Portuguese director Edgar Pira said that the book “Guerrilla War on the Asphalt... The FP-25 Group and the Portuguese Time,” by writer and former member of the organization Manuel Ricardo de Sousa, formed the starting point for his new film “Guerrilla War on the Asphalt.” However, the project took a different path as it developed, transforming from a treatment of historical facts into a film that mixes personal memory, politics, and cinema.
Pera added, in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat via Zoom, that the work has become for him a journey through more than 4 decades of his life and his films, not just a retrieval of an event that occurred in the past, stressing that what concerns him today is not recounting the history of the organization and D’Souza’s experience within it, but rather asking questions about the present and the future through the cinematic image.
He explained that the project began many years ago, and did not come in response to current political events, as some might think, indicating that the idea had been on his mind since he read the book in the early nineties, while the actual step came during the “Corona” pandemic, when he wrote the script with the work team, and succeeded in obtaining the necessary funding to complete the film.
The director added that producer Rodrigo Arias played a pivotal role in expanding the vision of the project; He suggested that the work not be limited to telling the story of the armed organization, but that it should also turn into a reflection on Bera’s personal journey with cinema, and on the concept of “guerrilla cinema,” which he continued to believe in throughout his career.
The events of “Guerrilla War on the Asphalt,” which was shown at the Locarno Film Festival, take place in Portugal in the early 1980s. The film is based on real facts, but presents them in a form that mixes reality and fiction. It tells the story of a quiet university student who finds himself involved in a radical organization, before his journey ends tragically following a bank robbery, when he is killed by police bullets, and then his body is subjected to abuse by the crowd.
The director highlights Manuel Ricardo de Souza’s experience within the armed organization, and combines it with his personal journey in filmmaking according to the “guerrilla cinema” style. Thus, the two stories are intertwined in a work that blurs the boundaries between history and biography, between political struggle and artistic rebellion.
Berra said that he was careful from the beginning that the film would not turn into a work that regurgitates past traumas, explaining that he told his producer, from the early stages, that he wanted to make a film that looked to the future more than it was preoccupied with the past.
He added that this trend prompted the project to gradually change; It is no longer just a treatment of the story of a political organization, but rather a multi-layered film, presenting different points of view on contemporary reality and cinema itself, as one of the tools through which the world can be understood and re-questioned.
He explained that the film also deals with the meaning of independence in the film industry, stressing that this issue has become, for him, no less important than the political topic that the work addresses. He pointed out that the real question was not how to narrate the events of the 1980s, but rather how the artist today maintains his intellectual and creative independence in a world where commercial and ideological pressures are increasing. For him, cinema is not just a way to tell, but a way to think and test ideas.
He added that the most difficult thing he faced while making the film was not converting the book into a screenplay; Because literary adaptation, in his opinion, remains an issue that can be dealt with artistically, but the real challenge began when the project turned into a journey in his personal life.
He said that he had to return to an archive that spans more than 40 years, and includes photos, audio tapes, and footage that he took since his beginnings, along with family memories and personal experiences related to friends and events that left a profound impact on his life. Which made the writing process much more complicated than he expected.
He stressed that the scenario was not actually completed except inside the editing room; He re-watched this huge amount of archival material, and chose from it what served his final vision. He pointed out that he spent more than a year viewing his personal archive, before he began building the final form of the film.
He believed that this stage was the most difficult on the psychological level. Because it forced him to confront his past with all its happy and painful moments at the same time, but he was convinced that this confrontation was necessary for the film to be honest with itself and with its audience.
Pera stressed that he was not concerned with presenting the film's characters as heroes or villains, but rather as people who fell under the influence of different ideas and ideologies. He explained that everything he presents is his point of view, along with other points of view, including what the media presented about that stage, so that the public can form its own judgment. He stressed that he does not want to take the place of the judge, but rather that “the viewer is the jury” that reaches its own conclusions.
He explained that the only aspect in which he adopts a clear position within the film relates to the method of filmmaking itself; It compares two different models in dealing with cinematic material. He pointed out that one of them represents the cinema that is made according to the requirements of major platforms and huge productions, while the other represents the cinema that he believes in, which depends on the portable camera and working freely in the street, away from production restrictions.
