Original subtitles

My name is Joaquim.

My life is uneventful.

I live with Nuno. We're married.

Together we have traveled the world,

Or the world has seen us pass by.

Two years ago I started to set down in a map

my good days and bad days.

I gave up after a month;

they were almost all bad.

I tried with no success

all available treatments in Portugal for Hepatitis C

I volunteered for a clinical study in Madrid

with drugs as yet unapproved.

The Hepatitis C virus

caused a chronic infection,

which developed into cirrhosis.

Co-infection with HIV speeds up the process.

This film is the notebook of a year of clinical trials.

A year of forced rest,

finally with the time to open up old boxes,

recycle old papers and give books away

that might find new readers.

I apologize if my notes are confusing.

My head is still not in the right place.

I'm also sorry if my voice doesn't come out right.

When I finished my treatment

I realized it had ruined my teeth.

Now I have dentures,

but I'm not used to them yet.

Doctors say, stay optimistic

so I'm starting with a smile.

Nuno drives for me

I don't trust my reflexes.

Nuno doesn't want to participate in the film.

He has other priorities...

Looking after us, preserving life...

On the 21st of November 2011

I am signing the informed consent documents

and they give me injections and pills for four weeks.

The Spanish National Library

has a work by Francisco de Holanda

that portrays the history of the world

It was taken from Portugal in the XVI century.

I take the occasion to visit a friend, Chema,

at the Madrid Film Library,

and I ask him for contacts at the National Library.

I would like to see that book

as one imagined Time before there was time,

and Man before mankind existed.

Almost ten years have passed

since my first year with interferon

and memory comes very quickly.

The first side effect,

I don't really know how to describe it, it isn't...

on the Medication Guide list.

It's sort of...

I could call it inertia.

It is feeling one's will...

disconnected from one's body.

That is,

normally I don't have to make an effort

to move my arm or my hand.

With interferon

the tendency is

to remain still.

I have to want

to move my hand,

to make an effort,

to give it an order several times

for it to move.

The strangest thing is the breathing.

Normally we breathe and we don't think about it.

With interferon, it's like...

it's as if one's chest doesn't want to move

and we have to force it

to breathe in

and breathe out.

Probably that depression

that people talk about comes from this.

From this constant effort to stay alive.

The other thing is the coordinates

strange pains

that run through one's body.

Right now I've got a pain that starts in my head, here,

goes round the back,

goes down,

and ends in this finger,

as if it had been drawn with a pen.

Ideas get mixed up

Ideas go all over the place;

I see a sculpture I made last night,

even though I know I didn't make one.

I don't think we'll have enough money for next month.

Wages, wages...

Salary comes from salt.

What about wages?

Where does wages come from?

But we are finally going to make a move.

I numbered the boxes with books

with records,

the furniture,

stuff we drag around with us.

Another list for the dogs:

Rufus, a fluffy toy dog,

Cookie, a pillow,

Bambi, a bone,

Zorra, nothing.

She doesn't get attached to things.

How did I get here?

On the 25th of April 1974,

I was awoken by a neighbor who shouted:

"Get up! The revolution has started!"

I told her to come up,

I turned the radio on

gave her a magazine while I was getting dressed.

Over the next few months

films banned by the censorship flood the cinemas.

"Emanuelle", Eisensteins,

"Deep Throat",

Godard's "Contempt".

I saw Pasolini's "Theorem"

in Lisbon's oldest cinema.

A God's visitation

in a cinema that showed porn movies non-stop.

I was reading a book by Guy Hocquenghem.

In 79, in New York,

I see a film by him.

A comedy about the history of sexuality.

Guy was present.

In the debate

I find myself defending the film

against an audience of politically correct gays.

That year I finish the Film School,

in the field of sound.

Also in 79,

the USA declares that war against epidemics is over.

The World Health Organization

announces: the smallpox virus has been eradicated.

The USA elects an actor for President.

And I hear about a disease that kills homosexuals in America.

I think it was in 83.

I was on location in Madeira.

While filming in Paris,

I discover that Guy Hocquenghem lives close to Claudio.

They are friends.

We see each other often.

In 84,

I read in a newspaper that Michel Foucault has died.

Claudio tells me the news was expected.

Rock Hudson is admitted to the American Hospital.

In 86,

the year I start to produce films, I lose my first friends.

Copi in 86,

Kurt Raab and Guy in 88,

Serge Daney in 92.

Mandred Salzgeber and Derek Jarman,

on the same day, in 94.

In 95, I had recorded almost 100 films,

and produced a few dozen.

At the end of shooting Cesar Monteiro's "God's Comedy",

my collapse.

I know the symptoms, but I don't do the test straightaway.

There were no efficient treatments.

By chance I came across the invitations

for a farewell film production dinner.

I couldn't go on; it was time for a change of life.

At the end of 97, now diagnosed with AIDS,

I signed the informed consent

for a clinical trial with the new anti-retrovirals.

Joao Cesar invites me and Nuno

for Christmas Dinner.

He gives us a synopsis:

"The Disease of the Century."

On the 15th of December 2011 we travel to Lisbon.

Checkpoint opened a year earlier.

Five percent of the people tested discover they are HIV positive.

Maria Jose Campos, the scientific coordinator,

tells us that Jo, a mutual friend,

began a similar treatment in Paris.

I ask her to get us into contact.

I get home exhausted, but I can't get to sleep.

It's four in the morning, I have the night to myself.

I'll try to explain.

I can't feel my body.

As if another invisible body were floating nearby.

Pain emerges when they meet.

I taped the map where I noted down my bad days to the ceiling.

Where I put down paths and journeys,

in search of a meaning.

In Madrid, Chema gave me a book about Ruiz.

I could swear that in it I saw the map of "The Territory",

the first film we worked on together.

