José Filipe Costa
In ‘Prazer, Camaradas!’ Jose Filipe Costa recreates life on a cooperative farm using some of the original participants, as well as other local villagers of the same age group who were around at the time. He focusses on the human element instead of only examining the political issues. He questions what would have been the reactions of the villagers to the new ideas that were filtering in and how they managed to deal with them. Costa wanted: “…to try to find an alternative approach when looking at this significant period of our nation’s history.” It is a film about change and about the roles of men and women in society.
José Filipe Costa holds a PHD from the Royal College of Art in London and his films have been selected for a number of important festivals. He lectures at various universities including the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. In his published book “Power to the Cinema”, he literally examines the power of film as he explains: -
“It was more about the politics for cinema after the revolution. After the [Carnation]revolution, everyone wanted to make films but there were many different visions on what it meant to make a film. There were the groups that believed in cooperatives and others in more centralized units of production… this is a book about those sorts of clashes between different points of view.”
‘Prazer, Camaradas!’ follows on from Costa’s award-winning documentary-on- a- documentary called ‘Linha Vermelha (Red Line) (2008)’ where Costa analysed a cinema-veritée film of the occupation of a farm during the Carnation Revolution directed by Thomas Harlan. Harlan came from a film-making family himself, being the son of Veit Harlan (who had made films for the Nazis in Germany). In Torre Bela, Thomas Harlan filmed the spontaneous takeover of the massive Torre Bela estate by men and women who then started a cooperative there, initially in an informal land reform process. This occupation was unique in its nature and became a national reference point for political transformation and social justice. It was led only by its former labourers and local inhabitants, significantly, there was no direct political party involvement.
Welcome to this centre of Popular power ( Torre Bela)
José Filipe Costa questions Harlan as to how far, being present with a camera, provoked, affected, even accelerated the outcome of events that they were ‘witnessing’. Harlan himself admits: “We were manipulators. How that actually worked I don’t know. But it pushed things forward, rushed them.”
1959 had seen the Cuban Revolution, early 1970s had seen Allende in Chile trying to introduce land reforms, so in a long list of similar movements, one of the last to arrive at that point was Portugal with its, ironically, military coup that brought in socialist policies that led to the creation of cooperative farms. The coup was led by the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas- MFA).
Portugal had been hermetically closed and held in the grip of the longest dictatorship in Europe under António de Oliveira Salazar and his immediate successors for 48 years, (1930-1974). Salazar had created the ‘New State’. This was a corporatist authoritarian government that ruled Portugal until April 25th 1974. There was a great deal of censorship and an active (and deeply feared) secret police that purported to fight for ‘God, Fatherland and Family’ and other strong Catholic values.
So, in its isolation, Portugal had missed out entirely on the ‘swinging sixties’, and certainly had had no access to the ideas of feminism or the multitude of liberal ideas that were ubiquitous in other parts of Europe and the world. Therefore, when the Estado Novo (the New State) collapsed in 1974, people in Portugal were suddenly exposed to a raft of new ideas and possibilities that challenged their entrenched traditions and ways of life. ‘Change is not always easy’, could almost be a theme of Costa’s latest film: Prazer, Camaradas!
Prazer (pleasure) was indeed suddenly to be had, as the entrenched Machismo in the rural areas was challenged and women reached out to also benefit in the sexual revolution. The creation of the cooperative farms touched on the ideals of many, immediately attracting many people to the country. They came to help, to be doctors, to participate at all levels and they brought new ideas with them. They were not all strictly political ideas of the left or the right, but largely ideas about how men and women relate to one another. Dealing with these situations with mature men and women led to some wonderfully funny and revealing situations. There were literacy lessons and videos about sexual information as well.
José Filipe Costa continues: -
“There were a lot of foreigners then, coming to the country. People came from Germany, France, the UK… they came to be doctors or social workers, and they joined the cooperatives to help, so you can imagine all the cultural clashes that arose from these encounters… the foreigners would go to villages that were very isolated. It was a shock! There were people there who couldn’t read or write… there were also alcoholics.”
