Tea time with Tio Tomás, a Contabilidade dos Dias [Uncle Thomas, Accounting For the Days]

Interview with Regina Pessoa, director of Tio Tomás, a Contabilidade dos Dias [Uncle Thomas, Accounting For the Days]

Did your uncle pass away many years ago?
My uncle passed away in 2005 while I was in France working on my film Tragic Story with Happy Ending. In fact, one time when I was calling my mom as usual, Uncle Thomas was with her and he wanted to speak with me. I was far away and it was moving to hear his voice. I told him, “Uncle Thomas, I love you very much…” and with his unique vocabulary and the reticence to express his emotions which is typical of his generation, he replied, “Of course, of course, we all love each other”. A week later he passed away, the victim of a stroke. I was happy that I’d been able to tell him I loved him. I used our last conversation at the end of the film.

Why did you want to delve into his obsession with numbers?
I’ve always been fascinated by Uncle Thomas’ habits, as well as his objects, his accounting sheets and diaries. I’ve always found his notes aesthetically pleasing and very mysterious; I wondered why I he did all that. I was very curious to know what he was jotting down and writing, but Uncle Thomas kept his notes to himself, it was his business. When I was a teenager, I looked at him and asked him, “Uncle Thomas, will you let me read your notes some day?” He was quite unsettled when he answered, “I cannot, they’re my private affairs, they’re important things!” It wasn’t until a few years after his death that I dared meddle and began reading his notes, and I could see that their content reflected his character: he methodically described his daily habits, in his limited, polished, unique vocabulary. I could hear him and visualize him as I read his notes, which are very touching, for, during his very modest life, he found something to write about every day. It was nothing exciting, just humble notes. I used some passages from them in the film. Among his stuff, I found a document, the draft of a letter that was clearly addressed to a(n unknown) woman. I don’t know if he ever sent it. I also found another two-page document with a long, meticulous, obsessive disquisition on the number seven and numerous ways of calculating the number, which he noted was the difference in age between his mother and father. I found these two documents very interesting: I decided to combine them and I used the mix in the film to accentuate his obsession with numbers and calculations.

Are you particularly interested in the question of models for self-development and do you see yourself making other films on the topic?
For one simple reason in all of my films, I approach atypical characters who do not conform to social models of “normality”: I’ve never studied film or script writing, my training was in the visual arts and painting. I wanted to make films but I didn’t have enough faith in myself to come up with purely fictional scripts – I didn’t think I had the cultural baggage or the necessary training in writing. So I started telling myself about my little topics, very simple ones but ones that I knew well: my experiences, my childhood and the people around me. Those were the world and the models I knew. I grew up in a dysfunctional, underprivileged family with cases of mental illness, like my mother who suffered from schizophrenia, and my uncle who had his “fixations”. The characters in my films are atypical because that was the reality I knew.  Gradually, I developed my own language. There are different levels of interpretation in my films, which I work on so that they can’t be exhausted in a single view of the film. I use references and subtle little clues hoping that the viewer notices them along the way. At first sight, or for certain viewers perhaps, it seems like there’s nothing there but a personal experience, but for others, I think I also throw out topics that can lead to deeper reflection, such as “the role of difference in society” or, in the case of this film on my uncle, “the legacy that one generation leaves the next”, a subject that is curiously a topic of discussion nowadays.

What are your next projects? Are you planning on other portraits of people?
My next project will be on my mother. I think I was lucky because as I became an adult I was able to come to terms with my childhood and accept my mother as she was and to love her unconditionally. In the last years of her life, this extremely energetic, different woman also began to have the same physical problems as most people her age. When she was nearly eighty, she could no longer walk, which made her even more anxious and unbalanced, since she was very frustrated she couldn’t let out her energy. It became very difficult – I looked for activities to distract her and I discovered that she could draw! That was a revelation to me. I was amazed and together we made a huge collection of drawings on my iPad. They’re drawings of faces, like portraits – naïf, childlike, but the expressions on the faces and their gaze are so strong and terrifying that they’re extremely fascinating and intriguing. I want to make a film that’s a homage to my mother and use those drawings, combining them with my personal style and approach the portrait of this woman who suffered from mental illness. She was unable to take care of herself or her family, she had a very violent husband and two daughters in a poor country and no one to help her.

Would it be correct to say that the film is a sort of apologia to tranquility?
My tranquility after finishing the film, yes, you could perhaps say that. I felt at peace when I finished it, I knew I’d been honest and that I’d really gotten to the bottom of what I could give. I think I’m loyal to the people who inspire me and who I represent, but the subjects I deal with are not at all innocuous, quit the opposite: my films always talk about people who are rattled by existential difficulties.

Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form offers?
Short films, and particularly animated short films, are my favorite format. They’re pure visual poetry and the format allows me to develop my personal language and the rich, elaborate imagery that I like creating. For me, short films are the greatest demonstration of courage and resilience among cinema techniques and formats. Most often we do our work without expecting anything in return, out of devotion to cinema and to art. I see this format as a sort of laboratory where you can experiment with new imagery, techniques and narrative forms that can be useful for renewing and refreshing the industry. I think the meeting up of those two worlds – the industry and arthouse films – can only be beneficial.

Which works did you draw from?
Cinema is an intersection of several artistic disciplines, and animation even more so. My inspiration comes from music (like Chico Buarque’s Construção), film (like Chaplin’s The Gold Rush), books (like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland). It depends on the project I’m working on. With regard specifically to animated films, they’re all short films and my top ones include: When the Day Breaks by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, Flying Nansen by Igor Kovalyov, Jonathan Hodgson’s The Man with the Beautiful Eyes, all of the films of Georges Schwizgebel and others.

Tio Tomás, a Contabilidade dos Dias [Uncle Thomas, Accounting For the Days] is part of National Competition F6.