Located inland in Portugal’s south, the Alentejo region is known and still plied by researchers as a cradle of humankind, where dolmens – megalithic tombs – dot the open countryside, perfectly preserved in their “schist” rock forms. Perhaps you can call it Portugal’s own Stonehenge. Previously known for co-directing The Tsugua Diaries [+leggi anche:
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trailer
intervista: João Nunes Monteiro
intervista: Maureen Fazendeiro e Migue…
scheda film] with Miguel Gomes, Maureen Fazendeiro’s first solo feature, The Seasons [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film], takes the boots-on-the-ground archaeological research the area attracts as her overall cinematic method, prying open Alentejo’s metaphorical surface so that vivid history spills out. Applying fictional annotations to a documentary base, the film’s hybrid form unites pedagogy and poeticism, but with less depth and understanding granted than we’d like. It has premiered in Locarno’s main competition.

Born and educated in Paris, whilst currently based in Lisbon, Fazendeiro’s work up to now has shown an interest in the rituals of isolated communities, and their outputs of labour and occasionally art – communities whose ways of life resemble modern utopias. Discovering the folk memory and eternal pastimes of Alentejo, we can’t suppress her subjectivity’s role in determining what we see and the film’s tone of address; another director might visit the region and offer an entirely different and more intimate focus, providing further authenticity.

Structured chronologically around the passage of the seasons, pertaining to the care of a native breed of Serpentine goat and the harvesting of bark to manufacture cork (which remains a key trade for the country), the feature proceeds on two main tracks of exposition. Diary excerpts from the pioneering early 20th-century archaeologists Georg and Vera Leisner are presented in German voice-over. Their accounting of neolithic structures in Iberia was collated as their homeland was bombarded by the Allied forces (their republication a decade ago provided Fazendeiro’s initial spur for her film). The academics’ clear-minded yet still-agitated reflections are heard over handsome, wide shots of the areas described – the past of previous millennia, living memory and the enduring present merged in one audiovisual manoeuvre. This presence of pre-civilisation is the impetus for myths handed down amongst the area’s inhabitants (one of which is very literally visualised in the second half) as well as the source of obvious local pride. Fazendeiro’s shots of the goats roaming free in natural harmony with their environment, and the artisanal curing of goat’s cheese along with the cork, are seen in context with the rise of co-operative farming, as revolutionary and communist activity in the area grew once Salazar’s dictatorship withered in the 1960s and famously ended on 25 April 1974.

Amidst the pessimism and defeatism of current times, Fazendeiro showing Alentejo and the Castelo Velho excavation site as outposts of beauty and possibility is endearing. Still, her enthusiasm butts up against our more hard-hearted scepticism, as it begins to seem idealised – a feeling buttressed by the lush, 16mm-shot greenery and the fey, imaginative vignettes – that this large area can sustain all this positive and cheery representation. We whisk in and out in 80 minutes, yet our total comprehension of the locale and its cross-section of natural and political significance stays a tad superficial.

The Seasons is a co-production by Portugal, France, Spain and Austria, staged by O Som e a Fúria, Norte Productions, Filmika Galaika and Nabis Filmgroup SRL. Its world sales are handled by Square Eyes.