An Interview Miguel Gomes about his short films

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“Tales in Tales: A Retrospective Glimpse of Miguel Gomes’ Short Films” is a curatorial programme dedicated to the celebrated Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes as part of the Astro Filmmaker in Focus section at the 8th Beijing International Short Film Festival (BISFF).² Featuring seven short films made between 1999 and 2013, it offered a comprehensive overview of the evolution of Gomes’s cinematic vision. 

Gomes’ short film career was significantly supported by the Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival, which provided funding and a platform dedicated to short films. In this context, a generation of filmmakers emerged, working extensively with the short film format and collaborating with one another. Portuguese film critic Augusto M. Seabra referred to Gomes and his contemporaries – who made their mark on the festival circuit in the 1990s with short films – as “the Shorts Generation”.³ Their works demonstrate that short films are not merely stepping stones to feature filmmaking but an artistic form in their own right.

In an online conversation, Gomes revisited his short films one by one and shared insights into his filmmaking trajectory and cinematic vision. In the latter part of the discussion, he elaborated on his understanding of cinema and reality by referring to The Wizard of Oz as a meta-cinematic example. Ultimately, the interview is both a detailed glimpse into his short films and a gateway to his broader film philosophy, helping us to better understand his recent feature films, which are characterised by intricate narratives, intertextual references, self-reflexive strategies and geopolitical allusions.

– S.T.

Let’s start with your first short film Meanwhile (1999). Under what circumstances did you begin this project? Could you talk about how you transformed from a film critic to a director?

The fact that I was a film critic at that moment when I directed this first film – I think it had an influence because I had the reputation of being quite severe in judging films. I think the commission for the funding that gave me money to make this film was to give me a lesson because they wanted to show me how difficult it was to make films. Then I made the film, and I don’t think it is a good film. I’m sorry to say so, but this is my opinion about the film – it’s not so good. But maybe no one noticed at the time. I had the opportunity to continue, and I improved a little bit over time by making other films.

Meanwhile came to me on a flight from Macau to Lisbon. I don’t remember exactly, maybe in 1996. I was in Macau, spending some months there and helping a colleague from a cinema school who wanted to direct a film in Macau. I was working like an assistant director or at least helping him with the project. When I came back, I was looking out the plane window, seeing the clouds, and listening to music on the airplane’s music circuit. Doris Day was singing “Que Sera Sera.” That’s how the film begins.

Meanwhile

The only idea I had was to start with this song and the image of clouds. It felt quite light, almost defying the laws of gravity – the song with the clouds. I had a goal for this film, which was to try to keep the film up all the time. This is a little bit theoretical as an objective, but it was my objective at the time. I thought that I would start with “clouds and Doris Day” and try to keep the film in the clouds and sky. This was how it started in Meanwhile.

I don’t think it’s a good film. I can explain. I think it’s too poetic in an ostentatious way, a little too “on your face.” I’m not proud of that.

In Meanwhile, you portrayed a love triangle, which seems to echo themes and characters in your later works, such as Tabu, Our Beloved Month of August and The Grand Tour. Could you speak a bit about this? Why do you think love stories or triangular relationships are significant to your work?

Half of the films, half of the songs, and half of the books are love stories. So it’s not a very innovative thing – it’s common ground for fiction. Of course, when you have a triangle, when you have three people in a love story, it has the potential for conflict and a fictional potential. I just follow what is natural for fiction, and a love triangle is something that belongs to the traditional forms of fiction. So it’s not something unique to me – it’s for everyone, almost.

Your second short film, Christmas Inventory (2000), in many ways, introduced elements that you’ve used repeatedly in your later works, such as blending fiction and documentary styles, parallel narratives between image and sound (voice-over), and scenes depicting the filmmaking process. In doing so, you create multiple narrative layers running in parallel. Can you tell us about the background of this short film? How did you come up with the idea of creating these parallel narratives by means of image, voice-over, folk stories, etc.?

