Experiencing Interruptions?

Variations on How to Farm a City

Sprout.
In the vacant lots against the hammering of buildings always under construction, between walls of granite, cement and sheet metal with rust, moss and cats; on the hillside between the train and the river, next to the traffic on the highway, facing the subway, vegetable gardens sprout.
In this city, the choreography of ancient gestures of cultivating the land is repeated day after day, without fail. Sowing, digging, harvesting, watering, eating, talking, resting, returning the next day and starting again.
The longest day of the year brings S. João and nobody goes to bed, but when the sun rises, the discreet gestures of resistance will restart.

  • Mónica Martins Nunes
    Director
    Sortes, The Ashes Remain Warm
  • Deniz Şimşek
    Artistic collaboration
    detours while speaking of monsters, CENTAURESS
  • Mónica Martins Nunes
    DOP
    Sortes, The Ashes Remain Warm
  • Deniz Şimşek
    DOP
    detours while speaking of monsters, CENTAURESS
  • Mónica Martins Nunes
    Editing
    Sortes, The Ashes Remain Warm
  • Deniz Şimşek
    Editing
    detours while speaking of monsters, CENTAURESS
  • Mónica Martins Nunes
    Sound recording
    Sortes, The Ashes Remain Warm
  • Deniz Şimşek
    Sound recording
    detours while speaking of monsters, CENTAURESS
  • Pedro Fernandes Duarte
    Producer
    The Metamorphosis of Birds, Ghosts: Long Way Home, RINHA, Entre a Luz e o Nada
  • Mónica Martins Nunes
    Producer
    Sortes, The Ashes Remain Warm
  • Dídio Pestana
    Sound Design
    About all and nothing, Spell Reel, It’s the Earth not the Moon
  • José Vasco Carvalho
    Sound Mixing
    Sycorax, Percebes
  • Caio Soares
    Color
    Club Splendida
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Variações sobre como cultivar uma cidade
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    29 minutes 14 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 28, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    Portugal
  • Country of Filming:
    Portugal
  • Language:
    Portuguese
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Porto/Post/Doc

    Portugal
    November 28, 2024
    Working Class Heroes
Director Biography - Mónica Martins Nunes

Mónica Martins Nunes (b. 1990). Navigating freely through different cinematic registers, her work entwines poetry and reality in deceivingly simple ways that yearn to unearth a wider understanding of both. In her films and sculptures, she looks for materials, places, people and traditions resisting on the shadow of a fast and seemingly all-encompassing society. While experimenting with the non-melodic musicality of moving image, her montage searches for a rhythm interweaving linearity with the cyclic nature of time. Her first film THE ASHES REMAIN WARM (Na cinza fica calor) was distinguished with the Golden Dove of the International Competition for Short Documentary at DOK Leipzig 2018 after premiering at IndieLisboa. Her second film SORTES premiered at Visions du Reél, and was awarded the German Short Film Award for Best Mid Length Film of the year. Both were shot with time and attentiveness in a one woman team. 
Since then she has developed a collaboration with Deniz Şimşek in a shared creative process. The film "detours while speaking of monsters" directed by Şimşek, was filmed in collaboration in turkish Kurdistan. After premiering at Berlinale Forum Expanded 2024 it received the German Short Film Award for Best Experimental film, among others. Filmed in the vegetable gardens of the city of Porto."Variations on How to Farm a City" is Mónica Martins Nunes newest film in artistic collaboration with Deniz Şimşek.

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Director Statement

The choice to make a country life in the city is to me, a discrete form of resistance in dissonance with a fast-paced, consumerist society. Vegetable gardens require regularity and continuous care. Understanding and proximity with the land and animals.
I have observed the people who farm them on several occasions prioritising interpersonal connections, community building, or mutual aid over profit. Even small acts become subversive when refusing something so overpowering as the value of profit or property in the society we live in. There is a strength in an improbable, understated existence, like a tomato plant I once saw growing from the gutter of a busy road.
The film moves organically from one person to the next, across the city. The gestures of labour and care, the hands on tools and on the ground, the vegetables they grow and the desire to live a country life in the city connect different people. Variations of a theme recurring since time immemorial.
At the same time they inhabit an urban space that surrounds them and becomes the intruding soundtrack for their farming work. Contrasting and creeping into it. Against the backdrop of a prismatic city that keeps on growing, the gardens sprout defiantly green, in defence of slowness.

At the height of the summer solstice, the city celebrates Saint John (S. João do Porto), a catholic celebration with pagan undertones. With traditions that are, according to my research, linked with the historical presence of vegetable gardens and fields in the city of Porto. The film spans over the Saint John day and night: starting with a prelude and followed by several variations (or chapters) each with their distinct montage approaches leaning on the structurally musical composition of the film.