A vontade de voltar à Macedónia, desta vez com a câmara de filmar era antiga. Em 2005 eu tinha estado a viver em Struga e aí tive conhecimento de um festival de poesia. Ali observei as formas e a beleza da palavra poética, pela palavra, pelo som da palavra. Decidi falar com alguns amigos sobre o projecto. A Sónia Santos disponibilizou-se a assegurar a produção e depois de vários contactos conseguimos ter o Marco Fernandes na imagem (trabalha comigo há alguns anos). Em Junho de 2010 começamos a traçar o projecto e explicá-lo em palavras. Aqui vos deixo esse texto e uma imagem do lago Ohrid.
The day I arrived in Struga, a small city in the southern of the Republic of Macedonia, I met
the oldest poetry festival in the world. It was there that I proposed to discover the meaning
of Poetry. The presence of poets from around the world, with several languages, with
different visions of the written word, has made me question the meaning of the festival.
After several days to follow the poets and writers in the acts of the festival, from their
mouth, I discovered an endless variety of meanings for Poetry. As always, I worked with the
written word and deepened here a personal discovery that I now want to realize in this
documentary.
The idea is to return to the festival and gather as much information about the poetic word
in the voice of those who dedicated his life to writing and producing. Portugal has a rich
literature, but poetry is that our language has gained importance in, and projection. I'm
conditioned to it and would like to understand why a poetry festival takes place in the home
of the great Western civilization.
The contemporary artistic expression has been doing many experiments around the poetic
component, but the word remains, as the main medium that fills all other proceedings.
What leads a group of poets from around the world, to find themselves in front of a lake
between mountains continuing to spread their word? The idea is to understand how this
festival lasted over the times, and how more than ever before still makes sense.
The thought is to interview as many poets of the most varied backgrounds, and with them
to understand the importance of the sense of the poetic word. On our journey we want to
see what unites these writers and what they seek there after fifty years of the festival.
What is poetry today?
André Soares
Director's Statement