The Christmas Inventory was a long time ago. I’m talking about a film from 25 years ago. I’m trying to remember the film. Oh yeah, there’s a voice-over at the beginning. In fact, it’s my grandmother – she was alive at that moment – and she’s the one telling the story. I asked her to tell this story.

Well, I think this film – my second film – is much more important to me than the first one, because I discovered something – something I think was my way of making films. It has a very artificial style, not being realistic, almost like theatre…It’s cinema that doesn’t look like life – it’s something else. At the same time, it also has this kind of documentary feeling because, for most of the time, we’re shooting kids. I found it was better not to manipulate them – just wait for something to happen. I remember a shot I made almost at the beginning of the shoot – it’s one of the first shots in the film – where a little girl is crying because someone took her bike. This wasn’t planned; we gave her bike to another kid without discussing it, and she reacted naturally while being filmed. She started crying because the other kid had “stolen” her bike. I would never have staged this – it just happened. I understood at that moment that I could get things that didn’t come from me but came from the situation we were creating. This could bring good surprises – unexpected things. Sometimes there were bad surprises too, but I think the good ones were more frequent.

This film has no main characters. It’s not like a traditional fiction film with main characters. It’s a portrait of a family on Christmas Day, mixed with images of the crèche and the clay figures of Christmas. In the end, it feels almost like a documentary. At the same time, it’s almost like an animated film. We mixed different materials, like gift paper from the presents, and the film feels very dynamic – it moves a lot, partly because of the music, which is always present. The film has a very close connection with things we did later, also in feature films. It was an important film for me.

In the end of Christmas Inventory, the director’s “CUT” is included to reveal the filmmaking process. How did you conceive this idea?

I just didn’t cut until I said “cut” in the editing. Normally, I should have cut three seconds earlier, but we decided it was better to keep it because there was a kid who bumped into something. He started to cry, and I said “cut,” so the two things happened together.

I don’t know if you play this game in China, but there’s a game called the “Dark Room.” There’s a kid in the dark room trying to recognise the others, and the others can move around. The kid has to try to reach the others, grab them, and say their names. Normally, this game ends with someone getting hurt because one of the kids falls. So, this was just a normal Dark Room game.

This film – like some of my other films – is a film with the awareness that it is a film. We wanted the viewer to have the same awareness, to realise they are watching a film, not reality.

Gomes at BISFF

In 31 Means Trouble (2002), the title cards referencing The Wizard of Oz and the Portuguese Revolution of 1974 seem crucial to understanding the film. By doing so, you appear to use the conflicts between people of different ethnicities as well as between people and animals to signify social hierarchies and broader socio-political divisions. Could you elaborate on this? Why did you name the film 31 Means Trouble?

When you say in Portuguese, “You are in a big 31,” it means you are really in trouble. 31 Means Trouble was my third film. It came just after Christmas Inventory and before Kalkitos. 31 Means Trouble was like a reaction to my first film because it features the same actress, but it is very different from my first film. One of the problems in my first film was that I was over-controlling. I was over-controlling the actress, so they were too restricted by me and didn’t have enough space to be themselves. I tried to compensate for this, so I made a very different film, allowing them to improvise most of the dialogues. It had no script – just a location to shoot. 

We decided where to shoot, which was a sports park outside Lisbon. The situation involves a couple, a boy and a girl, who are robbed after a tennis game. The film is a mix of cinema, The Wizard of Oz, and also politics, because it seems to touch on class struggle. There are these rich kids and the guys who rob them, and references to the Revolution of 25 April in Portugal. This mix is something I can’t explain much further – it’s very difficult to talk about this film.

31 Means Trouble may be my favourite of all the short films. I learned a lot from this film. It’s the most punk film I made at that moment. I took risks by shooting without a script, doing things I continued later, like shooting for a few days, then editing, and deciding what the film would be and how it would continue. It was a very organic process. 

You’ve mentioned The Wizard of Oz in multiple interviews, and it seems to reflect your idea of cinema. Is that the case?

