> Interviews

Encounters on an Uncertain Spring
Taymour Boulos (Director)

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—How are you? It’s raining today.

It’s beautiful to discover the rain.

—That’s what I was wondering. How did you like this rain today?

It’s particularly nice, you know, because since I’ve arrived, the weather has been warmer than I had expected. And then in the end, since yesterday, something has been happening. And yet yesterday night, we had a beautiful moment in front of me on the street, like in front of the building. And it started raining and we walked under the rain and it was quite a moment.

—Good, good. Because you talk about the sound of the rain in your previous film Sounds of Weariness (2021).

Yeah. No, that’s true. There’s someone also whom I interviewed in the process of making Sounds of Weariness who mentioned the sounds of the rain. I think it didn’t make it to the cuts, But it’s true that I like it as well, actually.

You know, I mean, it’s quite a calming sound. And as opposed to that, also in that film, I mentioned how much the sound of lightning.

—Oh, lightning.

The sound of the lightning is thunder. I saw the lightning with thunder which was also quite calming.

—By the way, I really like your film Sounds of Weariness. I haven’t seen it yet. I read the interview and I saw some of the photos. OK, you put the camera inside the washing machine to shoot. I can see that you’re holding a microphone and I think that’s kind of very interesting.

That film was made in Brussels.

—So that’s a trip that you had for your master program?

Yes. The trip was over a two-year period.

—Two years.

It was part of a masters. I’m not going to get too much into the details, but it was a program that also maybe felt like a festival in a way; Lisbon, Brussels, Budapest and back to Lisbon

—You started the trip in Lisbon and Budapest, and then went to Brussels.

Then I came back to Lisbon. You’re very well informed. That’s exactly what’s happened. Encounters on an Uncertain Spring was my last stop in this trip.

—So you’ve been traveling a lot.

It was two years ago. It was a very important point in my life. Yes, It was quite a special journey.

—I’ve been to Lisbon many times. Well, the first time I was there was in 1989. And then in 98, 2009, and 2012. The last time I was there was in 2016.

Oh you’ve been there a lot.

—I’m a dancer performer so I’ve been touring around.

OK. So you’re a performing artist and also a critic.

—I’m not a critic. So interviewing is a little awkward for me.

So is it for me.

—I hope we can carry this as a casual conversation.

Yes, definitely.

—How do you like Lisbon?

Lisbon is a place where at first I had some difficulties to get used to it because I had two stops there, and the first stop was more difficult because it was a new city for me and at the same time, it coincided with the beginning of the crisis in my country.

It was at the official beginning of the crisis. It had already been ongoing, though.

It was a lot of things for me. Lisbon at first didn’t impose itself as a home and then when I went back, which is when this film was made, it suddenly felt more welcoming, much more welcoming. And it appeared to me like a very luminous place, too.

—Luminous.

A bright, full of sun, and calming city.

—It’s also melancholic, a kind of old fashioned style city.

Yes.

—I liked it very much. And I clearly remember the texture of the city in the atmosphere which you can’t find in any other European cities. Lisbon is special. It has a special texture, which I saw in your film, I thought. I’m sorry I couldn’t watch your screening in the theater because of my schedule.

That’s perfectly fine. I already feel lucky that you’ve also seen some of my other films for this. I really appreciate it.

—And the texture, texture or the light that you captured in the film triggers my memory from the city. Like, somewhat slow . . . I’m not sure if slow is the correct word, but soft and . . .

Yeah, not more intense. You would say, not intense.

—You are right.

Actually Lisbon feels to me like a place a bit stopped in time in a way. But also I think there’s a relationship to the rest of the world. I don’t know if you’ve had the same feeling, maybe not, but to me it felt like a chance to take some distance with other parallel realities.

In the case of my second stay there when I made this film, the parallel realities were the ongoing crisis in Lebanon, my father’s illness and COVID in Lebanon. Lisbon felt like a place where there was a distance, and the film was also made to try to explore this distance that they had with this other reality.

Also, related to this idea of timelessness of Lisbon, sure, it felt like the perfect place to explore this, let’s say, state of being uncertain.

Uncertainty, that is, yes.

—Did you come up with the scenes or the ideas when you were there?

It’s not like I just came up with it. In the sense that uncertainty is something I’ve always struggled with, and been curious about. But what happened when I was there is that I knew it didn’t come from this word originally. This whole film, it came from only earlier than that. It came from a moment even before Lisbon actually. There’s a little fictionalized aspect in the film too.

—The name of the film then?

