António Lopes from the film are and Ana Rodrigues mastering in architect filmed over a month the life in a factory, through a short film. The Place of abandonment is a university project that rose one of the many abandoned spaces of the wool era, in the city of Covilha.
How did it all start?
António Lopes: We met at a class entitled "film and other arts" whose aim was to produce a short film which brought together the cinema to an art, like music, dance, painting, and as it was obvious we had to do something related to architecture. After we start the idea of revisiting a factory. I am from Covilha and studied there. The city has always lived the wool industry and now a big part of these structures is the university and throughout the city especially around the river and streams are large abandoned buildings. We wanted to film the constructive details of a building.
Ana Rodrigues: We did not film the building as is done usually in cinema. As a rule, they are part of the narrative, here is the actual space that will tell its story through elements that were significant finding. Although over the short film we do not show the whole breadth of the building, because when you see the movie we want it remits not only to what happened in the building, but also the other stories. Hence the sound.
Why you chose that particular factory? What distinguished it from other abandoned buildings that exist in Covilha?
AL: It's the few factories that you can visit the inside. The last time we almost had no ground. We recorded over a month and going just once a week, always at the same time. And each time we went there always something was different, since people went to steal electrical cables and there was always a lot of machinery pile would be led by someone overnight. Our intention was to record details and not a factory that could be identifiable; I think we could have done it in another space. This, however, had the most important architectural aspects, woolen mills usually do not have windows, are enclosed areas where workers hardly saw the light of day, this one distinguished itself because all over the space there were large windows and it was one of many things we shot. There were interesting little details that always stood in the windows and there was hardly anything on the opposite side. There were many more elements that could have been recorded, the accounts of the material they wrote on the walls with pencils, I think it was a facility in terms of production and as we did not intend to recorded it at all this could be a good example, except architecturally, because otherwise they do not vary much inside.
It is a game of light and shadows that you look for?
AL: More or less. The initial idea is not about light and shadow. However, the means of production led to this. We recorded with a camera, with no lighting; the factory had no electricity and then tried to take advantage of daylight and windows that exist in order to make a more adequate film.