You can explore very different things in cinema, but there are two aspects that often seem in opposition: what we call reality and what we call the imaginary or fiction. In The Wizard of Oz, you have this girl dreaming about another world. She’s very bored in the countryside in the United States, but she believes there’s another place that’s different. Then, there’s this tornado, and she – and her house – fly to another world, which is a very different place called Oz. And Oz is cinema. It’s like a parallel world, which doesn’t follow the same rules of the world we live in. On one hand, you have daily life, and on the other, you have this movement into another world, which I think represents cinema. And in my films, I’m dealing with this as well. That’s why I often joke – though I don’t know if it’s entirely a joke or maybe a bit true – that all my films are, in a way, remakes of The Wizard of Oz. Strange, weird remakes of The Wizard of Oz. There’s often this movement from reality to a fictional world with different rules, and I explore this in different ways across my films, even in 31 Means Trouble. I think that’s where it all started.

Kalkitos (2002) is a work where you experimented with music and silent film techniques. How did you come up with the idea of combining these elements in this project? What does the title “Kalkitos” mean?

Kalkitos is something I had in my childhood. Like the early ‘80s, you had these cards with figures, with drawings. It was almost like a tattoo. Now you have these tattoos for kids where you use water to apply them, but before that, there was this thing called Kalkitos. It was a plastic board with a drawing. If you used a pencil, you could rub it over the drawing, and it would transfer onto whatever surface you were working on, like a piece of paper. It was essentially a transfer.

In this film, you have grown-ups behaving like children. It was commissioned by Vila do Conde Festival for its 10th edition. They asked me to make a film around the number ten because it was their 10th anniversary. So, I made this film, and it’s a little bit like Kalkitos. It looks like a silent film – it has music, but no spoken dialogue – and it features intertitles, like in silent cinema. These intertitles, for me, are like Kalkitos. I mean, you can put a sentence there, and the characters, who I wanted to resemble manga characters from Japanese animation, would open their mouths in this quite strange, minimalistic way.

What’s interesting is that if you changed the sentences, it would still make sense. The film would become something different, but it would still work. Looking back, I realise I could have made ten versions of Kalkitos with the same exact images but different text on the cards. That would have resulted in ten very different films. Unfortunately, I’m only having this idea now – 25 years after making the film – while talking to you in China. It would have been much better if I’d made ten versions of the film, all with the same structure but changing the sentences on the intertitles.

Kalkitos

In Kalkitos, why did you choose to create a disjointed musical effect?

Why is music so central in my cinema? Because I like music, and I put things I like in my films. I don’t put things I don’t like. I like music and I include it in the films, using very different kinds of music. Talking about Kalkitos, we did something interesting in this film. The editor and I were responsible for editing the music, and we called this process “DJing.” It wasn’t just sound editing; it was more like what a DJ does in a club.

We took the same piece of music and created samples, manipulating it by playing it backward, repeating loops over and over, and deconstructing it. The music started to transform and became something completely new. One of the aspects we enjoyed most while making the film is manipulating the sound and the music to create something different. We used the same piece of music from beginning to end, but we interrupted it, restarted it, looped single words, and explored its possibilities. The result was a constant recreation and manipulation of the same music.

Later on, I made a feature film – or maybe three films, since it’s a trilogy – called Arabian Nights. In Arabian Nights, I used the same approach by working with a single Latin song that had many versions. We used these versions throughout the trilogy. I never thought about this before, but Kalkitos might have been connected to this idea of returning to the same music repeatedly, with each return transforming it. For Arabian Nights, it was about continuously presenting new versions of the same song.

In Pre-Evolution Soccer’s One-Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League (2004), you experimented with video game art by utilising the engine of the PlayStation game. Could you tell us more about the creative idea behind this project?

Technically, it’s almost not a film; It was a commission. At the time, my friends and I had these contests while playing PlayStation, this game FIFA. I liked the moments after a goal when the players would start to celebrate. With the joystick, we could loop their movements, and it looked like they were dancing. That was the idea.

