Rossana Torres

In the quietness of rural life, small disputes about the right to use a rivulet may take the proportion of a life-and-death matter..

Mértola, the Guadiana River, a place of ancient watermills, where flour for bread was milled. A place where birds live and people relax. Fishing boats pass by and the fish leap. The tide rises and falls, with the atmosphere changing every day. The color of the water and the landscape vary throughout the year. At the same time, Manuela Barros Ferreira left us a piece of writing entitled: “Soul”. Why do we gaze at the river?

Somewhere in the Alentejo there are two great ovens covered in dirt where a man makes charcoal. Essential elements like fire, water, air, earth and space reflect, breath and celebrate the rhythm of the Earth.

Two sisters, 96 and 98 years old, live in an old house situated opposite the school where they used to teach in the centre of Portugal. Their care and attention is shared between the house and the garden. Their daily life, serene and unhurried, is full of memories and small tasks. They do not make plans for the future – it just happens day after day - like tapestries which are made with neither paper pattern nor prior drawing. Whilst the garden reveals the passing of time, the house seems to live with quivering light and trembling breath. Illness arrives, unannounced apart from that of age itself.

Poem of images and sounds around man and nature.