I look through the pages for it,

but don't find it.

I can't remember what I did yesterday,

but I relive a scent of childhood,

a trip to Madrid with my parents.

A map of Spain in the hotel reception.

Portugal had been erased.

It was just sea...

A phrase from a poem by Ruy Belo

bangs in my head, like a broken record:

"it's sad to go into life like someone returning

humbly entering into death by mistake

it is very sad to walk absent among God

it is very sad to walk absent among God"

Madrid December 18, 2011

I read about patients who interrupt medication for HIV in Madeira

due to lack of financing.

Insomnias again.

Fortunately Nuno is used to getting up at 6 am.

He's a heavy sleeper and he doesn't snore.

I got a message from Jo.

I try to imagine how she might be.

We haven't seen each other for over ten years.

"Hello Joaquim.

Maria Jose send me your contact

so we can talk about HVC.

I started treatment with Telaprevir, peginterferon and ribavirin.

Right at the beginning

we had to reduce interferon,

due to a sharp drop in platelets.

Tell me what you want to know,

and I will try to reply.

Best, Jo"

I reply:

I've done a month of peginterferon and ribavirin.

Now I'm adding Boceprevir.

They suggest I take anti-depressants and hypnotics,

but I prefer to remain aware.

They recommend using sunscreen.

The medication causes photosensitivity.

How are you feeling?

I attach a family portrait taken back in the Azores.

Miss you, Joaquim and Nuno.

We are starting over.

We leave behind a reforestation project

on the island of Santa Maria, in the Azores.

We came back to mainland when my health got worse.

We can watch the trees grow thanks to Google Maps.

We sold up everything, we came back

and we bought 3 hectares of abandoned land.

My father said: "A good place to bury money."

Nuno said to me: "That's right...

A good place to plant..."

Today is Christmas Eve.

The rains haven't come yet.

The wells are dry,

but fortunately we built a pond.

We had help from Nelson, who's good at everything,

likes dogs and enjoys our company.

I spoke to a neuropsychiatrist who studies HVC and new treatments.

He showed me tests for disturbances associated with HIV,

dots with numbers that one is supposed to join up.

I don't think you can get to know Nuno.

The pictures I filmed with him

and whatever I say about him are like those dots.

Nuno has a strange capacity to understand plants,

to talk to animals.

Without any words; he doesn't trust language.

When I fell ill for the first time,

only he came to visit me after work.

Our friendship grew closer, without any breaks.

He is recovering from a treatment with interferon and ribavirin.

He lost 44 Pounds in three months

A treatment that didn't work out.

The dogs have followed us since the Azores.

We found Rufus in 2001 at the Fogo Lagoon.

He was so small he could hardly walk.

His mother had been run over.

That same year

I had my first inefficient treatment for Hepatitis C,

and Rufus grew up alongside us.

I started jotting down ideas.

I leave notes around the house not to forget things.

I lose my glasses,

I can't find my keys.

I forget the notes I have written not to forget.

I started jotting down ideas.

I leave notes all around the house not to forget.

I lose my glasses, I can't find my keys.

I forget the notes I have written not to forget.

Jo answered:

the side-effects are similar;

pains, loss of sensitivity, insomnias, confusion.

She says the treatment has ruined her libido.

A word that reminds me of a bearded doctor.

I answer that Nuno's libido is always up

and that my sex is completely dyslexic.

Coincidence:

two rays of sunlight hitting the same point at the same time.

The chemicals do these things...

This time,

a line from Cesariny in loops:

"shadows spread over the ground...

arms of gray light..."

A few days before dying,

Claudio said that time was going backwards

like a film rewinding.

I want to film the work.

Time escapes me. I arrive late.

I can't focus, the light hurts my eyes.

I have to want to want.

I still follow them,

but I take refuge in our shelter.

Paying income tax,

paying company tax,

dealing with customers...

I can't keep to one subject.

I get the numbers mixed up.

I can't get the book I am reading out of my head.

Neanderthals and music,

the origin of language.

How can one imagine these early men?

Nuno and Nelson have arranged

to go to the caves in the valley near our house.

I research on the Net.

I find a scientific article

written by a colleague of mine at school.

Coincidence?

I heard about Joao Zilhao again in 99,

when nearby, the skeleton of a 24,500 years old child was found

The bones suggested admixture between early humans and Neanderthals.

This possibility provoked skeptical reactions.

Species that are too different to have interbred.

Today's theory is different;

a Neanderthal genome has been sequenced.

Proof of interbreeding and cultural interchanges have been found.

We live in fluid times,

but simple ideas still sell best

Nuno brings me photos of the Gruta Nova cave.

He and Nelson help Claudia

to clean up scrawls scribbled on the rock.

She takes samples from layers, for later research;

I only know these caves from pictures she showed us

artefacts, sculptures of rabbits

decorated vases from the Neolithic period

and Mousterian tools

associated with the Neanderthals.

I promise to follow them when I feel better.

I get treated in Portugal for HIV.

Unnecessarily I repeat the analyses I have done in Spain

I get treated in Portugal for HIV

Unnecessarily I repeat all the analyses I have done in Spain

This has become more of a routine.

I imagine a body in which I travel at the speed of light.

Where wounds heal instantly

and there is no pain.

Where I can become invisible whenever I want.

The first year after trimming is not so productive,

and this Winter has been dry.

Yes, and that doesn't really help.

And it's been quite cold.

I'll like you to take a picture

of some embroidery I'm doing.

Fine, and it will come out nice.

We met Deolinda at the water fountain opposite our house.

Every day she comes to fill up carboys of water.

She gives us eggs; we exchange seeds and plants.

She is from the North, like me.

She came down looking for work in the countryside.

She has lived in the village for 40 years

and she doesn't feel she belongs.