In fact, I wanted to make another film at the time. There was this place in Lisbon with palm trees, in a neighbourhood full of bars I used to visit. And there were rats living in the palm trees. All the palm trees were moving because of them. So I thought, okay, I’ll shoot one minute of these rats in the palm trees and add the soundtrack of birds from The Birds by Hitchcock. But then I realised that The Birds is maybe the only Hitchcock film without a soundtrack, so it didn’t work. There was no music to use. I ended up making the PlayStation movie instead – a one-minute film.

Honestly, I find it very challenging to make proper films in one minute. It’s one of the hardest things to do in cinema. So I decided to have a very, very long title, which is almost 20% of the film. So the rest is not even a minute. 

Could you share the creative background of Canticle of All Creatures (2011)? What inspired the story?

This film, I think, is quite different from the earlier ones I made. The previous films were really the beginning of my filmmaking journey, my first experiments before transitioning to feature films. Canticle of All Creatures came between my first feature, The Face You Deserve, and my second feature, Our Beloved Month of August. I shot this one just before Our Beloved Month of August, and I believe it’s more interesting than the earlier shorts. It has three very distinct parts, each shot in a different way.

Canticle of All Creatures is inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals in the Catholic Church. For some reason, he becomes amnesiac in the story. Toward the end, it reflects the well-known legend of Saint Francis preaching to the animals. The first part of the film feels very punk in its approach. We shot it in a straightforward, raw style with a Bolex 16mm camera. It’s a hand-cranked camera, which means you can only capture very short shots at a time. We went to the location and filmed over two days, capturing nuns, dogs running around, and anything else that caught our eye. The process was spontaneous and rough, reflecting a very do-it-yourself aesthetic.

The central part of the film focuses on a discussion between Saint Francis and Saint Clare. This was my first studio experience before I shot Grand Tour, which also heavily used studio settings. This section was intentionally theatrical and artificial. The dialogue unfolds as Saint Francis, having lost his memory, tries to piece together who he is. I wanted this conversation to occur during sunset, with the lighting gradually changing to reflect the transition from day to night.

The final segment consists entirely of found footage, primarily from animal documentaries, like National Geographic. Instead of showing the beautiful aspects of nature, I chose the more brutal moments – animals preying on and devouring one another. It’s like a war between animals. In this segment, the animals are given voices, performed by children, who express jealousy and resentment. The animals are unhappy that Saint Francis loves one group of animals more than others, which leads to a chaotic war for his exclusive affection. I think Canticle of All Creatures is more compelling than the short films I made before it. It explores themes in a way that feels richer and more layered.

Redemption 

Redemption (2013) is a fictional work made with various archival materials. Could you share the creative process behind this work?

Redemption is my most recent short film because it was made just after Tabu and before Arabian Nights. At that moment, I wanted to create a very confessional kind of film, a very intimate film. The idea was to have the memories of four people unfold like monologues – four individuals who, in a way, are regretting something about their past. They’re unhappy with aspects of their lives and feel a sense of guilt. I wanted these people to remain anonymous at first, so when you hear what they say, you don’t know who they are. But in the end, they get a face. Their regrets aren’t about their political behaviour, which we might know them for, but rather about very intimate aspects of their lives.

We just looked up the biographies of these four politicians on the internet in a very basic way. Then, we wrote about them in a confessional tone. In the end, there’s this clash between the intimate dimension and the public one. These figures are very well-known globally – or maybe not all of them. For instance, there’s the Portuguese Prime Minister at the time, who wasn’t that well-known, but the others were prominent. They were also known at that moment for implementing very conservative policies in Europe.

Did you write the script first and then search for certain archival materials? How did you edit these different archival materials to form the structure?

