Dir: Edgar Pera | Experimental/Fantasy Doc | Portugal 2024
Hats are the watchwords in this beguiling cinematic creation from Portuguese maverick filmmaker Edgar Pera.
Zooming in over the skyscrapers of New York this monochrome musing explores and draws comparisons between the enigmatic lives of two contemporary writers from the modernist literary movement: Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), who adopted a series of different noms de plume each with their own separate intellectual Identity, and the horror poet and novelist Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937).
Worlds apart yet united by their unique brand of science fiction horror the two engaged in correspondence, although they never came face to face. Pessoa was best known for his idiosyncratic heteronyms (a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling eg ‘tear’) to reflect on how individuals can also have multiple personas and different facets of their own lives. The multi-coloured frames contain a series of black and white photos of be-hatted men who each utter maxims from the annuls of literature.
The maverick Portuguese moviemaker Edgar Pera makes us of split screens, Ai generated images and a syncopated electronic score with his signature echoing voices (think O Barao) creating possibly the most meaty and accomplished experimental horror of his career to date. @MeredithTaylor
LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | CONCORSO INTERNATIONAL 2024