Memory landscapes in Rodrigo Areias’ films. After an audiovisual essay by Nuno Dias

Abstract

This essay aims at an analysis and deconstruction of Movement, Framework, Cut (2019) an audiovisual essay by Nuno Dias, that edits shots from Corrente (2008), Cinema (2014) and O Guardador (2015), three short films directed by Rodrigo Areias. Dias looks for intersections in these works. What draws them together? What is the role of landscape in these films? What is more important in cinema: what one sees or what is hidden? The aesthetics of image and sound as ways to cut across the incommensurable. Characters-being emerge in shots as metaphors of memory. The character-being in Corrente floats the waters of the river. In O Guardador, the character-being floats, with a lantern, the museum rooms, between objects of the past. In Cinema, the character-being carries over his shoulders the weight of memory in abandoned old cans that hide fantasies in a “cinematic bunker”. It is inaccessible to the common mortal, but that he is allowed to spy.