He added that this is the only position he clearly adopts within the film; Because he believes that the independence of film making is no less important than the independence of the idea itself.
He pointed out that the film will continue to generate new readings even years later. Because what he poses is not related to a specific historical event, but rather to questions that are renewed with time. He explained that he might watch the film in a different way 10 years later, but he believes that the feeling it carries will remain the same. Because the issues he discusses go beyond the time of the story itself.
Berra concluded his speech by stressing that freedom will remain the issue that preoccupies him in all of his films, whether it manifests itself in politics, art, or the way cinema is made. He considered that the film, despite starting from a historical incident, does not ultimately talk about an armed organization or a specific political stage, but rather about the human being, his choices, and his responsibility to defend the independence of thought, in a world where attempts to impose certainty and eliminate doubt are increasing.
Based on his passion for the ancient Egyptian heritage, the historic buildings, streets and alleys of Cairo, and the customs, traditions and aspects of daily life in the popular neighbourhoods, the Egyptian artist residing in Italy, Gamal Malika, launches his latest exhibition, for which he chose the title “Nostalgia”.
The exhibition, which contains 30 paintings belonging to the expressive and affective schools, was opened on Saturday by Major General Khaled Fouda, Advisor to the President of the Republic for Local Development, at the “Picasso Gallery” in Zamalek (central Cairo), and will continue until September 28, and includes 4 artistic groups of paintings in which places play a starring role, as the theater of memories and treasures of the past.
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, the artist Gamal Malika said that the idea of the “Nostalgia” exhibition stems from his nostalgia for the past and his desire to restore his memories in Egypt, especially the places where he lived in the Egyptian countryside in Minya, and his memories of the Nile, historic Cairo, and Fatimiyah, with its streets, buildings, and picturesque heritage landmarks.
The exhibition’s paintings are distributed in groups, each of which expresses a unique area of nostalgia. There are heritage landmarks, including the tombs of Imam al-Shafi’i with their distinctive domes, and Al-Muizz Street, and there is another group in which the magic of the Nile is evident, which the artist’s brush flirts with in his special style of photography and coloring. In another group of paintings, we find greenery extending over wide areas bordered by a sky whose blue mixes with milky white, to embody the atmosphere of the Egyptian village in its various details, while a fourth group emerges that monitors the popular neighborhood or the streets of the modern city, in which various elements are spread, such as crowded buildings, modern cars, and “tuktuks,” and some of them monitor festive customs and traditions, such as wedding decorations, Ramadan decorations, and others.
The artist emphasizes the different levels of color that he used, despite the multiplicity and difference in the state of “nostalgia” that dominated him. He says: “In the countryside, I painted my memories in the fields from my grandfather’s estate in Minya, and the green color dominated areas of the work, while in Fatimid Cairo we are talking about ancient buildings famous for their brown and yellow colors. In the popular neighborhoods and streets, flashy and somewhat hot colors predominate, while Nile paintings rely on cool colors, such as blue.” Pointing out that in his paintings of the Nile, he depicted his relationship with the Nile since childhood, and the movement from Sharona and Maghagha Island in Minya to the other side of the river, via sailboat, which is what he painted in paintings that recall that period and these memories.
Regarding the popular neighborhood, Gamal Malika, who presented dozens of exhibitions during his artistic career in Egypt, Italy, and other countries around the world, confirms that he previously devoted a special exhibition to the neighborhood and the popular markets in Egypt, and from this period came paintings that monitor the markets and crowds, and many aspects that may seem random on the one hand and intimate on the other.
Regarding his artistic style and the school to which he belongs, he says: “The origin of all art, in my opinion, is expression and effect. Whether the art school is cubism, surrealism, abstraction, or other; All of them must be subject or ultimately included in expression and influence. If the painting is not influential and expressive, it lacks the philosophy of artistic creativity,” he said.
In conclusion, he confirmed that he held a group of exhibitions in Italy, and the Egyptian character was predominant in them. He added: “This is one of the basic features of my work, which in my opinion contains an aspect of originality, and therefore it receives admiration, appreciation, and interaction from recipients abroad.”