She uses her grandson's Facebook account

so as to have news about her family in France.

Through her

we know about the young people who lock themselves at home,

lost between leaving school and unemployment,

with their backs turned to old skills.

"You called, Madame?"

Rita Gomes is one of the few people with whom we keep in touch

on a regular and friendly basis.

"Please have Dom Estevao removed from this castle as soon as possible."

She is mixing the trailer for her latest film.

"I have realized that your cousin feels ..."

"Have him leave!"

I do not feel able to complete this work

but we are present.

"You called, Madame?"

"Please have Dom Estevao removed from this castle as soon as possible."

"Your cousin feels a love for me that offends me through its insolence."

"Have him leave, I beg you!"

"You would not dare!"

I met Rita in Madeira,

when I heard about a disease that killed homosexuals in America.

I was reading Lana Turner's autobiography.

Her stormy relationship with a would-be gangster,

her career derailed by the press.

She was brought back to the cinema by a producer.

She told of how Ross Hunter took her flowers,

and, without interfering,

created the conditions for "Imitation of Life" to take place.

I looked around... and thought,

even I could imitate Ross Hunter...

I find an 8mm reel in an old box.

Tests and try-outs for my first long feature.

The whole film seems to be contained therein,

the characters, the actions,

the smells, the sounds...

I made the film with some money I had saved up.

Manfred Salzgeber saw it and selected it for Berlin.

It went well.

I thought I could produce other films.

My only plan,

projects without good sense,

without common sense.

In the boxes I find letters from banks,

photographs from location scouting,

scripts that never became films.

Stories.

Friendships remained,

complicities,

Luis Miguel Cintra.

And moments written on the wind...

a conversation with Serge Daney, in Taormina,

a tight hug from Laura Betti

on a turbulent flight to Rome.

The Portuguese Film Archive shows my first feature film

They invite me to speak.

I don't know how to talk about films.

We talk about lives, about experiences.

Raul Ruiz's "The Territory".

Where I met Claudio Martinez

whom I later invited to edit "Recollections"

and who followed my production years,

and a discreet man in a raincoat,

Serge Daney, from the Cahiers du Cinema.

Henry Alekan, who told me about light and shadows.

He had a notebook with the miles he had walked in each film,

since "La Belle et la Bete", by Cocteau.

Ruiz, who took away my illusions...

What democracy... Cinema is like the army,

with generals, sergeants, colonels and privates.

Joao Cesar Monteiro, alone, "Hovering Over the Water".

A farewell dinner, in 97.

We exchanged gifts, no future in sight.

I imagined Laura Morante as Nuno's sister,

in a film I wanted to make in the summer of 88.

He refused.

First seeing, then believing...

I look for images of viruses.

I find drawings,

sketches, computer simulations.

The real images are diffuse.

HIV is much smaller than the CD4 cells it infects.

Virus particles are too small to have color.

I visit the Molecular Medicine Laboratory.

I am received by Professor Joao Goncalves.

He tells me; the virus replication is swift,

with a high mutation rate.

In one day,

a single particle might lead to 100 000 000 000 particles

The drugs that we have inhibit virus replication,

but it remains invisible,

hidden within the brain cells,

lymphoid tissue and bone marrow.

This Institute is designing nanoparticles

that can recognize these cells,

in order to destroy them.

See? See? I hope you can have a good look...

These stains, well they are cells.

And it is in these cells

that we are going to check what is happening with the virus.

I wanted to film the virus. We film the work.

I discover that most of the viruses are persistent and do not cause harm.

They evolve with the hosts

and are mostly transmitted from mother to child or sexually.

An important part of the human genome

is made up of of viruses that have become a part of it

and which define us.

The gene responsible for the digestion of starch

is activated by a complete sequence of an archaeological virus

When they cross between species, viruses can cause infections.

Most viral diseases emerged with agriculture

and the domestication of animals.

Measles, tuberculosis and smallpox from cattle.

Influenzas from pigs and poultry.

HIV is another virus that crossed the species barrier countless times.

Maybe I'm looking for pictures of HIV in the wrong place.

The epidemic started with the intrusion in inaccessible regions,

of pale-skinned men

through the power of guns.

In the Congo basin,

at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.

It expanded along trade routes

where thousands of African porters were forced to cut paths.

Maybe I should look in the images of massacres

of the families of those who refused to submit.

The untold story in Heart of Darkness.

Perhaps Joao Cesar was right:

each disease has a time and a story.

Let me clean this up for you you can take both leaves at once.

This is the one the darker one over here...

What is its name?

I just said it... Agrimony!

And also here.

You take some plants and they grow...

Deolinda rubs the leaves

and gives the Agrimony to me to smell.

I feel its beneficial properties.

There are some places that we didn't cut,

perhaps more things are growing.

For the liver...

For the liver, imagine.

I've done some research; triterpenoids, tannins,

flavinoids, salicylic acid...

Antibiotic effects, antiseptics,

analgesics, antioxidants, anticonvulsives.

Yes, that's what it used to be like...

Now, can anyone do anything?

It's just computers and films and whatever.

Rufus can hardly breathe.

The vet says it is normal, a ball of fat.

And at his age it's not worth operating.

He talked about dog years.

1 year = 7 years.

If it's a big dog, 8 or 9.

What a mania, adding this up in human time.

At one year old he was always chasing the bitches.

That down there can go around.

It's probably easier.

It's best.

There's another pile down there, Nuno.

Yes. And that can go down as well.

That pile will be shredded down there.

What are you carrying it up here for? I'm sorry...

Don't be sorry!

My daughter says I'm really bossy.

I'm not bossy; it's just an opinion.

My father will be 90 years old.

He's invited me to spend some time together.

With a map in our hands, on secondary roads

looking for the house he was born in.

