Marcelo Gomes and Karim Aïnouz Viajo Porque Preciso, Volto Porque Te Amo

How did you begin the creative process of this film?

Marcelo Gomes: We made a trip of almost 2 months filming images […] collected them in Super 8, snapshots, 16 mm, video; then watched them several times, discussed it during years. Karim did his feature films, and I did my own. After that, we decided to get together again, because we loved those images, and wanted to return to the same feeling that we had during the trip.

Karim Aïnouz: We shot most of the film in 1999, and some images this year. We also used some photographs taken around 2006. The process was more the work of a collector, stealing images, recording sounds. We had the intuition it could become a film but the main goal of the trip wasn’t to think of which film it could be.

I read that your film was a response to new medias, like the Internet, which are contaminating cinema. How did you develop that idea?

KA: I think more about the idea of a journal. Few years ago it was [hand]written, then type-written, now it’s blogs, photoblogs, videologs, but all of those are just different formats of journals. The most influential for us was the classic, hardcore, physical photo album.

MG: Yes, in 1999 the photo album influenced us a lot, but as artists of their time, we’re also influenced by things that happened during these 10 years. I think that’s the amazing thing about this process: the film was finished in 2009, but it has the influences of a decade!

KA: I think the film was perversely influenced by the Internet: something that is a mystery to me is why do you have a blog? I don’t understand why you are publishing your intimate life, publicly. Our film is like a stolen diary, which is completely different to a public diary. It’s more like an old school photo album that you kept, then opened up and put on the Internet.

How was the experience of working side by side?

MG: We worked together during the shooting, the scripting and the editing… and fought every day! Very creative fights, the creative process is the discussion. We both share the same taste in films, the same ideas about cinema, we share our desire to make films that will make you happy, we make films to talk with people.

Why Acapulco in that final part?

KA: When we finished discussing the script I thought: "I want this guy to have to dive". Somehow we came up with the Acapulco idea. It was the precise feeling we wanted to express. Diving, refreshing, in clear water. If you go to a waterfall, when you come out of it you’re really re-energized. Water is the best image to translate that feeling of refreshment.

Laslo Rojas