By Adam Rabiner
At the turn of the millennium the Y2K problem was the last thing on the minds of film makers Joaquim Pinto and Nuno Leonel. In the fall of 1999 they were beginning to film in the Azores, an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean about 845 miles west of Portugal, and the Year 2000 Bug was an issue far removed from these remote and traditional islands - an autonomous region of Portugal - settled in the 15th century by Portuguese navigators, Sephardic Jews, Moorish prisoners, African slaves, Flemish, French, Galicians, and others.
Pinto and Leonel seem drawn to the Azores precisely because it is technologically backward, rough-hewn, in the middle of nowhere, a tight-knit and small community deeply rooted in its own customs and traditions, distant from the modern world, both temporally and spatially. They chose as the subject of the film a group of fishermen they befriend in Rabo de Peixe, a small town on the norther coast of the largest island Sao Miguel. First they accompany middle-aged Artur one evening on his small boat as he and his crew attempt to catch a shoal of mackerel by spreading out a large specially designed net. They use no electronic equipment to detect the schools of small fish, relying more on their experience and intuition, but and on this particular evening they had no luck. Later on Pinto and Leonel are invited go to sea on a much larger boat captained by Artur’s daughter Diana’s husband Pedro (who has a twin brother Eduardo) in search of prized swordfish and other larger catch.
In long, quiet takes, Fish Tail observes the careful, precise, efficient, almost mechanized movements of the crew baiting the hooks attached to miles-long fishing lines and other prep work. Pinto and Leonel approach many of these scenes as cinema verite, with very long stretches lacking narration, just taking in the action accompanied by sounds (and sometimes silences): water splashing, shouts and murmurs, muted conversations, whistles, the distinctive purr of a boat’s motor, birdsong, the clanking of heavy equipment. It’s almost as if they are anthropologists studying a primitive people and how they interact with their natural environment.
Yet unlike other purely observational cinema, there are also occasional highly scripted narrative interludes when the filmmakers wax poetic about the nature of freedom and other more profound topics. Although acknowledging the monotonous nature of some routines or aspect of the job, they contrast fishermen’s productive and relatively happy, though physically exhausting, dangerous and at times economically perilous lives, with those of more alienated factory and office workers and perhaps even creative film-maker types.
Pinto and Leonel remained in the Azores through 2002, going on several more fishing trips and following the lives of Pedro, Arturo, and several others. Along the way they fell deeper in love with the Azores and its people, customs, and ways of life. Eventually, rather than leave the islands, they invited friends and family from the mainland to visit them there. Finally they made it their permanent home, perhaps afraid that this is a vanishing and unsustainable world. The film concludes on the eve of the adoption of the Euro, the brand new European currency, which promised to usher in a brave new world, a vision of a unified Europe.
At one point Fish Tails refers to Moby Dick. While the film captures a particular time, place and small group of people, like the famous novel, its themes are expansive and universal. One concrete takeaway, though, is its resonance with a hallmark of the alternative food movement to “know your farmer and where your food comes from.” For consumers who shun farm-raised seafood, preferring theirs wild, and take this message seriously, you cannot find a better film than Fish Tail.
At the turn of the millennium the Y2K problem was the last thing on the minds of film makers Joaquim Pinto and Nuno Leonel. In the fall of 1999 they were beginning to film in the Azores, an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean about 845 miles west of Portugal, and the Year 2000 Bug was an issue far removed from these remote and traditional islands - an autonomous region of Portugal - settled in the 15th century by Portuguese navigators, Sephardic Jews, Moorish prisoners, African slaves, Flemish, French, Galicians, and others.
Pinto and Leonel seem drawn to the Azores precisely because it is technologically backward, rough-hewn, in the middle of nowhere, a tight-knit and small community deeply rooted in its own customs and traditions, distant from the modern world, both temporally and spatially. They chose as the subject of the film a group of fishermen they befriend in Rabo de Peixe, a small town on the norther coast of the largest island Sao Miguel. First they accompany middle-aged Artur one evening on his small boat as he and his crew attempt to catch a shoal of mackerel by spreading out a large specially designed net. They use no electronic equipment to detect the schools of small fish, relying more on their experience and intuition, but and on this particular evening they had no luck. Later on Pinto and Leonel are invited go to sea on a much larger boat captained by Artur’s daughter Diana’s husband Pedro (who has a twin brother Eduardo) in search of prized swordfish and other larger catch.
In long, quiet takes, Fish Tail observes the careful, precise, efficient, almost mechanized movements of the crew baiting the hooks attached to miles-long fishing lines and other prep work. Pinto and Leonel approach many of these scenes as cinema verite, with very long stretches lacking narration, just taking in the action accompanied by sounds (and sometimes silences): water splashing, shouts and murmurs, muted conversations, whistles, the distinctive purr of a boat’s motor, birdsong, the clanking of heavy equipment. It’s almost as if they are anthropologists studying a primitive people and how they interact with their natural environment.
Yet unlike other purely observational cinema, there are also occasional highly scripted narrative interludes when the filmmakers wax poetic about the nature of freedom and other more profound topics. Although acknowledging the monotonous nature of some routines or aspect of the job, they contrast fishermen’s productive and relatively happy, though physically exhausting, dangerous and at times economically perilous lives, with those of more alienated factory and office workers and perhaps even creative film-maker types.
Pinto and Leonel remained in the Azores through 2002, going on several more fishing trips and following the lives of Pedro, Arturo, and several others. Along the way they fell deeper in love with the Azores and its people, customs, and ways of life. Eventually, rather than leave the islands, they invited friends and family from the mainland to visit them there. Finally they made it their permanent home, perhaps afraid that this is a vanishing and unsustainable world. The film concludes on the eve of the adoption of the Euro, the brand new European currency, which promised to usher in a brave new world, a vision of a unified Europe.
At one point Fish Tails refers to Moby Dick. While the film captures a particular time, place and small group of people, like the famous novel, its themes are expansive and universal. One concrete takeaway, though, is its resonance with a hallmark of the alternative food movement to “know your farmer and where your food comes from.” For consumers who shun farm-raised seafood, preferring theirs wild, and take this message seriously, you cannot find a better film than Fish Tail.