Patrícia Dourado, Mirian Tavares

Towards a Living Fiction: Between Real-Time Composition and Working with Fragments in Leonardo Mouramateus’ Screenwriting Practices – ‘There is a Film I Carry with Me’

University of Algarve, Portugal

Our presentation explores two experimental tools in the production and screenwriting practices of Brazilian filmmaker Leonardo Mouramateus: real-time composition and working with fragments. Real-time composition is a trait that the filmmaker incorporates into his work through a dialogue with the improvisation and composition practices of Portuguese choreographer and dancer João Fiadeiro. And working with fragments of scenes, framings, and sensations, cherished and nurtured over the years, was one of the methods found by Mouramateus to stay in creation – films that he claims to carry with him. Both practices are working methods employed by the filmmaker to create and make his films viable within the gaps of production in an industrial system, especially in the realm of fiction cinema, and in the face of economic limitations imposed by this system in a region without an industrial base. These two aspects contribute to the presence of what we call ‘Living Fiction’. A desire for artifice that becomes life itself and doesn’t separate art and life; quite the opposite: it feeds off life while simultaneously serving as nourishment for it and for the next fragments to be created. The study is grounded in the filmmaker’s archives of creation, with a specific focus on script versions, drawings, notes, recorded rehearsals, and interviews related to films such as “António one two three” (2017) and “Life lasts two days” (2022). The theoretical and methodological foundation of this study is Cecilia Salles’ Critical Theory of Creation Processes, as studied in the Research Group on Creation Processes, at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), and the Visual Arts and Creation Processes Working Group, at the Research Center for Arts and Communication (CIAC) of the University of Algarve (UAlg).

Professor in the Master’s Programme in Creation Processes at the University of Algarve. Postdoctoral Researcher at the Arts and Communication Research Centre (CIAC) at the University of Algarve, and member of the Creation Processes Research Group at PUC-São Paulo. She holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Communication and Semiotics from PUC-São Paulo. Studies Creation Processes in general, and Cinema in particular, with particular focus on screenwriting practices in contemporary cinema. Screenwriter with experience in fiction, animated series, documentaries, institutional and digital education.

Associate Professor at the University of Algarve. Coordinator of the Arts and Communication Research Centre (CIAC), and Director of the PhD Programme in Digital Media Art. She holds a PhD degree in Contemporary Communication and Culture from UFBA and a Master’s degree in Communication and Semiotics from PUC-São Paulo. Develops research and theoretical work in the fields of Cinema, Visual Arts and Literature. Curator of numerous artistic exhibitions, essayist, art critic and columnist for Meer Magazine and Algarve Informativo.