as a kind of atelier.” The film itself is closer to a meticulously crafted art object than anything else, which only serves to reinforce Mateus’ point.
The stillness of the camera in the film helps create this sense of craftedness in each shot. “One time, a filmmaker told me, ‘Oh, you did that film where people never move.’ What was he talking about?
Then I understood perhaps he had this feeling since it is, in fact, the camera that almost never moves.” This compositional sense does much to suggest Mateus’ debt to a tradition of painting more than anything particularly cinematic. “I’ve studied many things, but not cinema.
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