He tells me he never met his grandmother,

who was taken by the Spanish Flu.

He shows his grandfather's house, who taught him to read from the Bible,

but didn't go to church.

I get a phone call.

Our farm is burning.

A neighbor set some trees on fire

and the fire got out of control.

Nuno doesn't have a mobile phone,

but I manage to warn Nelson in time to avoid more damage.

This has still got chemicals.

- Really?

- Yeah. It rattles...

Using interferon, ribavirin and the new medicine

means taking a lot of pills,

and it also means having more problems with toxicity.

The treatment with interferon and ribavirin is a tough one,

a very toxic treatment.

And probably the ones that causes most problems of toxicity.

However, the new drugs

further stress the gravity

of the toxic effects of interferon and ribavirin.

I have to want to believe.

Winter and Spring without rain,

probably a hot Summer.

Actions that are repeated.

Each day and each repetition are different.

I have to want to believe.

I have to believe to believe.

Winter and Spring without rain,

probably a hot Summer.

Actions that are repeated.

Each day and each repetition are different.

Filming became one more activity in our daily lives.

Nuno now participates fully;

I've given up the idea of having a team.

After recovering the burnt land

it is necessary to take water to each tree.

The land opens up cracks.

The air is dry.

We don't need watches.

The dogs wait during the working hours,

and remind us when it is time to take a break.

Claudia, our archaeologist friend,

has told us about a different vet.

Rufus was operated on twice and is recovering.

There is a French saying that goes:

dog's tongue, tongue of the doctor.

The fact is that contact with dogs

and open-air life has made us stronger.

After all, Rufus' ball of fat

was an infection caused by a strange object.

It had got worse over a year

creating masses of tissue difficult to remove.

A year of unnecessary suffering.

You'll be fine.

Look at your cheek.

What have you been doing with the bees?

It was a bee, wasn't it?

Really, Zorra?

You're a real loony...

What fun, what a great day...

Zorra is goofy, "I don't know what I wanted to do but...

I'm going to jump on you."

You're almost well,

you're almost well...

People are so slow...

Unemployed people drag themselves around the pubs.

The Polish electrician...

When I close my eyes I see things.

The day after interferon.

I have to lie down.

I looked after Rufus while Nuno made dinner.

I had a moment of absence.

When I noticed,

Rufus had burst his stitches, his neck was covered in blood.

General anesthetic, another operation.

Nuno gets pissed off.

I am present.

Too weak to participate.

I feel weak connections to the forces that surround me.

Rufus's heavy breathing,

Nuno planting.

We study what might harm us.

We know little about viruses and bacteria.

Even less known, the protists,

those life forms that abound in ponds.

Neither animals nor plants, so close to us;

cells with a nucleus, double chromosomes,

casual sex...

Nuno disappears without telling me.

It used to make me mad.

He always comes back with an unexpected present;

a fossil, a plant,

a book found in a secondhand bookstore.

This time it was Haeckel's correspondence.

I read in a letter dated 1852:

"Dear Father,

That which for you represents reflection

on the history of the world and the destiny of Man

is for me, on an even higher level,

the observing of nature."

We still see ourselves at the top of a chain

that goes from simple to complex,

from primitive to evolved,

from darkness to light,

And yet

we all are survivors of a long common history

of many millions of years.

We are not special, just recent.

The IMF revealed yesterday the accounting manipulation at Bankia.

The leaning tower is no longer a reference to a film by Almodovar.

It is a symbol of the Spanish banking crisis.

The Popular Party Government has announced new health cuts.

Foreigners without documents are excluded.

E.U. citizens

have to prove residence in Spain for more than 3 months.

In the hospital pharmacy

they don't look happy about my European Health Insurance card.

I sign a declaration.

I commit myself to pay the costs associated to the treatment

if the hospital thus sees fit.

They give me the results of the tests:

hemoglobin, 9

platelets, 62 000

CD4, three hundred and something

I obviously feel weak.

I have to stop off at a park.

Favorite pastime for virologists:

are viruses alive?

Without an agreement on the definition of living.

Favourite pastime for some biologists:

Writing banalities about God,

homages to Anglican atheism.

I have to stop reading, to be here.

Oh look, a rabbit!

I saw a rabbit running by! Running away, running!

I have to want to want.

I follow Nuno and the dogs,

but I can't keep up with them.

It's hard to breathe.

Lights and sounds hurt me.

We put up boards with quotes about trees

on a path that crosses through our land.

In the village people are talking about this.

The local people come along to read them.

They advise me to rest,

to eat well

and take it easy.

I try to organize my commitments,

but I carry on doing foolish things.

To save some money

I buy tickets in advance.

I make mistakes over the dates.

Once we got to the airport,

the tickets were for the day before.

Another time, in Madrid,

I had bought the return trip for the previous month.

It still isn't raining.

The trees have to be watered every day.

I do microphone tests for a possible open air recording

of the "Gospel according to John"

On the leaves there are traces of ash from fires.

We regularly bring water for the pond.

Life seems fragile, and death certain.

Algae and cyanobacteria

are killed by excessive exposure to UV light.

Some virus recover their living state.

In laboratories,

ultra-violet inactivation

is a common method to kill viruses.

And yet,

multiple viral genomes can reassemble

and form whole new viruses

Group selection from the "dead"?

Resurrection?

Such a capacity

allows the creation of artificial recombinant viruses.

We study what can cause harm,

bring profit.

A team of scientists from 14 countries

decoded the tomato genome

35,000 genes.

The human genome has 27,000 genes.

Have we evolved from simple to complex?

We just keep to copying,

imitating.

I am afraid that my obsession for facts,

this disquiet is taking me away from Nuno.

I spend more time at home reading, comparing information

in search of a meaning.

