11 Donkeys Fall in an Empty Stomach

Mandragora Officinarum by director and visualist Tiago Pereira is a live video performance based on the fusion of religion, xamanism, and alternative medicine concepts. It unveils different fields of knowledge such as ethno-history, ethno-linguistics and ethno-botanic reinforcing the value of oral narratives, music and rituals in society. This post-cinematic event gathers samples of contemporary music and field recording on collective memory that deeps in dynamic and unconventional aspects of culture. The descriptions collected on popular beliefs, botanic and their contradictions with science and religion are put together with musical narratives aiming at new strings of creative thought that instigate and renovate today’s identity process.

“Since 2011, as an author and in a frantic and committed fashion, I record music and dance expressions of various kinds all over the country. From a great conversation with film director Inês Oliveira, who followed my work for a while, I raise fundamental questions in this film: Why do I do what I do? What is this all about? What are the relationships with the people? What differentiates me from scientific work? What is tradition?” — Tiago Pereira.

This film is essentially about the music of B Fachada, but it does not stop in Lisbon, venturing into the interior of the country and, like a postmodern Giacometti, risking a trip to the origins of what will be the “tradition”. We see old women, we see the countryside and we see the city. There are fragments of old stories, there is an attempt (not always achieved) to connect the old themes of the field with the original songs of Fachada and there is a fragile (and welcome) humanity that runs throughout the film.

A fictional documentary about the acceptance and understanding of the artistic deconstruction of ideas and themes that are rooted in a certain collective imagination of our society.

“The neighbourhood that is not a neighbourhood, the ending cycle, Lisbon that is economy, for a moment, or not. We do not know. Now we’re here, in Arroios, at the Intendente Square. The Intendente of women. They were the ones in charge, they dominate. The film brings those memories on stage, mixes them and gives them sounds and music. The neighbourhood that is not a neighbourhood, but a body, with each arm an artery, the legs ethnicities, blends. The dance of what still resists.” Tiago Pereira

Tiago Pereira invites geographer and author Álvaro Domingues for a journey through Terras da Chanfana. The film portrays a present without presuming to guess its future or longing for a gone past, looking into the question of what is a territory.

What is it like to sing a culture one doesn’t know? Cantadores de Paris comprises three Portuguese, an Italian, a German and six French, and is dedicated to cante alentejano. We brought members of the group to Serpa to blend them with local groups.