Arabian Nights, Arábia. Voice-over, ambient sounds, silences, crisis, labourism

Abstract

The trilogy called Arabian Nights, by the portuguese directir Miguel Gomes, and the Brazilian film Arábia, by Afonso Uchoa and João Dumans have several similar aspects. This arcticle aims mainly to understand how those filmic similitudes work. These films are part of a much larger group of contemporary features in which voice-over are central, silences are clearly heard by the audiences, bringing together a full range of interesting
aural issues. We aim to demonstrate how such films propose a relevant representation of the crisis of contemporary capitalism, as well as the losing of rights and estability felt
by the working class in a a global scale, focussing on the cases of Portugal and Brazil. It is also our goal to show how the sound elements play a central role in constructing such representation. In Arabian Nights we intend to demonstrate how the multiplicity
of voices can be used in order to adapt for film the famous arabian tales. In Arabia, a worker who has suffered a major injury while working becomes an unpredictable first person narrator. Although he defines himself as a person who has little skills towards
writting, his written words will be followed by the spectators. By thinking beyond the sound relations themselves, as well as the relation about voices and images, it is also our goal to understand how it is possible for us, as spectators, to relate to the diegetical silences we can hear so clearly on those films.