Manuela Barile
Manuela is an Italian artist living and working in the Portuguese rural area of Lafões since 2006. There, she has been developing place-based projects in close contact with local communities, taking into account specific aspects of the territory such as tradition, memory, community architecture and history, and symbols and rituals deposited as indelible signs in the ground. Her works combine sound and visual anthropology, documentary, video art, performance art and vocal performance. They address intimate issues such as death, pain, happiness, work, and religiosity. The artist conceives her art as a continuous investigation and reflection on reality, on being in the world, on her personal experience. As a singer, she has undertaken a personal journey of vocal experimentation applied to free improvisation and based on “extended vocal techniques” focused on the relationship between voice, body, soundscape and acoustic properties of places. Manuela Barile is Director of Binaural/Nodar, a Portuguese cultural organization dedicated to the promotion of sound and media arts in a rural context. Her audiovisual works have been shown in festivals worldwide, such as the Australian International Experimental Film Festival, Cologne OFF, Optica, Videoholica, and the Camden International Film Festival (US).
https://vimeo.com/manuelabarile
Directed by Manuela Barile, with research by Luis Costa and Manuela Barile and local mediation by Isabel Silvestre, ‘Bondança’ is an almost wordless documentary about the yearly celebration of corn in a tiny rural village of the municipality of São Pedro do Sul (Viseu Dão Lafões Region), from its seeding to the making of corn bread, intertwined with many of the local female polyphonic chanting.
