Carvalho Sol, filmmaker
Indispensable from Mozambican cinema with more than 40 years of career, News Now Nigeria interviews him as he passes through the Afrikaldia festival, held in Vitoria-Gasteiz, where he presented his last film, Or anchored do tempo.
Passionate about the cinema since childhood, in Inhambane (Mozambique), his hometown, stayed with the posters of the films of the film hall that was next to his home, of which he remembers that “without a doubt, it was a Paradiso cinema.”
Its beginnings, due to the needs of the post -independence revolution, were on the radio. The lack of qualified personnel after the end of Portuguese colonialism led him to be the head of the National Radio Service with only 20 years. But he never stopped asking to be sent to the Film Institute. In 1979, when he received the authorization, he was asked to work as an editor in a magazine led by the famous Mozambican writer Mia Couto, with whom he began a long collaboration. As Carvalho acknowledges, «Journalism was very good for me in the sense that I learned to structure ideas, knowledge, to write. I learned a lot about the importance of sound, how to tell stories through sound ».
His first landing in the world of cinema was through Kuxa Kanemaa 10 -minute newspaper distributed in the movie theaters in the absence of televisions. After some discrepancies with the government, he returned to work with Couto as a book editor until 1986, when he returned to the world of cinema. And until today.
The Mozambiqueño curriculum includes the Promarte producer, of which he was a founder, which already has more than 40 years of experience and has exceeded 200 films under his credit.
Carvalho himself divides his work behind the cameras into three large blocks. The first, composed of those films that start from real -life stories in Mozambique, because, as he says, “ideas are on the street every day.” The director likes to “go to the real: drink, eat, digest and vomit,” and concludes that “creation is the transfiguration of the real.” A second block has to do with its appreciation of reality, in which the imaginary world has great weight. The story, for which it has a great interest, stars in the third block. «I always want to hear the voices of the victors and the defeated. I really like to work that at the cinema, ”he says. In this regard, he points out that he has been inspired by the work of directors such as Oliver Stone, which has led him to accompany many of the country’s historical processes and produce several documentary series on this subject.
Your last feature film, Or anchored do tempo (2023), released in Spain last November at the Afrikaldia festival, is a mixture of the second and third block, according to Carvalho. The characters, he says, “are exporters of knowledge and history that happened in our country and, on the other hand, there is also the idea of the world that is not real.” The story, set in Ilha de Moçambique, deals with the resolution of a crime in a fortress (that of San Sebastián, located in this city) inhabited by a group of curious characters.
The film, with a very well worked photograph, stands out for the mixture of cold lights with warm, the textures and geometry of the spaces. There are three elements to which the Mozambiqueño director grants great importance, because according to him, “they force you to define an aesthetic”, something that is fundamental: “movies are not an hour and a half of images and sounds about politics. The films are an hour and a half of images and sounds on politics with a visual and sound purpose ».
Cinema, literature and music
In this task, in addition to the director of photography and Mia Couto himself – the tape is an adaptation of his novel To Varanda do Frangipani-, Sol highlights the role of the art director, Claudia Lopes Costa, who asked that “fortress be speaking permanently with people.” Another element that stands out in the film is music. As the Mozambiqueño director admits, “I use it much more than normal,” a reflection of what Mozambique is, among him, “a country of musicality.” Music is in tune with the rest of the story, what is perceived in the intentional absence of instrumental accompaniment, because “if you dispossess the strength of everything that is modern, if you put instrumental music, you would be contradicting the concept.”
Consistency is key to Inhambane’s filmmaker. For him, «the question was very clear. All the music had to be played with the hands, hitting the walls, on the floor or wherever it was (…) the challenge was to use the voice, you have nothing more to use other than the voice. There is some drum, but nothing more ».
Or anchored do tempo It manages to reflect the structure of the African story, which, for Sol de Carvalho, works by layers and where the end of the stories is of central importance. In fact, the closure of the film is a turn with respect to the narrative that the story maintains.
This has not been the first adaptation of a work by Mia Couto – he did it with Mabata Bata in 2018–. In fact, when we ask him if there is any other novel that he would like to take to the cinema, his answer leaves no doubt: “Yes, there are several novels, but with the condition that I get working in the same way I worked with mine couto.”
An extensive cinematography
Before Or anchored do tempoCarvalho directed, among others, HEANNçA DA VIÚVA (1997) Maria, to entrepreneur (1999), To Janela (1995), O Jardim do Outro Homem (2007), Asias da Aranha (2007) or Criminal impunity (2012). In all, the director addressed the situation of women in Mozambique from different perspectives: the context of widows, the reality of domestic employees, sexual blackmail in schools or gender violence in the domestic environment.
To deal with these issues, the director and his team develop a huge work behind the cameras that include interviews – for HEANNçA DA VIÚVA They spoke with almost 50 widows and with 14 adolescents to O Jardim do Outro Homem-, or worked with specialized associations in gender equality, as in Criminal impunity.
More than entertainment
The cinema plays a key social role for Sol de Carvalho: “Its importance is in the relationship it establishes with people.” Along with this, one of the fundamental aspects of the seventh art stands out: «Connect, be playful and, at the same time, open fields of reflection and not exclusion fields». For this reason, the director is committed to a cinema open to others. “When you make movies in which only you understand what you are wanting to tell, you are actually saying: ‘Do not matter to me, the one that matters is me,” he says.
In the creative process, the part that Carvalho enjoys is «production and debates with the audience. At that time of interaction I feel done as director, when I am, on the one hand, dealing with a group of 30 or 40 people, with several egos, managing those human resources, and, on the other hand, when we are talking and talking about the recipients ». To this is added the concrete reality of Mozambique that, at the time of independence, had 90 % illiteracy and cinema fulfilled a fundamental educational mission, especially in rural communities, with issues such as HIV or malaria.
New roads
He is currently elucidating what his next step will be. Although he would like to continue exploring his sculptor’s facet, he is immersed in a project on the war in Mozambique for which he has already conducted more than 180 interviews around the world. The objective, according to the filmmaker, is to have “the best virtual library about the conflict.”
In addition, now it prioritizes “some smaller experimental things, to have fun”, because he believes that the time has come for another younger generation that, he says, is willing to help. It also considers that cinematographic production has to change, since the European financing model in Africa is not adequate. Therefore, it will seek to experiment with a model that involves smaller teams, something possible thanks to the digital revolution. In this context, he is working on an animation project with Mia Couto. In his opinion, in the absence of means, “the way to get the magical world to the screen is through animation.”