When I think I have found something,

a remark from Nuno,

an unexpected association

enlightens me and takes me back to the starting point.

I go up to his room looking for a meaning.

On the shelves there is no fiction.

There are books on botany, poetry, sacred books.

I flick through St Augustine's "Confessions", which I never wanted to read.

The inventor of original sin?

Of the Holy War?

I go out of the house. I go to him.

I want to read him a passage I came across in the "Confessions":

"How do we measure present time

since it has no extension?

It is measured while it passes;

but when it has passed, it is not measured;

for then there is nothing that could be measured.

But whence and how does it pass, but from the future?

Which way, save through the present?

Whither, but into the past?

Therefore,

from what is not yet,

through what has no length,

it passes into what is now no longer."

I discover another landscape beyond the passing cars,

the aviaries,

the lines left by airplanes in the sky.

I imagine those men, already tied to the land,

with leaders, weapons, ornaments,

trade routes and diseases.

I find Nuno with Claudia at the Columbeira Castro,

a fortified settlement dating from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age.

I discover another landscape.

It is Sunday.

When I started primary school I was asked when I was born.

I answered; I think it was in 1957.

Before that I was in my mother's tummy,

who was in my grandmother's tummy.

It was hard for me to get up,

but I put a shirt on and went with Nuno to Mass.

I complained.

I don't understand any of this Lamb of God...

the miracles.

Nuno went to fetch the Bible

and quoted words of Christ:

"I came to cast fire upon the earth and why do I want more,

if it is already afire?"

And he concluded:

"Do you believe I came to bring peace to the earth?

No. Rather dissent."

Well that would make it a different Mass.

Nuno challenges me with questions.

He forces me to do sums in my head.

I go quiet. I can't continue the dialog.

If I try to answer,

words come too late.

He's already answered for me and asked other questions.

I'm afraid my silence might be taken for a lie

in the sense of keeping something hidden in my mind.

Mental sums... mental sums...

Mental sums...

Paying VAT, paying the wages.

It seems absurd.

Economic crisis. Growth is necessary...

Resources exhausted, producing more unnecessary rubbish

to make more money, to pay wages,

to buy unnecessary rubbish.

The light is hurting me. I have to rest.

57. Year of the Sputnik.

I looked into the sky for Laika.

I thought she might be looking at me.

1957

When proteins released in the presence of viruses were discovered.

They called them "interferons."

1957

The greatest flu epidemic since the Spanish Flu.

Two million deaths.

Schools closed in Portugal.

August 27th.

It's not worth trying to sleep.

I'm off to the airport soon.

I've insisted on going alone.

Hello?

Hi Nuno,

It's delayed 5 minutes.

It's delayed another 5 minutes.

So I'll be leaving at 11.35 PM.

So I should get there at about that time.

OK.

There are loads of flights. It's all a mess. It's weird...

It's really strange...

Just let me go look at the information board.

If something changed I'll call you back.

See you soon.

I don't relive smells from childhood,

just a slight scent of death.

I found out about Boceprevir.

I read that in the USA treatments last from 6 to 9 months.

I suggested that I might stop.

They remind me that I signed a 12 month agreement,

If I stop it I have to accept the responsibility.

They advise me to carry on.

How did I get here?

Since 96. Starting out from zero. With Nuno.

Sound for a documentary in Arizona,

with Robert Kramer as cinematographer.

The first Calexico concerts in Tucson.

Christmas in the desert.

La frontera, Nogales, Mexico

The shanty town surf, stray bullets, abandoned kids.

Brazil, fever, vomits, dizziness...

In 98 we travel to Morocco to film with Carmen Maura.

The beginning of the anti-retrovirals.

The following year, back to Tangiers with Andre Techine.

The last film I managed to record the sound.

Three months to recover.

In Paris, together,

sound editing, mixing.

The presence, support,

words of comfort from Claudio.

Phillip Brooks, a producer and our friend

dies after a treatment with interferon that went wrong.

About to go off to Cuba, a phone call:

"Joao Cesar would like to see you."

We promise to visit him as soon as we get back.

In Cuba, a call from the "Publico" newspaper:

"Joao Cesar Monteiro, whom you produced, died today.

Can you make a statement?"

In 2000, we go to film in the Azores

in the Summer, the last concert by Nuno's band

on a beach in the Northeast.

And it is the last time that we were all together;

Claudio

Phillip

Laurent

Rita

Kiluanje

and Erika.

We cast Robert Kramer's ashes into the sea,

during a dive with whales,

between Europe and America,

fulfilling his wishes.

When I saw Rufus in Nuno's arms

I felt apprehensive; would we have enough health to look after him?

Weeks later Zorra came along,

Rufus's passion.

Claudio was a regular visitor.

He seemed to stand up to everything.

He had taken care of common friends;

his younger brother,

Guy Hocquenghem, Copi.

And he had accompanied others that I never met.

We stopped traveling.

Nuno swapped Heavy Metal for the Firemen's Brass Band.

He helped to start the Sea Search and Rescue Group in Ponta Delgada.

Childhood memories.

The past without memory,

the recent past,

present.

Come and go,

between here and there.

Seven years in the Azores.

Between 2001 and 2002 I did my first treatment;

a clinical trial with interferon and ribavirin

It didn't work.

We thought things over again.

We decided to stay in the Azores.

We abandoned what was not essential.

We started to grow our own food.

In 2004 I tried a new treatment.

It didn't work.

When I developed resistances to HIV HAART treatment,

we decided to come back to mainland Portugal.

We record and film the "Gospel of John".

That text which rejects the judgment of men and grants the word to women.

An invitation to the recognition of absolute love

that makes outer laws superfluous.

John's Gospel also alerts me

to the limitation of text in relation to lived experience.

