{"id":27561,"date":"2023-12-04T10:29:32","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T10:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zinebi.eus\/festival\/mikeldi-of-honour\/rita-azevedo-gomes-2\/"},"modified":"2023-12-14T12:01:54","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T12:01:54","slug":"rita-azevedo-gomes-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/zinebi.eus\/en\/festival\/mikeldi-of-honour\/rita-azevedo-gomes-2\/","title":{"rendered":"RITA AZEVEDO GOMES"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alkimista jakin-nahi eta paregabea

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A woman of the cinema, a versatile, independent, unique filmmaker, Rita Azevedo Gomes (Lisbon, 1952) is a director, she is a programmer, she is an artist, and her films render poetry tangible in more than one sense. She is an explorer of the territories of cinema, where the classic and the modern converge, and reality amalgamates with fiction and reformulates their ties, breaking conventions. She is without a doubt one of those who make up our cinematographic universe.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Rita Azevedo Gomes is familiar with the essence of literature, of painting, of theatre, of cinema. She is a curious, extraordinary alchemist, who turns everything into cinema. In her films she has frequently worked with adaptations of literary oeuvres, transforming the texts into images and time; under her restless gaze each word becomes infinite and ramifies, but she finds the precise indication, a different tag mark in this tradition.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

This may be perceived in her first work, O som da terra a tremer<\/em> (1990), based on texts by Andr\u00e9 Gide, M\u00e1rio de S\u00e1-Carneiro, Leonardo Da Vinci and Agustina Bessa-Lu\u00eds \u2013 with whom Azevedo Gomes also worked on the short A conquista de Faro <\/em>(2005) \u2013 and, on the specific story by Stefan Zweig, A colec\u00e7\u00e3o invis\u00edvel<\/em> (2009) and the free adaptation of a story by Robert Musil in A portuguesa (2018), in which she shifts the focus of the tale to a female personage, Correspond\u00eancias<\/em> (2016) \u2013 screened at the 58th ZINEBI\u2015 on decades of a complicit and deep relationship between writer Jorge de Sena and poet Sophia de Mello, ties updated through the voices of Boris Nelepo, Pierre L\u00e9on, Eva Truffaut and Agathe Bonitzer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What is true is that Azevedo Gomes does not simply base her work on an adaptation of the plot, but on the very essence of the poetry of words and theatre, with a rigorous distinguished mise en sc\u00e8ne influenced by her previous experience in the scenic and operatic arts, even daring to undertake the free adaptation of a story by Jules Am\u00e9d\u00e9e Barbey d\u2019Aurevilly in A vingan\u00e7a de Uma Mulher<\/em> (2012) or the exceptional theatre text by \u00c9ric Rohmer in O trio em mi bemol<\/em> (2022), starring Rita Dur\u00e3o, Pierre L\u00e9on and Ado Arrieta.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

15\u00aa Pedra<\/em> (2007), a documentary which arose from her proximity to Jo\u00e3o B\u00e9nard da Costa (with whom she worked at the Gulbenkian Foundation and Cinemateca Portuguesa) and to filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira (of whom she had been a disciple and former assistant), makes the remark that the power of an image does not stem from what it shows but from what it means, a meaning that is not strictly visible and can only be found by going directly into the work itself. The image, painting as another of her sources of inspiration is evidenced in Danses macabres, squelettes et autres fantaisies<\/em> (2019), co-directed with filmmaker Pierre L\u00e9on and philosopher Jean-Louis Schefer, with the playful apparition of dancing skeletons, mundane delights. \u201cThere are images which impregnate you, which go right inside you until, in some way or another, at some point, they come out. There are images you associate with a specific moment, a memory or a feeling, which you can then use in your professional life to express what you feel.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The elegant configuration she uses to represent feelings is a good example of how Rita Azevedo Gomes\u2019 cinema nestles between art and life. At the end of the day, all the components of her films are used to reach a finale: the finding of ways to express life, to express love. Something so intangible that it requires all this, not to seek a precise unique form, but to be in a position to celebrate it in all its romanticism, in all its ambiguity, in all its innocence. This is what she achieves in Altar<\/em> (2003) and in Fr\u00e1gil como o mundo<\/em> (2002), one of the most painfully beautiful cinema love stories ever filmed. Tales of intimacy, sometimes more remote, others more recent, but where reflections on a today are always resonating. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
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Cecilia Barrionuevo<\/strong>
\r\nProgrammer at Large \/ Film at Lincoln Center
\r\nInternational Seminars and Relations \/ ECAM <\/p>\r\n
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