“Memento Mori" (remember you will die), "Vanitas" (vanity of life) and "still life" are artistic clichés now in disuse. The continuous present, cult of youth, forgetfulness of the past, the politics of programmed obsolescence that perpetuates consumption and universal reification have all erased the presence of death from everyday life.

OSSOS is a visual essay reminding us that death is a real experience, perhaps the only real thing in life, which can be beautiful and ephemeral like the spiraling smoke from a cigarette, the wind on the meadows, the weary sound of the flock’s cowbells, the voluptuous cloud slowly making its way on a spring afternoon and the dusty skulls in a chapel.

The body is able to move because of its skeleton, and when emaciated it will erode into gray dust, an illusion of something that once was but now, it doesn’t really matter.

If people lived their lives with an awareness of its inevitable end, what would their day to day be like? We do not aim at moral judgment or eternal life as in the quoted text from the Catholic chapel in Évora, but to the ethical and aesthetic experience of life as equal to death: Eros and Thanatos as an inclusive whole.

Director: Raúl Miranda

Cinematography/editing: Francisco Navarrete Sitja

Performance: Lander Patrick

Music: Sebastian Jatz Rawicz

Producer: Minimale films.

Location: Montemor-o-Novo/Évora Thanks to: O Espaço do Tempo / Colección Ca.Sa / Antonio Luiz Cotrim

Portugal 2019.