They have in common the fact that both have left their previous lives and professions and even moved to land. But they took opposite routes, one from the Algarve to Lisbon and the other from there to here. Both in search of their dream. Miguel Valverde and Rui Rodrigues were the guests of another Beta Talk, the conversation about business entrepreneurship that takes place every month at the Café Concerto at Teatro Municipal de Portimão.
Miguel Valverde, a lawyer born in Portimão, left his hometown to live the dream of cinema in Lisbon and is now one of the three organizers of one of the best known festivals in Portugal, IndieLisboa, which is taking place these days in the capital.
Rui Rodrigues, 37 years old, an advertiser for large companies in Lisbon, one day decided to leave this life of hard work and stress, where he earned well, to come close to Rogil to become an organic farmer and create the agricultural company rural heritage.
Rui did his basic training in Communication Design and soon assumed himself as the “black sheep of the family”, who told him that these things in the arts “do not amount to anything”. But he persisted, began studying in Fine Arts, then finished at IADE, and worked on the 3D television series «Major Alvega», in the production company Mandala (of «Contra Information»), before entering advertising, where he opened «a joke mine with some friends».
The “joke” was such that, after a short time, he was already being invited by a multinational to become artistic director of campaigns for customers as important as Renault.
The fuel crisis and life change
One day, he recalls, at the time of the fuel crisis, he was going to Porto to work when his wife called him saying that, because of that, he had no fresh food at home, nor where to buy it, nor anything to give to his daughter. both still baby. And then there was a click in Rui Rodrigues' head: «I thought: a person can earn a lot of money, he can have good cars, but then what about the food?».
«My childhood dream was to have an agritourism». From there Rui decided to start looking for a hill by the sea. And there he ended up finding the hill, near Rogil, in Aljezur, a land with a total of eight hectares of good land served by the Mira irrigation perimeter.
«I gave up my agency's quotas on January 3rd and on January 7th I was already putting a roof on the hill».
Rui Rodrigues wears an earring in his ear, a beard fly on his chin that gives him the air of a Chinese philosopher, and he drives a jeep that is always full of mud. Besides, it's Lisbon. When in 2011 he landed at Rogil, a city boy who wanted to be a farmer but had never gotten his hands on the land, he was seen as a madman by almost everyone.
“Nobody encouraged me. The Local Action Group of Aljezur the first thing they said to me was: you won't find anyone here to work the land». But Rui found someone, Senhor Zé, a 63-year-old collaborator who is "a wise man of the land". Later, Mr. Zé's son also started working with him.
Thanks to his way of being and the friendship he soon made with another farmer, as he was also young and pioneer in the area of organic farming, António Rosa, who sells in the local market but above all «provides very important restaurants in Lisbon» .
Put your hands in the ground and create calluses
The mound, the house, was almost in ruins and it took many hours of hard work, creating calluses on my hands, to make it presentable. The land also required a lot of work and fatigue. “One day, I wanted to install an irrigation system on two hectares and they asked me for 15 thousand euros. I didn't, so I set up the system myself, I lost four pounds in the process. But today I know how to do a channeling. This is not learned at universities!».
Betting on organic farming, Rui started to sell his produce to other local farmers, but he soon dedicated himself to making baskets of organic products that he took to Lisbon “to pay for diesel” for the trip he makes every week to visit his wife and wife. daughter, who remained in the capital.
«I've never communicated, but my concept is “rural heritage”. If I sold other people's concepts when I was an advertiser, I will also sell mine».
The success of the baskets has been so much, as well as of other businesses in which he got involved, that he quickly leased a contiguous land with 16 hectares, where organic farming was already carried out, and thus increased the total area of his exploration.
At this time, the brand rural inheritance de Rui Rodrigues has 120 regular customers of the organic basket, all private and in the Greater Lisbon area, mainly in the capital and in Almada. On Sunday and Monday, the entrepreneur goes there and distributes the baskets. Business has been going so well that he has even had to buy a trailer for the jeep.
Despite his bet on agriculture, Rui Rodrigues remains connected to the advertising medium, working at his computer, at a distance, and going to Lisbon once a week. At the moment, he has two communication projects in hand: «an agritourism in Tavira, Quinta dos Perfumes, which opens in June, and a Dental Clinic in Faro and Olhão». It is a complement to your agricultural earnings.