It states:

"The whole world would be too small

for all the books that would have to be written."

In the interception, or perhaps in the coincidence of reading,

hearing and listening,

the message of Christ radiates out crystal clear.

Thank you.

The bombardments and exchanges of gunfire are constant.

This time the rebels attacked the security services building.

Eighteen months of confrontation in several different cities

have caused over 20,000 deaths.

Turkey is going through a critical phase

and is insisting on the creation of a buffer zone for the refugees.

Among government troops and rebels,

they have taken refuge in a primary school in Iraq.

Many of them arrive on their own,

with no parents, neighbors or school friends.

In most cases they don't even know

whether their loved ones are alive.

They don't seem fearful, but they miss their homes.

They are confined to the area of the Iraqi school,

a sort of ashamed prison.

The guards at the school gates stop the children from leaving the area.

Stories like this can be told in their thousands

by all the other Syrian children

forced to lose their age of innocence.

In Spain the rate of VAT is increasing today.

The highest rate is going up from 18 to 21%,

as well as the intermediate rate, which rises from 8 to 10%.

Several products go from the reduced rate to the highest rate.

The increase in VAT in Spain will cost on average

each Spanish family 400 Euros per year,

and will bring the state an extra 7,500 million Euros in income.

Fuck, it's an inferno! That shit is an inferno!

And another one! And another, and this one's here!

Oh hell, what a fucking shit.

This was arson. The fucking bastards!

I'm going to call the fire brigade!

Go on!

Maybe I should take it down there.

I think it's best.

Maybe more over there.

And another one there.

Sit down.

I thought it was later.

No.

Do you want some juice?

Not now...

Come on, Rufus

Come on boy...

It was a long day.

The fire almost got to our land.

The trees that our neighbor watered over the last months didn't survive.

The air is full of smoke from the fires that sweep the country.

Some days seem to last forever.

I have to believe to believe.

We are going to the farm.

It didn't rain in the Winter,

it didn't rain in the Spring,

Summer's coming to an end and it still hasn't rained.

The trees we planted have survived the drought.

I'm still opening old boxes.

I find a summons for an interrogation with the Portuguese Security Police.

Papers from East Germany.

In 74 I got into medical school but the universities were closed.

I asked for grants at several different embassies,

I was accepted for East Germany.

I find my Social Hygiene Dispensary's card.

They controlled the "tolerated" under the previous regime,

when prostitution was legal.

I was 16 years old and had caught Gonorrhea.

A closed interrogation.

Passports with visas from journey with my father,

throughout Europe, in 74.

While I acted as a navigator

we confronted ideas with experiences.

He told me about Adam Smith,

about Keynes,

about Friedman.

I talked to him about Engels, Owens and Utopian socialism.

When I got to East Germany,

they'd enrolled me in Economics instead of Medicine.

My friends were almost all Vietnamese,

coming from the war that had ended that same year.

As if extreme experiences

led to extreme sensitivities.

I protested; I went to Ministries.

It didn't help;

"Germans don't make mistakes."

I decided to stay.

Time to read in the original language.

I had a library nearby.

Each language encompasses a universe.

I realised that when I started to dream in German.

I recall coming across a young activist

whose name was Angela Merkel.

Twenty years later, now sick,

I went to show Nuno the same places.

Leipzig,

the Gewandhaus,

the Thomaskirche,

Weimar.

We went to a heavy metal festival on the border with Poland.

My pockets full of cocaine to keep me on my feet.

I took a photo of him in a bathroom at the Bauhaus.

The places where I heard Russian pianists for free,

turned into McDonalds.

Back to 75

Pasolini was murdered in November.

I thought: to Hell with good sense.

The following year I was back.

I met Joao Cesar.

Thanks to him I entered the Film School.

Schools...

Schools...

I have good memories until I went to school.

Then, the corporal punishment,

Getting the cane for refusing to say the prayers I knew by heart

didn't bother me.

But children enjoying beating other children,

the fishermen's children who arrived late,

barefoot, in the Winter, I couldn't stand that.

My house was on the way to the beach.

I used to bring them home,

open up the pantry to them,

let them bath in the big bath-tub

and give them my clothes.

To the despair of my mother, who would say:

"this boy...

one day, he's is going to catch some disease".

One afternoon, when I was six,

I came home from school. No one was at home.

I closed the blinds, lay down

and decided I was going to die.

I fell asleep,

I dreamt I was dying.

I was released from my body. I went up.

I reached heaven.

It was a blue, empty place.

Naked children holding hands with each other,

dancing in rings

like in paintings by Matisse.

I woke up.

A beam of light shone in through a gap.

I saw the world upside down on the wall;

the clouds,

the trees,

the birds,

the potter's workshop.

I forgot that idea of death.

Nuno helps Paula,

our neighbor from the grocery store,

to clean the water fountain, forgotten by the local council.

The next-door neighbor takes in abandoned dogs.

He and his friend, a retired circus trapeze artist,

take care of a kitchen-garden behind our house.

Further on, a family of woodcutters.

This village reminds me of Santa Maria in the Azores,

the first island to be discovered.

Then the landlords left.

The peasants remained, left to their own luck.

We exchange presents;

they help us to prune the trees.

"For me

fire comes from inside the Earth,

it runs in the hidden paths of the Earth,

always ready to become free.

I'm afraid that it might catch me."

Thousands of Greeks came out protesting against austerity,

on the day of a European Summit Meeting in Brussels.

Turkish pianist in court,

accused of insulting Islam.

Demonstrators protest defending freedom of expression.

- Did I, did I hurt you?

- No,

That night we saw the "King of the Roses", by Werner Schroeter.

I listen to the last sound I recorded on that film:

the frail heartbeat of Magdalena Montezuma.

