12/05/2017 - Pedro Maia’s feature debut, a collaboration with musician Paulo Furtado and photographer Rita Lino, was shot in the Californian desert

The setting for so many films — just to mention one, remember Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point? — the Californian desert remains an inspiring spot for artists in different fields to explore their visions and ideas. Now, for the first time, it is making its mark in Portuguese cinema too. Fade into Nothing [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which credits Pedro Maia as director, is the result of a creative collaboration between the Portugal-born, Berlin-based filmmaker, photographer Rita Lino and musician Paulo Furtado, aka The Legendary Tigerman.

Furtado, who composed the film’s omnipresent and hypnotic score, stars as a man embarking on a road trip across the desert. He carries with him little more than an old tape recorder, a notebook and a copy of Doug Richmond’s How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. This book might have inspired one of Radiohead’s old songs, but it’s not challenging enough for Furtado’s character, who wants to do more than simply disappear. He wants to reach a vacuum and ultimately fade into nothing. Make no mistake, though: the film is no self-destructive existential tale, but rather an art installation in the form of a feature film that seeks to fuse body and landscape into an alienating experience for the mind.

Seemingly an ideal background to open the doors of perception (yes, Jim Morrison was a fan of this sort of landscape too), the desert is filmed in super 8 mm with a studied fascination. There may not be anything innovative about the way that fascination is materialised on screen, but Maia and Lino’s lenses are certainly both effective and mesmerising, managing to capture the textures and roughness of rocks, sand and roads. These realistic outdoor moments alternate with intimate bedroom scenes shot in cheap motels, again perpetuating a certain American imaginary.

Narrative moments — Furtado’s tape recordings and some of his body language, which flirts with performative dance  — get mixed in with hallucinogenic trips featuring red lights, female bodies and an unexpected butoh dance — all shot like a hybrid of Kenneth Anger and Jodorowsky’s old experimental films.

Produced by Rodrigo Areias’ Guimarães-based company Bando à Parte, Fade into Nothing is the cinematic strand of a larger project which also includes the film concert How to Become Nothing and a forthcoming record by The Legendary Tigerman. Cinema is not virgin territory for the musician, who has previously contributed tracks to, and also appeared in, other films by Areias, like Ornamento e Crime.

Fade into Nothing is not scheduled for theatrical release as yet. It is now being shown in the national competition at IndieLisboa, which comes to an end on 14 May.