Marta Mateus, Fogo do vento, film, 2024
Held on 27 feb 2025
Intervals is the Museo Reina Sofía’s regular programme premiering recent film work, made up of critically acclaimed films from the year in progress or the previous one. This fresh edition centres on Fogo do vento (Fire of Wind, 2024), ), a feature-length film by director Marta Mateus (Estremoz, 1984) and a symbolic work which, as a fable of reality, exhibits archaic myths of Iberian lands. The film is screened in two sessions that include an introduction by the director, who will also take part in a post-screening discussion organised in the latter.
Through the metaphor of its images, Fogo do vento displays magic and mystery in the Portuguese countryside, ranging across the ancient story of the myth of the bull. As a girl injures herself, the drops of her blood guide this beast. Villagers climb to the tops of centuries-old vines, protecting themselves from death. On the strong branches of the trees, different women and men share bread and wine, dreams and life.
The forestry, ground, fields and landscapes of Iberian lands speak to us of an ancient history: a people’s dignity and struggle against brutality.
Through her film-making Marta Mateus reconstructs images of identity, the depictions of her (non-actor) characters comprehending an entire formal school of European and Portuguese cinema, for example the mise en scène and filmic portrait that characterises Straub and Huillet or the discursive relationship with nature and the environment rooted in the films of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro. Scenes where chiaroscuro and the gaze across a distant horizon bring us closer to sanctity and the mythical and where the characters’ engagement with the natural environment imparts a timeless quality to her stories.
Credits
Marta Mateus. Fogo do vento
Portugal, Switzerland, France, 2024, colour, original version with Spanish subtitles, DA, 72´
Direction and script: Marta Mateus
Production: Clarão Companhia
Photography: Marta Mateus, Vítor Carvalho
Editing: Marta Mateus, Claire Atherton
Music: Ulises Conti
Sound: Hugo Leitão
Cast: Soraia Prudêncio, Maria Catarina Sapata, Safir Eizner, José Moura and Maria Clara Madeira
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
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