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Interview: Portuguese filmmaker re-creating Lisbon in 3D images

Xinhua, March 26, 2016 Adjust font size:

Amid the cobbled hills of Alfama in the Portuguese capital, visitors can now see the city in 3D, through the oneiric vision of Portuguese filmmaker Edgar Pera.

Pera's "Lisbon Revisited" series, consisting of around 40 images, at first is seen in 2D but is soon transformed in 3D when using anaglyph glasses, offered by the Casa de Liberdade - Mario Cesariny where the exhibition is taking place.

The spectator is forced through a sensory journey to question his or her relationship with the city, from the viewpoint of a transhuman or alien.

"It (the film) started through a magic conjunction of a metaphysical reflection, with voices which occupy a garden," Pera tells Xinhua.

"My objective is always to create a form of art that is organic, a way of life, in the format of film or photography," Pera said. "Sometimes that is done by partitioning part of reality and demonstrating that even though we pass by gardens, or statues every day we are not aware of them, we don't give them enough importance."

Each photograph is accompanied by phrases like "To think is to be sick in the eyes" from poet Fernando Pessoa. The title, Lisbon Revisited, is also taken from a poem of one of Pessoa's alter egos, published in 1923.

The exhibition arose from a feature film Edgar Pera made with the same title, which was launched at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland in 2014.

"I'm from Lisbon and grew up in Moscavide and Olivais, so have a very close relationship with the city. I don't like to drive, I walk everywhere and I like to stop in Lisbon's gardens," Pera explains.

Pera started shooting his daily life in 3D in 2011, but has been filming his everyday life since 1985, when he purchased his first HDV video camera.

"I had the compulsion to film and register everything," Pera, who is known as Portugal's Man with a Movie Camara, (inspired by Dziga Vertov) admits.

Pera's first feature film was Manual of Evasion LX94, which features interviews with Terence Mckenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Rudy Rucker.

Pera won the Pasolini Award, together with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal, in Paris in 2006.

His film Virados do Avesso made its debut in 2014 and was his first movie to have more than 100,000 spectators. Endit