On Travessa do Ferreiro, Desidério Rocha closes the door to his home only to open, right next to it, the door to his workshop where he works. It’s been this way for 70 years. Nowadays, there’s little farming left, and no more agricultural tools to make or repair.

The kind of work I used to do… is long gone.

To keep myself busy, I started making swords;

and now I’m going to make the swords of D. Afonso Henriques!

The Blacksmith shares his love for the craft during brief pauses in his work or while repeating each gesture at the anvil or the forge. Desidério’s life is driven by passion. It always has been, and still is. Even though his body aches, he never stops working.

Eu I’ve never told this to anyone!

It’s been many years of work… and hard work!

The documentary centers on the words and actions of a seemingly solitary man. On his daily routine, carried out for over seven decades. It begins with his gestures—sometimes slow, sometimes sudden—repeated endlessly, then pauses to listen to his words, his silences, his enchantments and disenchantments. As if attempting to capture a single day in the life of someone practicing a vanishing craft, handed down through time immemorial—yet with a perspective that goes far beyond the trade of a blacksmith in modern times.

What matters here is the man himself. Restless and constantly striving. Defiant and passionate, rising above himself when least expected. The gaze of the camera is, in this sense, ambiguous—absorbing the tension between multiple temporalities. Informal, through the use of a present-day, mostly static frame.

Alongside the image, the sound is captured in an open, unfiltered manner—direct speech. Image and sound complement each other, going beyond a mere descriptive or demonstrative record of tasks, to dwell also in the hesitations, confessions, laughter, pauses, and the physical strain faced by a body that still keeps up with a restless, passionate, and determined mind.

I was strong… there was a guy, taller than me, but
they threw me straight into hammering. They set me to hammering,
I started working, I started seeing the craft… we made sickles,
plow blades, all kinds of farm tools.

Travessa do Ferreiro is, in short, a monologue that transports us—within the span of a single day—into the adventure of the human condition, in all its fragility, restlessness, and passion, in its ever-present drive to surpass itself. It speaks of continuing to believe that, even in the later stages of life, the meaning of what we do—and how we do it—the love and the passion we’ve held and still hold, truly make all the difference.

An installation was created in Lagos, at the Laboratório de Actividades Criativas, where Desidério Rocha watches himself in a recording I made at his home as he viewed the documentary.

The Sword of Dom Afonso Henriques can be seen here.