Tea time with Casa de Vidro

An interview with Filipe Martins, director of Casa de Vidro

 Why were you interested in showing a homeless drug addict?
The topic of drug addiction wasn’t essential. What fascinated me about Carlos – the film’s protagonist – was a combination of circumstances that went beyond homelessness and drug addiction: first, the fact that he lived in an abandoned car exhibitor, a transparent glass house where he was also exhibited. This exposure or lack of privacy holds a natural poetic weight. This was what first compelled me to make this film. Second, the surrounding landscape: the edge of the Douro River, the arch of the Arrábida bridge in the background. Extensive or monumental elements that imposed a contrast with the house of glass and the figure of Carlos, accentuating the “out of place” feeling. Third, Carlos’s own delicate personality, who managed to earn the neighborhood’s hospitality (including mine) over the months he lived in the exhibitor. The film wouldn’t have happened if Carlos weren’t a fascinating human being.

 How did you get Carlos to accept being caught by the camera lens?
The first time I spoke with Carlos (and the conversation wasn’t premeditated), I promptly proposed to make a film with him. I immediately realized that he was a sensitive person and would be capable of exposing himself to the camera without inhibition (which in itself is a form of talent). He was also very enthusiastic about the idea. On the other hand, Carlos was extremely conditioned by his drug addition. He had no schedules, routines, phone contact… Sometimes he disappeared for several days. Despite his genuine willingness to participate in the film, the drugs spoke louder. For this reason, I never got the chance to do a single working meeting or rehearsal with Carlos before the filming. In fact, one day before the filming began, I was literally convinced that the film was not going to happen, after Carlos had missed all the meetings previously scheduled with him. Despite all this irregularity, we ended up finding a method: during the six days of shooting, me and a small team would go to the glass house early in the morning (when he was still asleep) and defined a daily filming plan according to Carlos’s will and rhythm. Sometimes he would disappear for hours, but he always came back. The fact that the script was faithful to Carlos’s daily life has made everything more viable because it didn’t go against his own habits. Basically, we just had to go along with Carlos’s everyday life.

 Did you maintain the timeline of the film sequences when editing?
No. The narrative we see in the film doesn’t always coincide with the timeline of the events that took place during the filming. Although the film has a strong documental component and remains truthful to Carlos’s daily life, there was a script and a shooting plan, like what is practiced in projects of fiction. This type of approach was the only possible solution to the limited time I had for filming. With only six days to film, it would be risky to go for a purely passive, documental, observational approach. This kind of approach would have required more time, a more enduring follow-up of Carlos’s life. And, even then, an actual chronology of events would be unlikely to be respected. This temporal fidelity is not so frequent, even in documentary cinema.

 How did you work on the moment when he enters the supermarket?
We were allowed to film at the supermarket, but the scene where Carlos actually walks into the supermarket was more delicate. We did it as discreetly and swiftly as possible, so we wouldn’t disturb the clients inside the supermarket. The security guy that appears in that scene was really the supermarket security officer (playing his own role).

 How much are you interested in the marginalized and do you have further projects picturing such characters?
I have a natural fascination for marginal or marginalized characters. I guess it’s a very common fascination. My first fiction short film – Dido and Aeneas (2007) – was also centered on a homeless man. But what really interests me are projects centered on real people who somehow inspire me. I like working with non-actors. In addition to Casa de Vidro, I directed another film (finished in 2018) with the same hybrid approach between fiction and documentary: Marias da Sé, a feature film centered on a group of women from the traditional community of Porto. I am interested in the anthropological and ethnographic gaze of cinema.

 Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
I think that the short film format is perhaps less tied to the film industry (it is not so often that we go to the movies to see short film sessions, except in specialized festivals). And this more independent landscape may, in fact, translate into more experimentalism. But I don’t think that the short film format alone offers more creative freedom, just as I don’t think it is easier to direct a short film. Tarkovsky said that “making a short film is almost more difficult than making a feature film: it requires an irreproachable sense of form”. Tarkovsky was not just referring to the need for narrative synthesis. It really is a distinct vocation of cinema, with its own laws of relationship with time and duration.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Carlos lived for a year and a half in an abandoned car exhibitor on the edge of the Douro river in Porto, very close to where I live. I often saw him in his routine between the parking lot of the supermarket and the trips to Aleixo (Porto’s biggest drug center). Gradually, Né Barros (producer of the film) and I began to grow a peculiar curiosity for this man: a drug addict who, despite his appearance, gained the sympathy and hospitality of the neighborhood, including the employees and customers of the supermarket. He was a man in his forties, made very fragile by long years of crack and heroin addiction, but still a delicate human being with a touching sensitivity. One day, early in the summer, I suggested to make a small film about his daily life. For six (short) days, Carlos opened the door to his “glass house” and shared everything with us: a world reduced to very little. Extreme minimalism of a consumed life. Carlos died during the post-production of the film in 2018. He never got to see it finished. But, from the start, even before the movie was shot, it became evident how important this cinematographic experience was for Carlos: a mission, a job, a meaning. And the possibility of memory.

Casa de Vidro is being shown in International Competition I13.