QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FRON INDIELISBOA

The quaint, old-fashioned streets are cobbled, the building are charming and colourful, with a prominent pink construction adorning one of the corners. The leisurely space is dotted with comfortable metal benches, inviting residents and passersby alike to sit down, contemplate and interactive with the environment. No major events take place. A letterbox remains stands tall and unaltered, conspicuous in its bright red colour. It is the repetition of seasons that prevails, a leaf blower reminds us, while also revealing that winter is now approaching.

Filmmaker Madalena Fragoso – who also produced, photographed and edited the movie – captured the action over the period of approximately 12 months nearly two decades ago, between 2005 ad 2006. It is a never entirely clear why it took her so long to release this 62-minute film. Was perhaps because she never intended to make a movie, but a mere register of her routine? Or did she wish to create a piece firmly detached from the present, the ghost of a bygone era? As Flores does not answer these questions.

What is clear is that Fragoso set out to confine a square. That, in itself, ia a real geometrical challenge. The entire film is captured in the unusual 1×1 aspect ratio, making the image entirely square, more or less the shape of the titular Praça das Flores (“Square of the Flowers”). That too perhaps might be coincidental. Fragoso utilised the mobile telephone technology available at the time in order to create her exquisite movie, and many such phones possessed square cameras. Whatever the reason, the outcome is heartwarming and thoughtful. Fragoso captures most of the action from the four windows of the kiosk where she worked, only occasionally stepping out onto the open air and filming the sky and the passersby handheld.

A talkative, middle-aged blonde woman is a regular customer, her constant banter adding a new layer of casualness to the proceedings. A British tourist keen to engage with the local culture orders a ginjinha (local berry liqueur), before complaining about the harsh “r” and the excessive cheese in the queijadas de requeijão (a Portuguese sweet). He then expresses his gratitude with an abrupt “gracias”, apparently unaware that the Portuguese speak Portuguese instead of Spanish. Such snippets of mundane interaction and everyday life dot the movie.

Roughly halfway through the movie, the Square is partly sealed off. Uniformed men and tarmac machines begin paving the cobbled street. They conceal the scars of time, while also making the drive more convenient for vehicles. Suddenly Flores looks modern, without the natural signs of urban senescence. Fortunately for us viewers, Fragoso immortalised this little fragment of history before and after the work was carried out. As Flores is a simple and straightforward exercise on homemade anthropology. Cinema as a weapon for social liberation and personal liberation. A movie tiny in its execution, and significant in its purpose.

As Flores just premiered at the IndieLisboa International Film Festival.