The Gruta Nova,

one of the few Iberian caves

occupied since the Middle Palaeolithic period

and by Neanderthals.

We are living sad times.

How can we imagine those early men?

After Morgan's bold concepts,

we come back to social Darwinism,

or, as they call it now, evolutionist psychology.

New dressing for old ideas.

Before; here we are, ready for war,

determined to cheat and abuse,

because such is our nature.

Now; because it is written in our genes.

And yet there is no proof of confrontation in those times

before agriculture and the domestication of animals.

In looking for information about ponds in biological agriculture,

I discover the works of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

which redefine the maternal instinct as not innate.

Humans evolved as cooperative breeders.

Without help from individuals other than the parents,

men or women,

maternity would not be possible.

Nuno tells me several times about a character,

with the strange name of Pi,

who left an impression on him in his childhood.

Morgan, Engels,

polyandry,

matrilineal societies,

once again open to discussion.

We are living through sad times.

In the shadow of the Flintstones,

and of a doctor obsessed

with the sexuality of the Viennese bourgeoisie.

My mother phones every day.

She leaves messages on the answering machine.

She's worried about the cutbacks in health,

in education, and about unemployment.

Sometimes I phone her back.

I remind her that memory is short.

Who can remember the London Debt Agreement, in 1953

when half of the German debt was canceled,

and the rest was set out in a prudent payment package?

How the "economic miracle" started?

Who remembers in this Western world that calls itself Christian,

the tradition of the periodic remission of debts,

which comes from the beginning of the Bronze Age,

becomes the jubilee years of Mesopotamia,

and is written in the Bible?

I don't say that thanks to Nuno I'm reading the Bible,

but I quote the Leviticus:

"The land shall not be sold forever:

for the land is mine;

for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.

And in all the land of your possession

ye shall grant a redemption for the land."

Thank you.

It's done.

Jo phoned.

She's in Lisbon for a few days.

We've arranged to go and see her.

We started treatments almost at the same time.

There's so many things to ask her.

Oh well. She was my mother...

And, like, she's still my mother.

Despite her always being against my leaving,

but she's still my mother.

So I think you should talk to her.

Yes. I'll talk to her about it.

Perhaps she'll have some suggestions.

Maria Jose is one of those who deserve more recognition,

because she was behind all the emancipation movements,

claiming rights, she was always there.

No one saw her. No one saw her.

But she paid for the work, she did this, she did that...

In difficult times she found a friend or someone,

she phoned up and whatever to get things done...

And to end the subject we owe her that. We all owe her.

On the way back we go through the Casal Ventoso neighborhood,

formerly a drug supermarket,

now council houses.

The drugs of the "crisis" are different ones.

2012,

record for consuming of anti-depressants in Portugal.

22,500 packets a day.

I ended up with more doubts than answers.

Talking to Jo,

I realized that using drugs probably contaminated us both.

We have lost our ritual relationship with plants,

cannabis in Chinese medicine, in the Vedas,

2000 years before Christ,

the derivates of poppies in ancient Egypt,

the coca leaf, in the cosmology of the peoples of the Andes,

Deolinda's Agrimony.

What's left is the stupid prohibition policy,

the so-called dirty money;

drug trafficking, people trafficking, arms trading.

7% of world exports that goes back to the global markets,

which dictate the rules to disperse, corrupt national powers.

Poor Colombian farmer,

child labour in Afghanistan, in the world.

Poor Sasssafras trees pushed to extinction

in South East Asia, to produce ecstasy.

Oh, I mustn't forget to take my tablets.

Confused, I close my eyes and let myself go with the music.

There is a new fact;

there is something new.

Ideas...

instead of being fixed

in determined areas of the brain,

spin round like inside a washing machine barrel,

and are forgotten.

They are forgotten.

They are lost before they are formed.

It's strange, this sensation of dissolving...

melting of...

dissolving meanings,

while the rest of the machine carries on.

A crazy fly has been after me since yesterday...

I'm afraid that...

I'll lose so much

my senses, my logic,

that I will be incapable of deciding anything at all.

That I will lose the notion that I exist.

Nuno has stopped going to Mass.

I don't understand anything anymore.

I ask him what's the matter.

Nuno knows the Bible by heart.

He gets annoyed when the priest quotes it wrongly

or jumps to conclusions.

He says he isn't religious, he doesn't need churches,

Christ is enough for him.

And he asks me if I believe.

I don't answer.

He sets me a challenge:

you, who are always saying the same thing,

I'll give you a suggestion:

don't believe to believe.

And he quotes Mark:

"And they bring unto him one that was deaf...

and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.

And he took him aside from the multitude,

and put his fingers into his ears,

and he spit, and touched his tongue."

Nuno comes to me, puts his fingers in my ears.

I feel his saliva on his tongue.

I react.

He shouts at me: "Ephphatha",

that is, "Be opened."

I am taken aback.

If I were deaf I might have started hearing.

Moulds made directly on the bodies of workers,

seamstresses, artisans, nursemaids.

Compulsive internments in wards with suggestive names;

"St. Mary Magdalene", "St. Mary of Egypt."

"St. Mary Magdalene",

identified as a whore in a homily by Gregory I in 591.

Timidly rehabilitated by Paul VI in 1969.

Syphilis, a harmless bacteria, brought by Columbus's sailors.

It mutates and devastates Europe.

Bargaining chip for measles and smallpox,

which decimated the native American populations.

Clinical trials in Portugal, in 1910 with Salvarsan,

an arsenic that promised a cure.

To die of the disease?

Die of the cure?

I feel I am fading away. I don't know where my head is.

Nuno, let's stop filming.

Please. Take me home...

I've got pains.

I can't manage to go out.

I've received another message from Jo.

When she repeated her tests in Paris,

HVC load had become detectable again.

