Interview with Maddi Barber and Marina Lameiro
Paraíso describes a forest about to be torn down, which is called «Paradise » by inhabitants of the nearby village. How did this project originate ?
MB: The film is born from a very long relationship with the people of the village. I was born in that village and had made some movies there. One of my friends there asked me if I could document the process of transformation of the territory. The film project is part of a territorial redevelopment project to alleviate the lack of water in the territory. One of the actions consisted of cutting down the pine forest to convert it into crop fields, a use that had been given to the land until the pine trees were planted in the 1970s. With me documenting the process they wanted to somehow keep the memory of how it had been before. I said yes. Over time, I involved Marina in the project and we decided not only to document, but also to make a film about the process.
You include images which seem to be obtained by topographical machines, which are then animated. What are these images exactly ? Why did you want to include them in the film ?
MD and ML: These images are obtained by LiDAR technology (Light Detection and Ranging or Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging). The mechanism is simple, it works by pointing a small laser at a surface and measuring the time it takes for the laser to return to its source. This technology is used in geology, seismology, criminology, architecture and forestry management. LiDAR generates a cloud of digital points that can be displayed on a computer to generate a digital image of the forest. These 3D programmes allow a virtual camera to be inserted and to move around the space
As we wanted to portrait the forest before it was gone, we thought in this way we could somehow contain it digitally. The image also allowed us to reflect on different ways of perceiving a space.
At key points, two women who are never seen discuss, in voice-over, the forest and their relation to it. Who are these women, why did you not want to show them, and why did you on the contrary want to approach the subject through their voices ?
MD and ML: We can hear three women. One is the medium who communicates with the trees, we can see her in the film walking through the forest and sitting by the trees. The other two voices are ours, the filmmakers. Is true that we don’t see the medium while she’s communicating with the trees and the reason behind one has something to do with the camera we were using. We used a bolex that is quite noisy so all the sound had to be non-sync. In the scene of the medium we prioritize recording properly the sound over getting an image of the moment. Furthermore, there was also a desire to generate a space for intimacy. The reason for us as filmmakers to not be on screen was mainly a practical one, we’re filming and doing the sound ourselves. At the end of the film, Maddi asks to Maia (the medium) if she can tell something to the pine trees, since she was born and grew up in the village which named the place Paraíso.
The second half of your film is built around a camping expedition in which children and young teen-agers build a camp in the forest. Why this narrative choice, built around children, echoing the presence of the baby in the first scene ?
MD and ML: The film portrays a forest that is going to be cut and the relationship that the humans who live in the area have with it. We felt that kids have a particular way to inhabit space and we were looking forward to discovering the forest through them. The forest then becomes a playground, where you can climb pines, make huts, hide and throw pine cones at your friends. In a way it is true that there are some echoes with the first scene, where there’s a baby with his father as the adults catalog the forest. And there’s also this man that climbs a pine very agilely. We felt it was beautiful that those adults that were now measuring the forest were also once kids that inhabit it in a different way.
Interview by Nathan Letoré
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