"Let me tell you a story. It goes way back to the Vasco da Gama days, I was told.

They say an old black man was wandering the beaches scavenging for shipwreck debris.

He would collect the scattered remains and bury them.

It just so happens that one of those planks he hid sprung roots and reborned as a tree."

 

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                                                                                                                      In UNDER THE FRANGIPANI by Mia Couto

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When you open a book such as this one, what can one do?

As a producer, a film I say!

And we are talking about a film that counts with a script adaptation done by the original author teaming up with the film director. It can't get much better than this.

 

Mia Couto, is the author of his own name, as he explains in the Solveig Nordlund's documentary I had the privilege to produce.

Sol de Carvalho is the director and producer that presented to me a Mozambique way beyond Camões' Island of Love.

 

The anchorage of Time is the title for the film adaptation of "Under the Frangipani" and as Eduardo Lourenço as put it: "Mozambique: that immense veranda upon the Indian Ocean", where it all took place under a frangipani tree, now located, through the creative freedom of it's authors, to a 16th century Portuguese colonial fortress.

 

Such a beautiful and unique scenery to unwind this African hued crime thriller, where all the characters declare themselves guilty, upsetting the usual innocence of most criminals, in the prestigious western crime literature. A Murder on the Orient Express turned on its head.

And how extraordinary is the light that invades the characters as they embody this fantasy.

 

"FIRST THE WORLD WAS MADE UP OF MEN, THERE WERE NO TREES, NO ANIMALS OR ROCKS" Just men. Has the gods saw that the earth was getting overcrowded with the same people. They decided to transform some men in plants and other creatures. And also some in stone. The result? We are brothers, tree and creatures, creatures and men, men and rocks. We are all related, made of the same matter."

 

We are producer, director and author.

Rui Simões/ June 2020