Sculpting the Body, Sculpting History

Chapter two focus on the body, which is one of the central themes and motifs in the works of João Pedro Rodrigues. One of his objectives as a filmmaker is to explore the body, thinking about its complex figuration. Indeed, the body in his films can have many forms and shapes (transformed and sculptural or chiselled), it is a plural body, inhabited by the ghost of history, the animal body and the spiritual body. As such, this chapter uses the body, or its traces in its absence, as the common thread to think about cinema. In order to do that this study explores the “lesser” films by Rodrigues like China China (2007); Red Dawn (2011); The Last Time I saw Macao (2011) or Mahjong (2013) looking at issues like spectral bodies and memory or experiences lived in real life.