Secluded Stillness

Secluded Stillness is a short film in diptych form, shot in Adega Baía da Arruda, a project by the Portuguese-Swiss architecture firm Barão-Hutter, built in Pico Island in 2017. The film intertwines the house/cellar with the unique context of the island, whose volcanic rock is transported indoors. Through sounds, textures, and the creatures, we come close to the experience that is to stay in this black space of seclusion and contemplation of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a document about a modern shelter—an aeroplane’s cockpit—of its light, its voluptuousness, which is as much withdrawn from as it is open to the outside. The shelter, which in its original concept has a survival purpose, is here elevated to an idea of living. ‘Here words end, here ends the world that I know; here, in this tremendous isolation where artificial life is reduced to the minimum, only eternal things endure.’ (Ilhas Desconhecidas, Raul Brandão)