Might this be a relapse?

The doctor's opinion

is that the treatment should go on for a year.

But if he himself says he has no answers

why should he insist?

Do we go on to the end,

with crutches,

or do we break with these encouraging statistics

that set us back one more time?

I don't know what to say.

My humor cartridges are starting to wear out.

Big kisses, Jo.

Jo told me her method to put up with the pain.

She left a pack of synthetic opiates.

I resisted, but it's too much now.

I can't wait anymore.

I woke up

more or less every hour. With the last picture in my mind.

One of them was really silly;

you had to give me an interferon injection,

but the syringe didn't come with a needle.

We had to get a needle, so we went to the pharmacy.

They only had needles that, well,

looked like plumber's piping, really thick, so...

So we took it... "Don't worry. I'll deal with this".

And so I injected myself.

You asked me "But isn't it tough, with that needle?"

and I said "No. It's fine..."

I love it,

the "big and thick" part.

"It was fine. It didn't hurt a bit,

do you want to see?" And suddenly I look at my arm,

it's all bleeding, a bruise going from down here to up here.

And me trying to get my sweater off

it wouldn't come off.

And then I woke up really dizzy.

Thanks.

So here is the recipe for getting through the last weeks.

It is:

injection,

synthetic opiates,

and this is the so called

the heroin addict's eye,

involuntary...

but

it isn't much fun.

The two things clash against each other,

and after a couple of days comes the hangover,

a little hangover

until things get better.

Do I look silly? No. I am silly.

Symbolic relationships,

the relationships that pass us by.

When Rufus was little we gave him a fluffy toy toy.

He says hello to it every day.

He goes to see if it is well before going to sleep.

Zorra doesn't like dog games. She isn't interested in objects.

But she is fascinated by natural phenomena.

Tonight is a full moon.

Come on, monkey.

Hello Zorra. Hello pretty girl.

Good morning...

Keep it quiet, Rufus.

Good morning. - Good morning

Good morning, Rufus.

Breakfast in bed?

Hi, Rufus.

No...

I'm annoyed about being late.

Sticking to the routine.

Nuno makes me stay alive.

The hunting season has started.

Runaway populations of bacteria, mice, cockroaches

and grass end up collapsing,

stuck in their own wastes.

The "other", diseases,

the opportunistic populations, follow.

Even herbivores, if desperate, become predators, cannibals.

The stuff we drag around with us,

and the trail we leave behind...

Hunting season.

Four dogs waiting where they were abandoned.

We call them. They go away, frightened.

What's this business of feelings, emotions, love?

I'm fed up with psychologies; I want action.

I've got another message from Jo.

Her VHC load has gone up out of control.

She has abandoned her treatment.

We have destroyed our organism over almost a year,

through the illusion that we'd live a little longer.

It doesn't make sense.

Now I'm going to need another six months

just to get back to the way I was,

if I can.

Come on,

let's get back to work.

The important thing

is that I've finished with this poison.

Kisses, Jo.

"Jesus replied to him."

"They then answered him. We are descendants of Abraham,

and were never in bondage to any man;

how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?"

"Jesus answered them,

Verily, verily,

Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.

And the servant abideth not in the house for ever;

but the Son abideth ever.

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."

I'm going to Madrid in the morning.

I stopped the treatments

a few days ago. I couldn't take it anymore.

I don't feel any better.

I can't sleep, I have nightmares all the time.

It's six in the morning.

I was going round and round with labyrinths,

some papers with things I have to deal with.

I think they were...

the things I wanted to deal with in this film.

I fell down some steps.

I dropped all the papers.

I wasn't able to get home.

I can't find the keys.

October 29, 2012

I couldn't sleep, I was excited about finishing my trial.

In six months I will have final results.

Nuno came with me.

I tell him about the "Philosophical Letters" I read during the night.

About that practice described by Voltaire,

which was common in the East,

of inoculating children against smallpox,

with pus taken from diseased people.

Virus against virus.

Look, it's eating. How curious.

It's trying to cut off a piece... Wow.

It's cutting off a piece...

- and it will take it.

I don't know. Let's see.

It is. Amazing!

I feel my heart beating fast.

In Francisco de Holanda's colours and lines

I imagine those 40 years,

from the first to the last pages.

From the bright colors of the apprentice under Michelangelo,

to his retreat in the countryside,

in simplicity, in a search for life in Christ.

Over the figure of Eros

I believe I see the words "Nuno" and "Love"

I read it again.

It is the phrase from Virgil:

"Now I know what love is."

It's the same thing...

We are living through sad times.

Scientists playing God;

special effects at a knock-down price.

Delirium of infinite growth.

Resources exhausted, spatial fantasies;

let's colonize other planets.

What a ludicrous notion, that we can destroy all life,

even giant viruses thriving in the water tanks of nuclear power plants.

We are too recent.

When we go back to dust life will sigh with relief.

This thing, that they call Joaquim,

made of DNA and memories,

of ten bacteria for each human cell,

feels, names itself and offers thanks:

it gives thanks for knowing Nuno

it gives thanks for having met Rufus

it gives thanks for sharing the moment

it thanks the friends departed

and those who remain.

I thank Father

It's still smoldering...

My life is uneventful

A grain of time, and I will be dust.

One more grain of time,

and HIV and HVC will become history,

sleeping in the human genome,

mutated into less lethal viruses

or simply eradicated.

Other ones, perhaps undergoing gestation,

will occupy the space of opportunity.

I would like to see in Darwin, more than eugenics,

in Freud, more than a wandering Jew,

in Marx, more than the foreseeing of barbarism.

I can only suggest you, don't accept summaries,

quotations of quotations.

And yet Christmas is coming.

The turkeys are growing on the poultry farms.

And so, I wish you a Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas!