Director João Paulo Simões talks about his most recently completed work, music video Amar Salgado for Portuguese band Nanashi:

"Right from the outset, this project was blessed with mutual understanding and respect. I could immediately tell that this was a very personal song for Sara Belo (frontwoman from Nanashi), so I made sure I sampled the right elements from our early conversations in order to bring her essence into the music video outline. On the other hand, there was a genuine interest on their side in having as much of my cinematic vision incorporated into the video as possible.

This freedom opened the gate for a challenging approach, in a narrative structure already infused with a sense of mystery, fate and the quintessential Portuguese feeling of saudade.
Bursting out of the song and forming a dramatic core for the proceedings, came a central section in which not just the song was 'suspended', but the whole pace dared to slow down.
This anguished, comtemplative section is mostly carried by the actress Sílvia Almeida's terrific performance and it's punctuated with a sound design which I'm particularly proud of.The return to the song is triumphant and the overall result of part film/part music video displays what could perhaps be summed-up as hybrid vigour."

With special thanks to: Teatro da Garagem, who made their professional technicians and space at Teatro Taborda available; Frederico Corado (for his kind generosity) and Enrique Rodriguez (for making the post-production of this project a little less turbulent);

For more information and music from Nanashi, visit:
http://www.myspace.com/nanashiportugal

For other music videos and work by Filmmaker João Paulo Simões, visit his Youtube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/JPS3

Amar Salgado - Nanashi from Joao Paulo Simoes on Vimeo.

Independent Filmmaker João Paulo Simões talks to Laércio Costa about the upcoming film project Londoners.

Laércio Costa: To what extent has the fact that you’re a Portuguese filmmaker living in Britain influenced your involvement in this project?
João Paulo Simões: It could definitely be said that my involvement in Londoners has a very personal angle. It’s being written by a close friend and collaborator (London-based actor Alexandre Guedes de Sousa), but, as it was presented to me, I immediately related to the concept on a human level – as someone who’s come to this country in the pursuit of what he couldn’t attain in his own.
There’s also, and perhaps more importantly, the artistic/professional side. The way I see it, this project is the culmination of a lot that I’ve been expressing and exploring since I started living and working permanently in the UK. It will incorporate a lot of what my experience in the documentary field has taught me, as well. Particularly, the work I continue to be commissioned to make under the banner of Frontier Media, which has an ethical commitment to worthwhile causes and has helped promote social integration of Refugees and Asylum Seekers, amongst other things.

LC: Despite the multicultural side of London, Londoners brings racism to the foreground. Don’t you find that these two aspects together remain a paradox? How will the lens of your camera view and illustrate this?
JPS: Without a doubt. England is one of the European countries which most and better promotes the integration of different cultures within established communities. But that comes at a cost. There’s the unspoken, yet quite generalised, view that such approach can be in detriment of the traditions which have held this country together for centuries.
For almost everything official you’re required to do here, you’re asked to fill an Equal Opportunities form, in which you’re requested to state your ethnicity, etc. This might be in place to ensure that there’s no discrimination, but it also very immediately puts you into ‘a box’. What Londoners will explore, as a means to illustrate this dichotomy, is the way you can end up paying a very high price for either not knowing your own ‘box’ or attempting to move to another one. With such a rigid Class System still in place, such concept will unavoidably extend to issues other than race.

LC: This very same multicultural side and its subsequent tensions have already been explored in other film projects. What will Londoners add and bring of different or new to the 21st Century spectator?
JPS: I often say, when talking about this project, that I’m still to see to this date a multi-character film that fulfils me as a viewer. By that, I mean, more specifically: a piece with different narrative strands, interweaving the lives of various characters in a way that is not contrived or too reliant on the notion of chance. The portrayal of a modern, urban city and how it determines the fate of the characters is one of the most imperative concepts to get right, in this particular case.
As in a lot of my fictional work, this is about identity. Becoming a Londoner can be perceived not just as a new identity, but also as a new status through which the characters believe they can succeed. And there’s on the other hand, the cultural identity you somewhat corrupt (if not sacrifice) along the way.
This is where reality will begin to seep through the narrative. The film will incorporate the accounts of real people – and the bridge between those and the dramatic elements will be established by a fictional young Scottish filmmaker who, when forced to take on a job as a street fundraiser, initiates a personal documentary project entitled Oysters (itself a reference to the TFL card all Londoners use in real life - and through which their whole lives can be, to a great extent, mapped out).
In this factual film-within-the-fiction film, individuals are captured on camera and given the chance to briefly share the reasons for leaving their country of origin and what their hopes were once they arrived in London.

LC: Londoners has been labelled on your blog as “thought-provoking”. What reaction does this project intend to “provoke”?
JPS: The main thing for us is that this is a project which is entirely relevant for our times. It’s deeply rooted in social observation and will therefore invite the viewer to relate on an emotional level to the transient quality of the different characters’ lives.
With this, comes a good degree of realisation. We expect actual Londoners to watch it and, once they step out of their homes, to feel their surroundings as a continuation of what they’d just seen... To perceive the people sitting next to them on the tube as characters from the film...
The film will also touch upon key-aspects of contemporary British society and some uncomfortable truths of the recent History of this country. But it’s the humanity of the characters and real life contributors which will give it its global appeal, making Londoners about our place in an increasingly alienating and insular modern world.

João Paulo Simões is the Producer/Director of the notorious Antlers of Reason and various other fiction films, documentaries and music videos. Amongst the projects he has in development is the documentary ‘Beyond Climate Change’ - http://beyondclimatechangedocumentary.blogspot.com/
Laércio Costa is a Portuguese Copywriter with experience in Journalism - http://laerciodcosta.carbonmade.com/

Londoners - A Frontier Media Presentation

Developed as a TV series, Londoners is a thought-provoking, character-driven project deeply-rooted in social observation. Entirely relevant for our times, this Cinematic experience explores the transient lives of different characters and concerns the inherent tensions one finds in the increasingly multicultural British society of today.
Londoners is written by Alexandre Guedes de Sousa and directed by João Paulo Simões;
Preview is a Frontier Media Presentation, featuring Linda Valadas, Milton Lopes, Thomas Thoroe, Hannah Day, Alexandre Guedes de Sousa, Eleanor James and Mandeep Dhillon; Music by Sieben;
Special thanks: Daniel Saraiva, Rui Jesus, Rafael Saraiva, Enrique Rodriguez, Sarah Coleman, Matt Howden and Alex Usborne;

Torpor Revisited - Coming Soon

Duchess, Duchess - 5th Anniversary Online Release

Captüra Filmes is proud to host the feature-length drama Duchess, Duchess and celebrate its 5th Anniversary.
Produced in 2004 by I.M.Perfection Pictures, previewed at the Cannes Film Festival that same year and later bought and broadcast by Sky TV, this was the fourth film by Writer/Director João Paulo Simões.

The mind that would later bring us Absences of Mind, Antlers of Reason and Stolen Waters & Other Absences can be seen here at work with the same daring, yet lucid approach.

Preceded by two minutes of dark screen, with only but a few echoeing sounds before the 'curtain' is raised, the film is a deliberately stark affair. The fictionalised theatrical roots inform each scene and sexual jealousy soon gives way to all-encompassing guilt.

It's not just the male psyche that is deconstructed and laid bare here, but the ultimate incompatibility between verbal exposure of past desires and an intimate present relationship.

For the delight its worldwide fans, Duchess, Duchess is now available in its entirety online and can be viewed here: http://www.vimeo.com/4855460

Antlers Casting News

Actors Alice Carder and Alexandre Guedes de Sousa have joined the cast of The Thalus Trilogy. They will feature in both Antlers of Reason II: Morning Interim and Antlers of Reason III: Nether Edge Temptress. Alice Carder plays Lady Gwen Greene, whilst Guedes de Sousa, a regular in João Paulo Simões's films, returns to the role of Lucas - from the original Portuguese-language Captüra Filmes productions Torpor (2003) and the soon to be released Torpor Revisited (2009).

Visit http://antlersofreason.blogspot.com/ for more information.

Before Captüra...

As the feature-length film Duchess, Duchess (2004) is set to be made permanently available online, Captüra Filmes looks back on the early work of Writer/Director João Paulo Simões.

His first short film, Imogen Meets The Merchant (2001), announced the arrival of the promise of a new approach to filmmaking and established the mythological/supernatural angle which was to become more prominent in later projects. It delivered an ambitiously fragmented narrative, which successfully wove together Past and Present under an all-encompassing sense of yearning.
In Overture (2002), Simões explored much darker aspects of the human condition. An acknowledgement of Cinema's inherently voyeuristic nature was combined with a cyclical structure, which was in turn drawn from J.S.Bach's counterpoint works. The composer's work was to become one of the most important and crucial references in the ensuing Captüra Filmes productions.

Ignored and neglected by its producers at the time, Duchess, Duchess is probably João Paulo Simões's most conventional film. Deliberately theatrical and old-fashioned in tone, the film was to have its broadcast rights bought by Sky TV and achieve a cult status - its central subject of retrospective jealousy perhaps ringing true to the most attentive spectators.

Unprecedently (and in response to a degree of pyracy it endured), the film will be soon made available online in its entirety.

The Official Trailer can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7kgiqN-Ifk