Monica Baptista director of Territories (Portugal)

Monica, when you got involved in the first Cinetrain workshop, your life wasn’t that closely related to Cinema. How did Cinetrain change your life? I had no training in filmmaking, I studied painting. Before Cinetrain, I was already connected with cinema but in a very experimental way, I was making films for, let’s say, more conceptual and aesthetic purposes… Territories was my first documentary and certainly changed my way of thinking about making films. For the first time I made something with political context, a movie where you can find strong and real feelings, statements and different points of view. With the Cinetrain workshop I found a process of work that interests me. In some points, it made me grow up in dealing with the team work and anxiety in situations of tight deadlines that often depends on strong feelings and intuition to give a direction to your film

2 years already passed since film Territories was made. How do you feel about this film still going on the festivals worldwide? When I’m working on something, in this case, when I was doing Cinetrain, the Transsiberian experience seemed much bigger than any movie I could do in that context. A film itself is always a fragment of reality. When you decide to point the camera in only one direction, it’s more a question of loss than conquest. But, with this film I think I got something very real, an honest story, very powerful in the experience that the story represents. At every festival or screening of this film it’s important to enable people to see the movie and live with it, feel it and, above all, let them think about the issues present on the movie…

Your film is one of the most successful of all made during the Cinetrain workshops. Do you continue making movies? I’m working between experimental cinema and documentary. With documentary cinema I found something that interests me a lot and also allows me to deal and talk about issues that concern or passionate me in a more direct way than in my art work. Nowadays, both arts come together easily, and it seems to me a powerful union for my future work…

And how did your taste changed so far? Any plans for documentaries or fiction films? Have anything in production already? Yes, I am working on a documentary in Super8 about a small village on the north of Portugal. And I’m finishing right now a very personal film, a film-diary, which runs over the last two years. In this film you can see places from the Japanese sea to a small village in Portugal where I’m shooting my next documentary… It’s a kind of notebook of images, an ark of memories full of people, feelings and ideas. I will show it in an exhibition in November at Serralves - contemporary art museum in Portugal. I recently received an award for this project.

Before coming here to Adana you already visited some festivals. What is the most important for young filmmaker on such events? Do you visit any discussion panels or master-classes? I think the most interesting in festivals are people you meet there. Watching films is obviously important but behind these films there are very interesting people with a lot of stories… Here in Adana, I had nice and important conversations with other filmmakers. Especially in a place like this, located in the Middle East, the Mediterranean film selection brought very interesting films from many countries… Kurds and Turks, Israelis and Palestinians… They gave me a great opportunity to understand and think about their history and culture. I also went to Theo Angelopoulos’ master-class and visited a discussion panel about filmmaking in Palestine. I can say that somehow in festivals we get in touch with different perspectives and points of view on life and filmmaking. It is surprising but some films give me the feeling of “first look”, of something “new”. And it provides me with new desires and passions. And at the same time it gives me an understanding of the responsibilities of a filmmaker’s work.

Besides NISI MASA and Moviement who promoted the Cinetrain films in the festivals, another Cinetrain participant Iris Olsson was distributing her film Between dreams herself. Who helped you distributing Territories and how does it work in Portugal? Is there any institution for young filmmakers that helps them to learn how to promote? I’m not an "expert" in promoting or distributing my films, but my movie Territories was distributed by The Portuguese Short Film Agency, a platform connected with Vila do Conde Film Festival and with the ICAM - Portuguese Film Institute… there are also other institutions in Portugal, like Apordoc (connected with DocLisboa) that promote Portuguese documentaries in festivals and other places…

Territories won the Altin Koza special jury award for best short Mediterranean documentary.

By Hanna Mironenko