Sri Lanka, Portugal, Denmark

Synopsis

Luís Vaz de Camões, the greatest Portuguese Renaissance poet, struggles creatively while engaging in a hedonistic, coprophagic, and drug-addled lifestyle. The film follows the poet, and his lover Dinamene, as he writes his masterpiece, the epic poem Os Lusíadas. He travels from the cacophony of the Indic jungles, surrounded by allegorical elephants and rhyming macaques, to the frontier of Heaven and Hell, where he is confronted by his fantasy: fame and immortality.

Director's Statement

Camões was the first European poet to have an extended experience in Africa, India and Indochina. He wrote Os Lusíadas while he was exiled in the Indes, a poem that glorifies the Portuguese navigators that departed from Lusitanian shores and traveled to Taprobana, now known as Sri Lanka.
Many myths surround Camões’ voyages, and one in particular was an inspiration for this film. It has Camões falling in love with a Chinese courtesan, which he then baptized with a Greek nymph’s name: Dinamene. The myth goes on to have Camões and Dinamene imprisoned on a boat to Goa and suffering a shipwreck. Supposedly his lover drowned, as Camões was too busy swimming after his manuscript.
Taprobana is intended as a poetic and absurd satire about this contradictory and charming character; a European exiled in the Indes, but obsessed with his homeland; an iconoclast rapscallion that wrote some of the most sublime verses of the Portuguese language, where spiritual illumination is inextricable from sexual apotheosis.
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Gabriel Abrantes

Written by: Gabriel Abrantes

Produced by: Gabriel Abrantes, Natxo Checa, Marta Furtado, Vimukthi Jayasundara, Tine Fischer, Patricia Drati

Cinematography: Gabriel Abrantes

Editing: Natxo Checa

Production Design: Natxo Checa

Sound: Hugo Leitão , Daniel Gries

Cast: Jani Zhao, Natxo Checa

Nominations and Awards

  • European Short Film 2014