First steps in internationalization
Rui Rodrigues and his Rural Heritage are already on the path of internationalization. It all started with an Argentine friend who lives in Brussels and who one day told him: "I want your products". “And I said: ok, I'll send you a basket. But he told me: I want 200 tons of pumpkin. Hey there! A person is not used to this», says Rui, ending with a laugh.
Today, Rui is involved in a pumpkin and sweet potato export process to Germany, Spain, Italy and France, in which he involved other farmers. “Either we get together or else it doesn't work. Let's go there to join efforts and skills, each with their own», he stresses.
«We have a unique product in Portugal, the sweet potato, but only Cristiano Ronaldo is mentioned. And we have sardines, mackerel. And we were big peanut producers and now it comes all from China. Where are we going to stop?”
With his friend António Rosa, who pioneered market-oriented organic farming in Aljezur, Rui began to share ideas, experiences and finally business. «We started with peanuts and ended up with freeze-dried carrots».
António Rosa, who also participated in the March Beta Talk in Portimão, gave his testimony about Rui, saying that he was “surprised by the way he managed to settle in so quickly. He is a person with strength!».
«My path was always against the current, it was one of hard work and against the current», stressed António Rosa, adding that he and Rui share «the same way of being on earth. We have this karma of having to be the vehicle to pass on the witness».
António, who was also considered crazy when he started betting on organic farming, underlines: “as a farmer, I feel I should have the same status as a top-level athlete”.
As for his partnership with Rui Rodrigues and his own production, aimed mainly at the demanding market of high-quality restaurants, «at this moment we do not have the capacity to respond to the demand we have».
To Rui, the family who previously thought he was a little crazy, now says: «Rui, you are a visionary, you turned to the ground».
From law to cinema
Miguel Valverde was born in Portimão, is a lawyer specializing in copyright, works in film criticism and programming, studied script, created the IndieLisbon, one of the biggest film festivals in the country, and is himself a film producer.
The course was taken at the Faculty of Law of Lisbon, where Miguel, due to the connection he had felt with cinema from a very young age, specialized in an area of Civil Law, that of Copyright, especially applied to cinema: «film as a work made in collaboration, between director, producer, wardrobe, music, etc. All of them are authors».
But when he finished his course, he returned to Portimão, to practice his profession there, in a law firm. And he did everything: "crime, work, civil". Even so, he has always remained connected to Cinema, reviewing for the newspaper «barlavento», where his weekly chronicle appeared, as he recalls, «right below Prof. Herrero». Besides, I went to Lisbon every week for the premieres.
In Portimão, more precisely in Praia da Rocha, there had been a film festival dedicated to short films for many years, FICA, whose director, Carlos Manuel, one day invited Miguel Valverde to the jury and the following year to be a programmer .
Later, the law firm where he worked in Portimão opened a branch in Paris and, on a work trip there, Miguel had the opportunity to «see a retrospective of Portuguese cinema in France as it has never been done in Portugal». It was also during these wanderings that he met the director of the French Cinematheque.
During his connection to FICA, Miguel always insisted that the festival should show more and more Portuguese cinema. And one day, while he was working on choosing films for the Algarve festival, he met a Macedonian who told him: “you're a nice guy to schedule short films for me at my festival. And I went there. In the second year of that festival, the day after my arrival, war broke out between Albania and Macedonia. My mother called me worried with the news and I told her: “Here you don't notice that there is war”. But we were working at the Ministry of the Army and the place where we were staying was next to the US Embassy…».
Change life
In the midst of all that, Miguel began to think: «this is much more interesting than the problems I have at the office! It's not that I don't like law. I really like it and I don't put it aside that one day I can exercise it again. But I thought that in cinema there were many more different challenges».
Therefore, in November 2001, Miguel Valverde left his office and went to study script. With the highest grade in the course, taken at ETIC Training Advanced, he was invited to teach at Restart, a school in Lisbon, and to work with Pedro Costa, the director of the award-winning film «Ossos». “He was one of my favorite directors and my job was to send his films to festivals and submit applications for the ICA”.
