LIKE FISH IN THE WATER

by Jorge Leitão Ramos

Let's put things in a simple form: "Breathing (under water)' is the most promising Portuguese short films in many years. The story of a teenager making his first steps on the complicated ground of first loves in hard times (things don't go well at school, at home, with his friends) is a film revealing great visual concern and a narrative knowledge using film to do things you only can do in a movie. It reveals an awareness of materials and consistence in its use, a passion for forms without the bad habits of formalism, it is fresh and strict hot by shot - good things that make one foresee a good future to its director. He is called António Ferreira, he is from Coimbra and 29 years old. He got late to filmmaking, after college, several jobs, of which the longest was as a computer programmer, one year in Paris watching the trends come and go and seeing how small Portugal was, eight months serving the nation doing his military duty. It was only in 1994 that he went to film school, but he finished the course in Germany, at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin with an Erasmus grant. Then he went looking for work and found some (for example, the assistance to director Joaquim Sapinho in "A Mulher Poilcia"), he took the normal way of a first subsidiary through Cultural funds, gathered some other supports and produced himself, he was able to stretch the money and the will to tell a story until 45 minutes long. After showing it in Portugal, he applied to Cannes and was selected. He came back without any prize, which is not so important and also shows the director that not everything is the easy way. But he received good press references - the critic of "Le Monde" praised him and elected his film as one of the three best films in his section. António was sorry that the jury didn't think that way.
He's characteristic by a personal cinema and wants to maintain creative fidelity with some persons who stood by him on this adventure, such as the Director of Photography Markus Lenz, or the Editor, Co-Producer and life partner Dörte Schneider - but he reaffirms the necessity of having public so that 'Cinema' is fully accomplished. António Ferreira feels himself a bit foreign with Portuguese cinema and doesn't hide the perception that there are less and less frontiers. J. L. R.

Lisbon - "Expresso" 27.05.00