VITOR SILVA TAVARESObra Escrita 1, João César Monteiro

In 1974, in the preface for “Morituri te salutant”, this latin sentence that can translate to “the ones about to die salute you”, Vitor Silva Tavares writes: “It will not be at all improper to see in the words of César that of a theatre, admittedly literary, that already exists in his cinema.” In this way we can affirm that João César Monteiro’s* films are a continuation of his writings by other means. And vice-versa. There is a clear complementarity between both these creative areas used by the author, which in 1959 was already publishing by his own means a small book of poems "corpo submerso" [submerse body], which contains his words “(…) I do not want to die now without having the absolute consciousness of what a poem is. I do not want to die now without having the absolute consciousness of many other things. I do not want to die now even because I don’t want, with or without reasons, to die now.”  

Many other texts and films did César Monteiro create, but this initial book, manufactured by a “POET-APPRENTICE”, had already the elements that would mark the filmmaker’s future work, where the surrealist heritage, especially the heterodox – Bataille and Artaud –, was mixing explosively and with a malicious smile, with the erotic-satiric Portuguese poetry, eschatological of Sade and still and with no surprise with the thoughts of Nietzche, Deleuze and Agamben. "Filosofia da Alcova" [Philosophy in the Alcove] was left to realize, but its ideas became publicly registered in "Relatório Confidencial" [Confidential Report], included in "Uma Semana Noutra Cidade" [A Week in Another City], published by &etc in 1999. “You shall have the benevolence to pardon me, be it of my mistakes, or my rude sincerity, but I have the conviction that, when films are made, the belayed regrets no not serve anything or anyone. They do not serve above all to the film, and this, be it, would be of an un-rectifiable impenitent.”

In an encounter organized in collaboration with the book stores Letra Livre, from Lisbon, and Utopia, from Porto, Sismógrafo proposes a conversation with Vitor Silva Tavares, editor of &etc’s, in relation to the recent release of the first volume of the “written work”, by João César Monteiro, in which he himself is coordinating. The coincidence between this presentation and the premiere of Jean-Luc Godard’s latest film, entitled “Goodbye to Language”, assumes an unexpected dimension, for it is this territory, of the text that becomes moving image, that both the authors exercised and still do exercise, incessantly, in an attempt of approximation to the world’s origins. As can be read in the script of “Goodbye to Language”, one of the characters declares: “So be it, you are young/ in the plenitude of your beauty, of your strength,/ Go on and experiment…/ I, I’m going to die/ Goodbye/ Goodbye/ I do not want to leave you/ I cannot embrace you again/ I want nothing, nothing/ I have my knees on the floor/ and my kidneys broken” – Godard’s inspiration comes from the affectionate epistolary exchange between George Sand and Alfred de Musset. Romantic authors, JCM and JLG. Both compromised with the language that slowly fades to the backdrop – Pasolini would be the third vertex of this trinity, that unites them in search of the poverty of words that oppose themselves to the spectacle of a world in decay.

Vitor Silva Tavares's preface for “Morituri te Salutant” was entitled “César is moody”. And from the first book of João César Monteiro, author’s edition, we chose this verse from the poem “Genesis”:

“Moaning will be our last feast”  

*João César Monteiro was born in Figueira da Foz in 1939 and died in Lisbon in 2003. He is the author of one of the most relevant works in Portuguese cinema.