Artist Profile: Marta Mateus on Time, Tales, and Dreams

Mythological perils. Raging bulls. Colossal oak trees.

“There are different layers of time, of historical moments, but they are all in the present — and they are also crossed by the time of tales, of dreams,” filmmaker Marta Mateus said in an interview with The Crimson.

Mateus — who curated the “A Terra! The Cinema of Marta Mateus” program at the Harvard Film Archive in October — takes Aristotle’s notion of what it means to be a citizen of the polis to heart.

“We are all beings — politic beings. So, to participate in the city, we have to do this process of thinking ourselves in order to actually participate — and not just [be] played,” Mateus said.

And participate she does. Mateus’ two films — 2017’s “Barbs, Wastelands” and 2024’s “Fire of Wind” — grapple with memories of political turmoil.

“What I’m trying to work with is all of these very different experiences of time through different narratives. And, I include history [as it] has a way of narrating and has a construction of narratives,” Mateus said.

Mateus set both projects in the ancient mountains of Alentejo, Portugal — the region of her marble-quarrying hometown, Estremoz. She features local non-actors. She references historical events. She depicts Alentejo as she sees it.

“We try in different forms to gather an idea, to convey a feeling or an expression of something that we cannot tell mathematically or in another way,” Mateus said.

“Fire and Wind” begins in the Portuguese foothills, where a bull forces people to take refuge in the branches of centuries-old trees — the story, to say the least, is not a universal experience.

“The very root of fiction or history is not completely out of the body and the soul,” she said.

In order to achieve her films’ message-forward narratives, Mateus turns to history and lived reality. She sticks close to the people she knows, the places she knows, the turmoil she knows. In doing so, her films emphasize a distinct sense of locality.

“I work with different narratives — so personal, intimate narratives and historical events. And, also, I work a lot with different expressions of oral tradition — so poetry, legends, tales,” she said.

The films’ reach, however, extends far beyond the local. Mateus’ films use historical events, specific locales, and particular references not for substance but as frameworks to excavate broader sentiments.

“But, of course, then you think the bull is a kind of mythical creature, and it traverses many, many different narratives,” Mateus said.

The Portuguese filmmaker acts, in many ways, as an archaeologist, using the material at hand to learn something about society — and the world.

“I’ve shown the films in so many countries — in Japan, in Mexico, in, I don’t know, Brazil, in so many countries — with different languages, with different contexts. And, people recognize something; it resonates,” she said.

“So, I suspect — this is not a theory — but I think it’s from [a] common sense of experience that, actually, we understand very clearly that, even if we have different languages, different costumes, different cultures, there is very clearly something that connects us and to make us not so different and not so particular,” Mateus said.

Mateus’ films find a common ground by doing something that is easy to say but hard to achieve: centering the human experience. However, while her work’s impact is broad, Mateus enjoys focusing the lens on her home country.

“There is something I’m familiar with — this place, this landscape, these people, this way of speaking — so that I know this material, I can work with this material,” Mateus said.

She did add, however, that she would be open to working in new places; for now, though, she is working on her third film, set in Alentejo.

Without a classical training in film, Mateus brings a fresh perspective to the field. As mentioned, she elects to feature non-actors in her films — a choice that epitomizes her broader goal. Even more, however, Mateus explains how she takes inspiration from the people around her.

As she said, simply, “I work with the people I love.”

It is her work with the familiar, perhaps, that allows her films to focus on something more fundamental and universal.

Mateus reflects on her time spent at the Harvard Film Archive conversing with “awake,” “alive,” and “vivid” students — sharing ideas with people who are “willing to think and to share ideas about their projects and experiment and share also between generations.”

“And, of course, it’s a place of diversity of people from many different parts of the world,” she said.

With her central goal of combing through societies to decipher human emotions, ideas, and experiences — and, importantly, to examine how these ideas pass through generations — Mateus’ experience at Harvard very much aligned with her work.

“I feel that, in somehow, all of these narratives are intertwined and live in different layers — but live in our present,” she said.

In unearthing the thoughts, sadnesses, guilts, and pleasures that have lingered in and around ancient villages like Estremoz for centuries, the films’ resonating universal appeal marks how poignantly they portray the human experience.

“We are not just the protagonists of our own story. We are moving ourselves in the mountains of different narratives and stories,” she said.

—Staff writer Thomas A. Ferro can be reached at [email protected].