Even though it was my last short film, I honestly can’t recall whether I wrote the texts first or researched the images first. This film came from a certain context. At that time, I was working as a mentor at Le Fresnoy, a French film school in the north of France. I spent a year there mentoring students. The objective for the students was to create their own films during that year, and as a mentor, I discussed every stage of their filmmaking process. Mentors, however, were also obligated to create their own films, and that’s how Redemption came about – it was made in the context of this film school.

As for the process, I think there was a point when the three of us – me, the editor, and the screenwriter – researched some images. We also had people in other countries helping us because the segments are in four different languages: Portuguese, Italian, French, and German. I remember reviewing the images, receiving more, and deciding whether or not to buy the rights to use certain footage. It was all about experimentation. I can’t clearly recall whether I had the texts first. Maybe I had the texts, then saw the images, started editing a bit, and then went back to tweak the texts. It was probably like that. The process isn’t very clear in my mind, but it was iterative – moving between text, images, and editing.

How do you understand the short film format? Your exploration of the short film format also seems to relate to your preference for stories with different parts. For example, The Beloved Month of August has three parts, Tabu features two main sections in addition to the prologue, and Arabian Nights Trilogy could be seen as a compilation of multiple short films. Would you agree with this point?

For instance, Arabian Nights can be seen as a succession of short films. We produced it almost like that – making one tale and then moving on to another. The production lasted a year, and during that time, we were essentially making short films, one after another, restarting each time. 

Even though some of my films might feel like short films combined – Arabian Nights being an evident example – I’ve also made other films with two parts, which creates a kind of dialectic structure. A feature film with two parts allows the second part to interact or play with the first, something you can’t really achieve in a short film.

In a short film, you don’t have as much room for segmentation. However, in Canticle of All Creatures, I divided it into three parts, and in Redemption, there are four parts. I enjoy working with segments that have their own logic because they create something richer than a single standalone piece. That’s often the challenge with short films – you don’t always have the time to develop multiple segments.

Potentially, it’s more difficult to make a good short film than a feature film, because a short film ends so quickly, and you don’t have as much time to explore. You must be more precise. To create something truly powerful in 20 minutes or so is quite challenging.

Do you think short filmmaking is significant for young filmmakers? How can early-career filmmakers benefit from making short films?

In Portugal, we don’t have a fifth or sixth generation like China, but we also name our generations. My generation is called the “short film generation” because years before I started shooting, there wasn’t a systematic production of short films. It wasn’t until the 1990s that funding programs for short films were introduced. I was part of the first generation to benefit from this, along with other Portuguese directors, like João Pedro Rodrigues, who is a little older, and others who are a bit younger. There was a film festival in Portugal I already mentioned, Vila do Conde. It played a very important role in the renewal of Portuguese cinema by showcasing these films. So, there was this entire context. I was lucky because it was a good moment for Portuguese cinema, and I benefited from that. 

Things are more difficult for young filmmakers today than in my time. Of course, this is also an industry issue. Filmmakers often start with short films because producers don’t trust them to make a feature film initially. They provide funding for short films as a kind of test. The problem is that some filmmakers use short films merely as an introduction card to prove their capabilities, rather than fully committing to the short film itself. In the end, you can tell whether someone is genuinely invested in what they’re making or just aiming to get an opportunity to make a feature film. 

That said, I believe short films are as much a part of cinema as feature films. I don’t make any distinction. Whether it’s a short film or a feature, you need to be fully committed to the project itself, not thinking about your career but about the film you are creating. It’s worth noting, though, that some filmmakers – like Orson Welles – started directly with a feature film. He made Citizen Kane without ever making a short film. So, while the industry often dictates this progression, it’s not a universal rule.

Gomes shorts at BISFF

It seems many of your works can be considered “meta-cinema.” Why are you interested in exposing the process of filmmaking and incorporating a sense of self-reflexivity into your work?

Cinema is significant in my life. I love watching films, whether they are old classics or contemporary works. But I don’t know if cinema is more important to me than other aspects of life – like my personal experiences, the people I know, and the connections I make. Life itself is a key source of inspiration. Cinema is undoubtedly a part of my life, but so are music, literature, and other art forms.

