Dryads

Since I was a child, music has been present in my life. For a while I shared my desire to create with cinema, until I finally opted for images. But there was always a fascination with the gesture of making music. Where do those melodies come from? How do you balance craft and improvisation, control and emotion? These are questions that also run through my work as a filmmaker and my exploration of the creative process in non-fiction.

Six years ago, the possibility arose of participating in a European project that aimed to map the music of the extremes of Europe. I interviewed different artists about what conditions and drives their creation. That’s how I met Emil Kárlsen, from Norway; Joana Gomila, from Mallorca; and Vasco Ribeiro, from Portugal. The three of them work outside the big record companies, in a space where craftsmanship coexists with digital tools that allow them great autonomy and freedom. I wanted to accompany them to get closer to the mystery of creation from the everyday.

Emil is a young Sami musician and multi-instrumentalist who finds inspiration for his joiks in the fjords, frozen tundras and huts where he takes refuge from winter. His musical search is fueled by his relationship with the territory and with the tradition of which he is a part.

Vasco, under the name OMIRI, collects and transforms traditional Portuguese music into a personal and festive proposal. In his new work he seeks to take a turn: transcend inherited lyrics and incorporate his own words, opening a more intimate space within that collective universe.

Joana explores deep listening as a starting point for her next work. Interested in how the sonority of spaces transforms the voice and stimulates the imagination, she descends into caves and walks through abandoned schools to record her first musical sketches.

In Dryades I once again explore a way of filming in which the team seeks to make itself invisible through attentive observation, shared time and trust. We shot among friends, from complicity and admiration, building a closeness that allowed us to witness an intimate, almost sacred moment: that uncertain transit in which something begins to take shape and we still don’t know what it will be. I was interested in getting closer to the human dimension of that process, to its doubts, its gropings and its small discoveries. Seeing how music emerges from everyday gestures preserves for me something magical and fascinating. I wanted the camera to accompany that intimacy with discretion and for the viewer to be able to share our privilege of being there.

The first improvisations are followed by sessions in which the musicians model, transform and define their compositions. The film accompanies this journey and finds its own rhythm in listening. Dryades is a sensory journey into creation, where silence, gestures and musical interpretation drive the story.