Encounters on an Uncertain Spring. Actually I was in Brussels when I got the news of my father’s disease.

There was the urgency of finding the medicine. While looking for this medicine, there was this um . . . , I suddenly felt alive. It was very paradoxical because there was something very invigorating about this quest. This continued till Lisbon. Once I was there, the word uncertainty, the idea of making a film about that had to do with this quest for the medicine.

But then it’s only after that I realized it was not going to be a film just about the quest for medicine. Maybe there’s something else. There’s something else actually that had to do with questioning what’s made me feel invigorated.

On this first day when I was In Brussels, actually, where I started looking for the medicine, how come I felt so alive all of a sudden? I think it was because when you have a quest to make, when you have something to do, suddenly things feel more certain in the sense that, OK, there are no doubts about things. It’s also something that we get when something very heavy happens in one’s life, maybe the very fact that everything else feels insignificant. Compared to this, the rest can bring some strangely paradoxical comfort.

I think even when someone passes away, there’s something terrible about it. But at the same time nothing else matters. Maybe there’s some sort of comfort in the fact that you can allow yourself to feel sorrow. Back then, I wasn’t able to put words on this feeling.

But then I started putting some Post-its in my room in Brussels and Lisbon, which was like a cave because it didn’t have a window. And so I had several Post-its with different things that I hadn’t been feeling. Also, I was trying to make sense of everything that was happening, which was OK.

There’s my dad. But there was also, like, this situation in my country. There was also the COVID, and I realized there were concentric circles that were revolving around something. But what was that idea that was at the center of this film?

Then came the idea of uncertainty, and it became a quest that I had to do with uncertainty. The medicine became some sort of metaphorical antidote to the idea of uncertainty as well. So it’s like there are two things happening at once in the film.

—You get the news that you got the medicine towards the end of your stay?

Well, earlier. Actually, my sister got it. I never found the medicine myself. This was because the medical system in Portugal was such that I just couldn’t. But my sister found it maybe before the end of my stay, much before, actually, because it was urgent. So of course there’s some sort of fictionalization as the timeline of the film suggests.

There’s this medicine thing, it ended up being an excuse or a McGuffin for another quest, although it was a reality, but a very important one, of course. but the film itself ended up revolving again around this idea of concentric circles with the sense of uncertainty at the center. And then I started thinking what encounters could happen, that could help me.

—Then you started walking around the city to look for encounters.

Yes.

—You were very good at encountering. I thought you had lots of encounters. Very beautiful ones. And certainly they were not all done in one afternoon?

No. The encounters worked in several ways. I had to anticipate a lot in the sense that I had to go for some encounters, and try to think of what I was looking for. I knew in the beginning already what I wanted to explore: different aspects of uncertainty. I knew quite early on that I wanted to have the, let’s say, spiritual aspects of uncertainty and very concrete, very grounded encounters as well. And then more metaphysical ones. There were different kinds of encounters. Sometimes they had to be provoked, of course. I mean, naturally, it doesn’t happen in one afternoon.

I was interested in the idea of a character incarnated by myself like a shadow.

A person who wanders around aimlessly, and encounters either people or events. Who wanders around sort of daydreaming. The presence of this character was important for me because it has to do with uncertainty for me.

—Wandering without knowing where you may get to?

A friend of them versus the unknown by definition, in the sense that they don’t have a trajectory that is defined.

—Was it when you walked around?

Yes. But of course, in a way no. The dispositive documentary is made in such a way that sometimes you have to make things happen. But still, it was partially true. And I tried as much as possible to allow for uncertainty or at least for uncontrolled things to happen that were not planned, allow for unplanned moments to happen.

—What was the most surprising encounter, which you had least expected?

Let me think, I found the whole priest’s encounter was amusing to me. And to Nico who as my partner in this project, and Luca who was working with me. Of course, when we first went we couldn’t have access to the place. But the second time we were able to go in, and I was wondering who rang the bell. It turned out however that there was no one there to ring the bell. Whenever you picture a person and then it turns out there is no one.

—That’s like magic.

There’s something exactly like that, but it was quite disappointing.

It was surprising and also amusing, and this itself as a filmmaker was a good funny lesson, and as a character in the film, allowing for the unplanned, too. it was again important for it to be uncontrolled, right?

It was my least controlled film. I’d say, it was made quite organically. The script was written progressively. And it was essential, I think, for it to be made that way. With its imperfections and like, assuming the fact that this form comes with its weaknesses and fragility.