Being a film critic, though, was somewhat accidental for me. I’m not disparaging film criticism – in fact, I strongly defend its importance. It’s crucial to have knowledgeable critics who engage in thoughtful dialogue about cinema. While great insights can come from such platforms like Letterboxd, which allow everyone to write reviews, there’s still value in having professional critics whose job is to think deeply about films. Unfortunately, nowadays, the space for film criticism in newspapers and other traditional outlets has shrunk. When I was writing, there was much more room for such discussions. This reflects a broader cultural shift: cinema is no longer as central to people’s lives as it was 20, 40, or 50 years ago. While it’s still possible to create and watch wonderful films, cinema’s role in society has diminished compared to the 20th century.

As for my own path, I attended film school with the goal of becoming a director. However, I was specialised in production but I wasn’t a great student. No one wanted me on their crew, which is understandable. A friend working at a newspaper offered me a chance to write about cinema, and I took it because I didn’t have other options. That’s how I ended up writing about cinema for about four years.

The reflexive elements in my films, where the crew, the camera, or the filmmaking process itself is shown, don’t directly stem from my experience as a critic. This approach began during Our Beloved Month of August. That film is a portrait of life in the Portuguese countryside during a specific time of year, with its festivals, rituals, and performances. We were capturing a system of traditions, but at the same time, we were part of that system as filmmakers. It felt more honest to include the filmmaking process within the film itself. I remember a specific moment during the shoot when we were using two cameras, which was unusual for me. I found it challenging to manage two cameras and hide one from the other. So, I decided to embrace it: one camera would film the other, along with the crew – camera operators, assistants, and all. At one point, while filming people dancing, the crew started to dance too. It felt right to acknowledge that we were there, making a film but also part of the world we were documenting. We were not separate from it – we were part of the dance. These moments also remind the audience that they are watching a constructed reality – a film, not reality itself.

In some interviews, you have mentioned that cinema holds too much power, as it often tries to tell the audience how to feel. However, you seem to favour films that offer viewers more freedom to choose, make connections, and interpret according to their own interests and experiences. Could you elaborate on this point?

I think cinema often puts the audience in a very passive position. The film controls everything – what the audience sees, thinks, and feels. It dictates the experience, leaving viewers with little power. This imbalance creates an unfair relationship where all the authority lies with the screen, and the audience is merely a recipient. To me, this feels like a form of tyranny. I believe it’s important to push back against this kind of domination by creating conditions within the film that allow for different interpretations. A film should offer space for the audience to engage on their own terms, to think and feel independently. For example, it’s fascinating when different people watch the same film and come away with completely different conclusions or interpretations. They’ve seen the same images, yet their experiences and thoughts diverge because the film didn’t impose a singular, controlled perspective. This, to me, is an ideal outcome – a film that depends on the viewer to complete the experience.

Each film approaches this differently, but it’s always a priority for me. When people ask if I think about the audience, they often mean in a commercial or industry sense – whether I’m trying to make a film that appeals to everyone. But that’s not what I mean. Trying to please everyone is impossible, and thankfully so, because art shouldn’t aim to control everyone.

For me, it’s about creating opportunities for the audience to connect with the film in a personal and meaningful way, without being completely manipulated by it. Every viewer is different, so I think about them as individuals, each bringing their own perspective. I want to ensure that they have enough space within the film to move, explore, and arrive at their own conclusions. Sometimes, I imagine making a film as similar to designing a building. I know that people will walk inside the space I create. My job is to construct paths for them to follow – not so rigid that they feel trapped, but not so loose that they become entirely lost. There’s a balance: the viewer needs enough structure to find their way, but also enough freedom to explore and make their own discoveries. This is the balance I strive for in every film. I think about the viewer as someone who will step inside the film and experience it. My goal is to create a space where they can engage, think, and feel – not as prisoners of the film, but as active participants in its world.

Endnotes