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Seven years of increasingly abstract handycam imagery transfigured into a tentative seven-stanza cinematographic poem. Something of a cross between home movie aesthetics and a wordless documentary essay, Azul e Prata presents a personal (if materially-incidental) look at the ethereal and the unknown, nurtured by an underlying yearning to scrap-discourse on the subjects of time and memory, day and night, life and death.

(Please see Press Kit below for synopses of various lengths.)

  • João Coroa Justino
    Director
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Azul e Prata
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes 25 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 25, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    0 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Portugal
  • Country of Filming:
    France, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - João Coroa Justino

Born in Lisbon, Portugal, 1986, I have long cultivated an interest in films of all eras and sensibilities. I now aspire to make some of my own.

I am mostly interested in small-scale productions where the act of directing is akin to that of writing, photographing, or painting.

I have been working as an editor, of late, having recently finished work on documentary "Four Seasons and Autumn" (Pedro Sena Nunes, 2018).

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Director Statement

Azul e Prata started as an unassuming family-levelled project - an attempt to channel seven years of intuitive handycam imagery into a so-called film - but has gradually bloomed into a micro-obsession of sorts, in which every sound/visual cue has been measured over the course of several months in an effort to elevate it beyond its very roots, while acknowledging them in the process.

Throughout this process, images were largely distilled to their bare - and near-abstract - essentials in an attempt to detach them from their original context and allow them to reverberate from within, or without: to permeate them with whatever dramatic weight I found, or wished I'd found, peripherally or deep down. Whether or not it amounts to anything besides itself is up for grabs.

Aesthetically influenced by the works of Franco Piavoli (beautiful 4:3) and Joseph Cornell but fully committed to conveying my own perspective on the world around me, this short - perhaps too long? - experimental film has gradually come to aim for a nebulous sense of transcendence, while simultaneously embracing its - very valid, very honest and beautiful - home movie origins.

Done entirely on my own time and money, Azul e Prata has slowly become something very dear to me. It is my wish that it may have something to say to you, as well.