Men and women in the cooperatives were both challenged to participate in all activities and the men were particularly annoyed at being told they had to assist with home chores, like washing-up or cleaning. One labourer point blank refused to remove his muddy boots, because he’d ‘never had to and why should he start now?”
Costa: -
“The lack of sexual freedom in Portugal in 1975 was shocking, because Salazar had closed the doors of the country… and there was this culture of machismo … but they didn’t ask themselves about this culture, because their priority was what they felt they should do in terms of politics. After 48 years of dictatorship you lose the ability to think politically and lose your normal social conscience… you lose the skills. What is a meeting? What is a debate? How to express yourself?”
Finding the cast for this film was not easy, but Costa made a big effort to find some of the original people who had been in the cooperatives, finding some by talking to people in the villages: -
“[I found them by] talking to the Portuguese people and some of them are the actors ...the English, there is a German doctor and she went for holidays … she was one of the original volunteers. I [also] had to [spend time] networking to find them. The one that is there with the man and the sheep, milking and the other one that is a doctor, teaching people to use bandages… they were really volunteers from that time! They were very happy to have the chance to come back and be in the film … it really became very emotional for them. It’s like [re-living] your whole life when you return to visit where you were so many years ago and everything is different and you see faces that you recognize.”
When I chatted with Costa, he said that the people and the villagers had yet to see the finished film but that the experience had been beneficial: -
“When I did my research, I always talked to the ‘real’ people and they would say: ‘Yes! I want to participate!’… but others would vacillate… ‘I don’t know… it was so long ago’… but there was also the will, the desire to do this kind of film… the location, the old house… the old baths… were all real and still there from that time. It wasn’t necessary to build any sets… of course, they don’t use the collective wash house any longer because everyone has a machine now! There is the magical thing of being in the collective... there is the body language, all these things are very important in these kinds of situations … the actors enjoyed the experience a lot…
They haven’t seen the film yet. They will be seeing it in the Portuguese Festival in Lisbon [in the middle of November 2019] … we will have some wine and we will try to [share it all] because the film has a lot to do with friendship and confidence
I found them mostly by having a lot of lunches…. though I had a facilitator … Antonio Rodrígues… a sort of local casting director. He came from that area himself and was very helpful, suggesting people: ‘Maybe he can help because he knows how to sing…’ The actors have to feel confident and that builds up during these lunches and in conversations. We had two workshops with the actors before doing the film… to devise the dramatic situations for people to carry out [with improvisations]. There is one scene almost at the end, in which they are talking about the foreigners… “What are we going do about the foreigners…” that was [the only] properly scripted scene [as it was harder for them to express those thoughts] so we had a lot of conversations and people arguing: Saying NO… Yes. Yes… No... No.”
Costa was very moved by the spontaneous memories that emerged during the filming: -
“I like one scene that is very, very, very strong which is the one in which a woman says: ‘My body is mine and I do what I want with my body’… because she had a very genuine attitude. She didn’t like to be (sleep) with her husband… that was all true as she was describing her own real situation, but then she said that she had a new boyfriend. For me, that was a key scene.”
Clearly Femininity and Masculinity are one thing in words and quite another in reality.
José Filipe Costa is now working on a new production called a ‘History of the Film Spectator’. He plans to work with the same crew: -
“[It was] a new crew as it was the first time that I was working with them and it was incredible. I really loved to work with them because they were very cooperative and receptive. It is so important when you work with non- actors, non-professionals, to have a certain attitude with them and they had that. I had some references about them but it was chance, and now I am already working with them again.”
PRAZER,CAMARADAS! (2019)
Written & directed by José Filipe Costa
Producers João Miller Guerra / Filipa Reis
Cinematography Hugo Acevedo
Editor João Braz
Sound Design Carlos Abreu
Cast: António Rodríguez, José Avelino, Amanda Booth, Pat Butler, Mick Greer, Celia Williams, Joaquim Lópes, Filomena Matos.
