this is my house in lisbon...

It's funny that since I arrived I am much more in touch with my friends from philly than from here. I mean I am meeting people here, but they seem so far away from me the way I am now, as I changed a lot but they cannot see it and it is very difficult to explain how people change deeply. Of course they want to know how was it, but what I can tell them it's just so poor... that's why I feel my friendships in philly are so important to me now and I wish I could be staying, because I really feel my life is there at this moment, I was feeling happy there, maybe for the first time, at least in such a continuous way, being able to integrate myself with my art and others, without limitations or boundaries... just experiencing that flow was amazing for me.

You say about "the ballad..." that is "simple, direct and human", nice choice of words because it's how I feel myself and I am happy that I could put that in my work. When I started making films I was very concerned about the form, not exactly the technique but how to put things, ideas, feelings into film form, how to create beyond the rules, how to make something new... I discovered the pleasure of the camera and editing and I found I was talented for that and found out that film was the way for me to expresse myself and the world around me. My master - an old film director who lived in Japan for 10 years - used to say I was TOO talented... For a long time I thought how is it possible to be too talented with the camera or whatever?

doing films I realized - and even more in my creative time in philly - that I was forgetting a bit the content, my feelings were not clear or direct or simple... my ideas were blured, poetic, but with my camera I could give some beauty to things, I could trick myself or my subject, give them the tension and mistery I was feeling. I was abstract and the communication with the public was possibly also not very clear, I was not trying to send any particular message or make a statement, I was just creating atmospheres, sensations, forms (narative forms, editing experiences and so on). And I still think there is a lot of beauty in my first films and I like them and it is interesting for me to watch them and see who I was, who I am now. I think that is one of the big reasons for me to do films: to understand myself better and the world around me and people and relationships and human condition... yes, the human aspect became more and more important and now I think I can create many different levels of experience in my films, one is more direct and others underneath, like layers - I guess I could finally do that with my new script (Mobile) and it was very important to do it in a script / written form because forced me to really think very carefully in every single detail and in the orquestration of the whole. it took me around 3 years to be able to do so. and that is what interests me right now, to be able to talk with people, to portray their lives I must get close and understand them, so I need to be simple and direct, that is the key I was looking for. America taught me that, not in the sense of the "story / plot" and the "message" but even by my understanding of english language, so clear and direct... that made me think in a different way, also the computers, which made me think more logically... which for me was good!

and now here I am, in a place where people get sad and depressed because they cannot do their art and because they have to wait so long... and I'm afraid to loose the energy I had in philly where I was feeling so inspired from everything and all the friends I got and all the environment was giving me that dynamic... being displaced there, without roots or attachments made me look at myself and all around me in a very different way and I got deep inside to search for new things also outside of me. Being displaced, at first, was kind of painful, then was an inspiration and lately I was feeling part of the place (I remember walking on the streets smiling, just because I was feeling so happy!) and now, it is here in lisbon that I feel like a stranger...

claudia