Directors: Matties Dielemans & Guus Engelbregt
Running time: 30mins
Every film faces its own unique set of problems, when it comes to getting the project off the ground, seeing it through production, and finding a way to distribute it. But beyond that minefield, all documentaries face the same key question: how much of myself should I put in this movie?
As tends to be the case with the most nightmarish questions we face, there is no right answer. Pretending there is nothing of a filmmaker in a documentary, presenting it as unfiltered reality, is disingenuous – every scrap left on the cutting room floor, every decision to shorten or snip a sequence, is a choice that constructs meaning in some way, so sometimes inserting yourself into the actual lens is not only forgivable, but emphasises your process. At the same time, when too much of you creeps into frame, you risk leaving your audience feeling patronised or manipulated.
It varies between different projects – and the true art of documentary filmmaking, is understanding the time, the place, the context that this decision hinges on. One of the most remarkable things about Matties Dielemans and Guus Engelbregt’s short Buskers of Porto, is the maturity the duo showed in making the absolutely correct call here. While both have a background in the film’s subject matter – having each played guitar in their youth, and busked on the street to “earn some extra pocket money”, as their director statement puts it, they both ignore the siren’s call bidding them to step into the frame, and take centre-stage for themselves.
Following a handful of street musicians, looking to make their way in Portugal’s second-largest city, we are thrown into the action without narration, an opening text crawl, or any other kind of demonstrable hand-holding – besides the name of each musician in bold print, serving as chapter headings for each of the movie’s segments. Indeed, jumping in this way could have been thoroughly embarrassing – not just because it would speak to an insistence to see them as musicians on par with those in the film, but also a tone-deaf equation to a number of people who are extremely down on their luck.
Fortunately, Dielemans and Engelbregt stear clear of this route, and instead demonstrate supreme confidence in the quality of the footage they have amassed to tell us the story. Whether that confidence comes from the fact that they spent huge amounts of time filming fruitlessly, to capture a few moments they could hang a narrative around; or whether they had the good fortune of those moments falling into their lap after no time at all, I do not know. But what I do know is that either way, a filmmaker might have squandered those moments, through a heavy-handed approach that overtly told us how to feel about whatever we were witnessing.
The power of what is on display comes in part from a slow-burn effect. When one of the subjects – Francisco, a man in his 70s who performs shaky karaoke in public places, because he cannot afford to retire – starts making vaguely xenophobic statements to the police, nobody jumps out to immediately take him to task. Instead, we’re given the breathing space to consider his situation; then we are given footage which provides it with an important contrast.
First, then, Francisco already serves as his own advert against prejudice: a man unquestionably failed by Portugal’s economic and political elites – the threadbare nature of the social security net means rather than enjoying his twilight years in peace, he is forced into a performance his heart clearly isn’t in, in the hope of charitable donations to keep a roof over his head – his main complaint is still somehow instead directed at Brazilian migrants, who have even less than him.
Second, after Francisco has embodied the crab-logic that has helped create, and maintain the societal disrepair that has left him with all the tragic indignity of a dancing bear, we see the way that those Brazilians he so begrudges are hardly busking on streets paved with gold either.
André says he first arrived in Porto to attend the birth of his daughter – and stayed after. When he mentions the idea that he stayed “to earn in Euros”, he almost spits the words out – seemingly well aware both of the fact so many people in the country would begrudge him that opportunity, but also that those Euros don’t go nearly as far as the local xenophobes would have you believe.
His guitar was smashed shortly before filming, he says, by some local boys dropping a large stone onto its body. Smiling through it, he claims that the guitar still works, and even has a new, unique sound thanks to the gaping hole just to the right of its neck. Borrowing a replacement from a friend, he proceeds to play for largely deserted streets long after dark – joined by Joana, his partner, who sings over his melodies.
Making such an apparently meagre amount, the question as to why he even bothers seems to emerge – and there are two immediately obvious answers to this. One is that he has nowhere else to go – a candid conversation picked up by the camera sees him confide in another passing friend that his one viable option (camping in someone’s back yard) has fallen through, due to police intervention. The other, which comes up while he sits on a set of spikes in a store window – hostile architecture specifically designed to make his predicament worse – is that he loves making music; or rather, he loves to contribute to the world around him, to make the street more beautiful, and to provide an atmosphere for others to live their lives by.
Via the contrast of these figures – and many more who turn up for brief spells in Buskers of Porto – we ultimately come to see the failures of society more generally, and to take a fresh view away from it, into our own societies. Whether we live in the gorgeous cobbled streets of Porto, or the brick-laden alleys of Amsterdam, or the sweaty tarmac of London, we can recognise the erosion of the last vestiges of civil society and community; and the undermining of art, both being steadily eroded by the unfettered capitalism of our present era.
But as grim as that sounds, it is still not a hopeless situation; as the film also shows with the camaraderie exhibited by many of the buskers, and their supportive passers-by. Championing art – music in this case, but also film when Buskers of Porto plays festivals around the world – in the public sphere, encouraging engagement and interaction with it, can help reconnect us with each other. And while that might not seem so revolutionary, without that, nothing can be done to challenge the state of things.
Matties Dielemans and Guus Engelbregt have provided an exhibition in documentary editing here. Cutting between stunning images of Porto lit up after nightfall, they paint a backdrop of towering beacons of ‘civilisation’, monuments to historic elites, pillars of stone we are meant to marvel at. But amid that, they place the lived experiences of ordinary people at the heart of it all; as if to illustrate that for all its illustrious, postcard beauty, Porto – and so much of our world – is nothing without its people. Especially when they unite to make music.