Asserting himself as “very stubborn”, the idea of promoting an independent film festival had been germinating in his head for years. With two friends, Nuno Sena and Rui Pereira, they started to idealize the IndieLisbon. «Each one knew their area: I was a Law student, Nuno came from Communication Sciences, and Rui had studied Management. We weren't those typical freaks who had studied cinema, so a few things in the air. We thought of creating something serious from the beginning, showing the cinema we wanted, but communicating with a wide audience». And so was born the IndieLisbonIn 2003.
In the first edition of the Festival, they honored the Sundance Festival, the most important in the world in terms of independent cinema. “We sent them an email to invite them but we thought: no one will answer us. But they said yes, let's go to the festival and make a schedule for you. I later asked the director of Sundance why they had accepted our invitation and he said it was because our website was so cute. In fact, we have always invested in careful communication and apparently it has worked well».
Years later, in another edition, «we invited the director of the Festival de Cannes to the jury and he replied by saying: “I have a lot of respect for IndieLisboa, it is one of my four favorite independent festivals”».
Miguel, however, is also the representative in Portugal of the Cannes Filmmakers' Fortnight.
From other people's movies to your own movies
After having studied screenplay, Miguel took classes in comics and script for animated film at the Gulbenkian. One day he decided that he wanted to write a short film, but that he wanted to make it on 35 mm film, «a story that was completely photographed». His short film was «filmed half at the Autodromo de Portimão and half in Iceland. What will these two places have in common?”.
The film was selected for the Santa Maria da Feira Festival, for the Documentary Panorama in Lisbon, for the Cork Festival, in Ireland, the Pompidou Center, in Paris, for the Spanish Cinematheque, for Melboune (Australia), Netherlands, and also for Shortcutz, in Lisbon. «And it has been much requested to be presented in galleries».
This film was made with his already solid experience as a producer: «Organizing a festival is also being a producer. Indie moves around one million euros».
Recently, writer Possidónio Cachapa invited Miguel to "produce his feature film", and the producer is now "trying to find funding for all this".
“Since I left law, I've never stopped teaching copyright classes. It's an ever-changing area, for the most part now with all the issues raised over the internet. I will never stop being a jurist, although I continue to do what I like most, which is everything that has to do with cinema».
The impossible dream of a film festival in the Algarve
Proving once again that «saints of the house don't work miracles», the festival that Miguel Valverde tried to organize regularly in his homeland of Portimão died after two editions. It was the «Visões do Sul» festival, which «linked Manuel Teixeira Gomes, his travels and his literary work, in order to build a program with that».
"To my great regret", the festival is over. But this was not due to lack of quality or public interest, but… due to lack of money from the Portimão Chamber. There were only two editions, and in the first the Chamber was owed "huge money", while the second "motivated a judicial process to receive", which is not yet concluded.
FICA, however, had already died a long time ago, which leads Miguel Valverde to regret that in his Algarve a film festival cannot succeed. «The problem is that, when there was money, nobody believed, and now…».
To make up for this heartbreak, the IndieLisbon, whose 10th edition is running until April 28, in various spaces in the capital, continues to prove to be a success, with the public, critics, innovation, with programming for all ages and different audiences.
In order to keep this festival going, even in a year of great financial restraint, Miguel Valverde and his fellow organizers make contact throughout the year with companies and sponsors. But an important part of the funding comes from the Media Program, which supports only 20 festivals across Europe, one of them being Indie.
Indie has even had an extension in Portimão, but, recalls Miguel Valverde, «the Chamber owed us». In other words, it won't be too soon that Miguel will think of more adventures in the Algarve.
New Beta Talk is today
March's Beta Talk was thus about the story of a new rural man and a lawyer who loves cinema. What do these two entrepreneurs have in common? As summarized by Salomé Cabrita, responsible for the organization of Beta Talk by the Portimão City Council, at the end of the session, they have in common «stubbornness, daring, sharing, partnership». And why not say it?, a certain amount of madness.
Today, April 16, from 19:00 pm, at Café Concerto do TEMPO – Teatro Municipal de Portimão, it will once again receive another Beta Talk, this time with guests Ricardo Alves Mariano (SW- Success Work) and Daniel Machado (Ecoceanus) , who will share their journeys, in an informal and relaxed atmosphere that reflects the Beta Talk spirit. Admission is free, but the registration must be done here.
Photos of: Cris Costa – etic_algarve
Comments