An absorbing account of life and traditions, unrecorded by previous history, on the tiny volcanic island of Corvo (pop. 400) in the Portuguese Azores. “Tirelessly engrossing.” — Village Voice. Best Doco, San Francisco Film Festival 2012.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2012
It's the Earth Not the Moon 2011
É na terra não é na lua
The volcanic Portuguese island of Corvo, a mere four kilometres long, is the smallest island in the Azores. Though its social history remains largely unrecorded, its people, until the early 20th century, were a self-sustaining, agricultural community. Gonçalo Tocha (Balaou, NZIFF08) approaches Corvo with a mock scientific agenda – to know every plant, every inhabitant, every minute detail of the place. But when he and his sound man get there, they wander the steep, winding roads and ease us not at all rigorously into the tiny community. We encounter the island's homely crafts, religious rituals, troubled politics and pumping lo-fi disco through its people. Attending with particular respect to the older inhabitants, Tocha emerges with an artefact of something like communal memory, a picture of tough reticent island people living in perpetual contest with the elements. Rendered increasingly untenable by globalism, the centuries-old patterns of life on Corvo have found their social historian just in time, in a tender, inquisitive, itinerant cine-laureate. — BG