Director FREDERICO MIRANDA

Countries Portugal

Duration 26 min

Synopsis
Fire Memories' is a documentary that aims to show the memories of old forest Masters who have devoted their lives to the forest. Stories marked by a strong spirit of sacrifice, as well as, the dedication they enhanced the forest as a resource, work, source of livelihood but mainly by the familiar tone with which they related to this reality. In parallel, it aims to express the relationship that these people had with fire as a tool to fight forest fires. In a time when material resources were scarce and the water was rarely used, they used to turn to the available means to fight fires in order to extinguish them as soon as possible, by using mostly hand tools and suppression fire. On a trip through Central and Northern Portugal, we have found ancient forest Masters who told us their stories of how they defended the forest, and how they empirically learned to deal with fire in order to extinguish forest fires. Suppression fire as a tool, as a technique but above all as a vision, knowledge, and experience of using fire against fire.