But that’s something that I had to accept. And this is both as a filmmaker, as a character in the film, and me myself as a person learning filmmaking. The character in the film is trying to deal with the fact that you can never control everything. It’s about dealing with the unknown and with the uncontrollable.

Sorry, I already talked a lot about this. Tell me if I’m talking too much.

—I remember I also joined a protest while I was in Lisbon for LGBT rights. There’s a park at the top of the hill where it started.

Was it the grass on top of the hill? I think I know where that is but not this one.

—OK. I was wondering where the protest happened in the city.
—I mean, I noticed that although you have been to lots of different places in the city, you really don’t show very much of where it is. Maybe you carefully avoided showing any touristic characteristics of the places?

Well, there was a bit of that, too. Although I mentioned Lisbon was the right place for this to happen, at the same time, it could have happened anywhere. As I mentioned initially, the feeling that made me want to make this film was in Brussels. So I could have made this film in Brussels. Or in any other city.

I think although of course, Lisbon has this particularly soothing quality, my interest resides in the facts and the very specificities of the city because encounters themselves don’t necessarily have to do that much with documenting the country in particular, even when it gets more political, for instance, when I came across with the protest.

To answer your question, it was in this park in Alameda. I think so. Even though I was interested in the situation of the city, but perhaps not to show it as specificity and because even the political aspect of the film, it isn’t too specific to Lisbon. It was not by chance that I went to the protest, it has to do with my left wing inclinations, which is probably present in the film, too.

It goes in the opposite way of the quick hustle bustle, the quick lifestyle, a new liberal lifestyle. So it’s the character I’m incarnating is a character who takes the time to make encounters that perhaps we wouldn’t have time to make in the real life context.

It would not be so hard to encounter a priest, but maybe not in such a way that by taking the time to go and asking silly things, silly questions, but I like the triviality of the questions or of the interest. Also, it came from this desire to create a space where there’s a character who takes the time to do things that you can’t do in real life.

And so it has to do with little treasure pleasures. That’s why there’s a little epicurean aspect in the film, there’s a few little daily life pleasures that I was trying to portray. I think we should have more time for these things.

—For example, you took a nap.

Exactly. Unproductive things like a nap.

—Siesta. You take siesta in your life?

Yeah, I do. So does my dad. Do you actually take a nap daily?

—Not big ones, but yes.

How long usually, like, what’s the idea of that?

—Lately I’m not very well, so, one hour if I can sleep, but usually half an hour.

Yeah. Half an hour, I think, is a good time. So, siesta maybe is another aspect of this film, I knew it when I filmed the coffee factory owner.

Or the fisherman or all seem in different aspects. Also, although the fisherman is a working class person, and Helena is more of bourgeois, being a factory owner, which is different, there’s this other person as well at the demonstration. But I felt like work should have a place in the film, a presence, and all this constellation around uncertainty. I felt like work should be mentioned.

—Well, I was also thinking about your father. You have a very close relationship with him.

Yes, I’m very close with my father although we are very different.

—He must be in his 50s or . . . ?

I think he is 66, or maybe 68. I’m 26 years old.

With my dad I share some similarities, but I’d say we’re quite different, but both very optimistic. He’s more optimistic than I am. We are different in how we live our lives, but at the same time, I think we agree within our differences. But I’d say our main difference, at least that I tried to explore in the film, has to do with fundamental alchemy, with faith, if you would, or optimism.

And that is the starting point of the film. My dad can deal with uncertainty in a way that maybe I couldn’t at the time I made this film.

—I hope he’s doing OK.

Luckily, he’s doing well.

—Good. The medicine’s working.

Yes.

—That’s good.

I was very impressed throughout the process by him and his attitude towards that.

—And he’s still working.

He’s still working at 68 years old. That’s actually interesting, you know, that I’m thinking that I never made the link, I was just talking about labor and my parents are past the age of retirement. Retirement. Only if they were in another country, possibly they would be getting a retirement pension by now.

I currently live with my parents since I went back to Lebanon.

—I heard the news of the recent situation in Lebanon. I hope your family and friends are okay.

Yes, they are. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, yeah, I mean, the recent situation with the bombing by Hamas.

—Well, I only got the news very briefly.

No, but thanks for asking.

—Before finishing, I would like to say that I think the film was enveloped in this strange, soft light and tender texture, which I really liked.

—Thank you.

Thank you so much. And I enjoyed our “rainy” talk.

Compiled by Takao Kawaguchi

Photography: Abe Taisei / Video: Kusunose Kaori / 2023-10-09