Through the eyes of F. J. Ossang
We may have discovered the Azores in the cinema in 1958, in the short film Les Hommes de la Baleine, directed by Mario Ruspoli. In this 24-minute documentary, viewers embark on a rowboat adventure with sperm whale harpooners. The film won the Grand Prize for Documentary Film in Yugoslavia at the Novisad Festival, as well as the Grand Prize at the Mar Plata International Film Festival. However, it was French filmmaker, writer and poet Jacques Plougeaut, also known as F. J. Ossang, who really helped expose the archipelago to film buffs. In 1990, Ossang directed Le Trésor des îles chiennes, an experimental black-and-white science-fiction feature. Twenty years later, Ossang returned to the Azores with Dharma Guns, presented in the Horizon section at the Venice Film Festival in 2010. More recently, the director returned to the islands for his film Neuf doigts (2018), the plot of which is based on the story of Magloire, a young man who, following the fortuitous acquisition of a large sum of money, finds himself pursued by a group of hoodlums. For this work, Ossang received the Leopard for Best Direction at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival. In these three films, the filmmaker brilliantly captures the volcanic rock-filled landscapes of the Portuguese islands. A native of the Azores, actor Zeca Medeiros (born on the island of Sao Miguel) is featured in several Portuguese TV films, such as L'héritière (2017) by Portuguese director Maria Joao Mira.
Other works, Burra de Milho and commission
Other works featuring the Portuguese North Atlantic islands include Rob Rombout's documentary Les Açores de Madredeus (1996), Kenneth Payton's Azores, from Lava to Wine (2011), Joaquim Leitao's Quarta Divisao (2013), Brazilian Luis Filipe Rocha's Cinzento e Negro (2015) and, more recently, Virginia Abramovich's Between Waves (2020). Starting in 2013, the Brazilian city of Rio Grande put the Azores in the spotlight, by creating the Mostra de cinema contemporâneo dos Açores. Under the initiative of the Burra de Milho cultural association, in 2017 they screened a dozen Azorean films, enabling the general public to discover the 7th art of this part of the world. Among the films screened that year were Ponta dos Rosais (2013) by Dinarte Branco, Tempos de Bairro (2014) by Sara Azad, Deportado (2012) by Nathalie Mansoux and A Viagem Autonómica (2012) by Filipe Tavares. In terms of institutions, the archipelago founded the Azores Film Commission in 2008. In this way, the Azores aim to promote the audiovisual and cinematographic production of their lands.
