#407: 2013.02.10 [carlo patrão]

Manoel de Oliveira – Collected Silences

“If the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear…if the ear is entirely won, give nothing to the eye. One can not be at the same time all eye and all ear.” Robert Bresson – Notes on Cinematography

The cinema of Manoel de Oliveira features a careful balance of image, sound, and silence. Long takes and static frames call attention to the rich auditory elements present in each scene. In this hour of Framework:Afield, we are going to explore the soundtrack of Oliveira’s non-dialogue scenes by separating the audio from its image. These sounds depict daily life in pastoral Portuguese landscapes. In the context of radio, they become the focal point while new visual layers are free to form in the listener’s imagination. The sounds presented in this collage are not organized according to the films’ chronology or storylines. Rather, they are grouped as much as possible according to other properties like volume, pitch, and intensity of the samples as well as by common themes like footsteps, wind blowing, characters breathing, wood creaking, etc. The sounds were taken from the following films:  The Hunt (1963), Past and Present (1972), Benilde or The Virgin Mother (1975),  Voyage to the Beginning of the World (1997), My Case (1987),  The Cannibals (1988), Word and Utopia (2000), The Uncertainty Principle (2002),  Belle Toujours (2006) and Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (2009). At the age of 80, he hit the pace of making one film per year. Today, Oliveira is 104 years old and still going – the world’s oldest active filmmaker.

Credits:
Produced by Carlo Patrão, Zepelim, Rádio Universidade de Coimbra
Narrative Readings: Susana Sampaio Dias & Erica Buettner

Links:
www.zeppelinruc.wordpress.com
www.ruc.fm