On Monday, I traveled from Porto to the Douro Valley, and stayed at the Fladgate Partnership’s Vargelas estate, warmly hosted by Alistair and Gillyane Robertson. I interviewed Alistair to get the history of the company going back to 1692, one of the missing pieces I need to finish the film. I just needed a brief overview, but ended up with over an hour’s worth of material. More great stories, and more anxiety how I’m going to fit it all in.
I went on to Tua on Tuesday to film the old, disused trains in the station that once moved people and goods through the Douro Valley, probably before there was electricity in the area only a few decades ago, and that now rust away as silent and overlooked witnesses to another era. My shots were mostly still and lacking in movement, occasionally some people in the distance would walk through the frame, or the leaves of the trees would move with the breeze.
At times like that, when the shooting goes well, I feel like I’m a photographer who just happens to be using a video camera, and that my films should also be silent witnesses, telling all through images. Great photographs are that, capturing a whole world in an instant, and what need is there for words when an image can say it all?
But then I think about Alistair and the many others I’ve interviewed for Life on the Douro, thinking about the incredible stories I’ve heard, often told with love, passion, and humour, and how fortunate I have been to have had that experience, and that those stories should be more widely known, and again I wonder how I’m going to fit it all in.
(You can support the documentary – and spread the word about the Douro and Portugal – by pre-ordering a DVD – http://www.indiegogo.com/LifeontheDouro)
