A FACTORY DEVOTED TO THE PAST
By Sérgio Raimundo
Still from THE NOTHING FACTORY
In THE NOTHING FACTORY, the Portuguese director Pedro Pinho focuses on the dramatic transition from the manufacturing world to the technological world
THE NOTHING FACTORY tells the story of a group of workers at an elevator factory who, after having machines and raw materials stolen by the administration, decide to stay in the factory despite having nothing to do. They then plunge into total unemployment and await their respective layoffs.
This nearly three-hour long feature film is a mirror of what factories have become after the technological revolution. The film could be seen as the staging of a Portuguese past, but it constitutes, more than that, a voice that speaks of the crisis faced by industries and factories and the demise of a political discourse that promised a better future.
"The world is no longer divided between the right and the left, but between those who submit and those who are willing to give up their dreams, cell phones, trips to the moon". This sentence is one of the film’s passages and, as one can see, carries the cosmopolitan trend that lies in the scenes. At all times, the film seeks to not position itself from the right wing nor from the left wing. It seeks to be a film of the world and about the world.
Characterized by musical acts incorporated into the narrative, political contradictions, social incidents, characters that advocate for their causes, humor that raises laughter and compassion, this film is an invitation to reflect on a recent past that turned many families into victims of uncertainty and the fear of tomorrow.
THE NOTHING FACTORY is, from another perspective, a factory of re-encounters with the past, a factory that, even without producing elevators, elevates us to think and reflect on how, sometimes in times of total crisis, humanity’s work is minimized. This feature film is utterly committed to the present time, as it seeks to show us small black cardinal points that once made us blindly believe in a sure destiny.
