Self-representation and Intermediality in The Metamorphosis of Birds (Catarina Vasconcelos, 2020)
Self-representation and Intermediality in The Metamorphosis of Birds (Catarina Vasconcelos, 2020)

Summary/Abstract: The Metamorphosis of Birds (Catarina Vasconcelos, 2020, Portugal) is a hybrid non-fiction film in which the director represents herself and the members of her immediate family, who are an extension of her, in an intermedial and deliberately lyrical fashion. Starting with Bill Nichols’s performative modality of documentary, the article will shed light on how the metaphorical network that links mother (roots and growth), father (life and death) and birds (freedom and creativity) in the film is developed inconnection to the filmmaker and her existence, in a profoundly personal and intimate manner. This performative autobiographical stance exists midway between the real and the fictional, i.e., in fully autofictional territory. Permeated with autobiographical details but resorting to imagination, the film seems to be a combination of both “biographical” and “specular” autofiction according to Luz Elena Herrera Zamudio (2007), presupposing lyricism, on the one hand, and reversibility between the real and the imaginary, on the other. Mirroring is the core performative act which demonstrates that the creator is an integral part of her work (film as text) and vice versa.

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