17 Julho 2015
PEDRO COSTA COMES TO TOWN
“Pedro Costa comes to town…”, é assim que começa uma notícia da edição de 17 de Julho do Wall Street Journal sobre a Retrospectiva Integral da obra de Pedro Costa, na Film Society of Lincoln Center e que antecede de uma semana a estreia nos cinemas comerciais de Cavalo Dinheiro nos EUA.
“Os seus filmes são impressionantes na forma como combinam o trabalho da luz, da sombra e da composição, de um velho mestre, com um rigor antropológico. Os actores são frequentemente habitantes de quem ele se tornou amigo e com quem colaborou ao longo dos anos: imigrantes de Cabo Verde cujas vidas falam do legado do colonialismo. Se isso soa a algo de académico, os filmes em si são hipnóticos e cheios de alma. O senhor Costa estará presente em várias sessões.”
Para além das oito longas-metragens de Pedro Costa, o cineasta leva a Nova Iorque também uma escolha de filmes portugueses (Verdes Anos de Paulo Rocha, Trás-os-Montes de António Reis), de Jean-Marie Straub e Danièle Huillet (Não Reconciliados / Nicht Versohnt) e americanos (The Fearmakers de Jacques Tourneur e Land of the Pharaohs de Howard Hawks), sob o título comum “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”… (título que remete para o livro do escritor James Agee com o fotógrafo Walker Evans).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/indies-from-the-80s-and-a-pedro-costa-retrospective-1436988405?mod=e2tw
Just look at any film by the Lisbon-born, 56-year-old director Pedro Costa, whose body of work includes eight features and a handful of remarkable shorts, and you’ll find something thrillingly rare in contemporary cinema. It might be the moral ferocity with which Costa, who made his first feature in 1989, films the lives and trials of Lisbon’s immigrant poor, the intense focus with which his camera captures the shape and atmosphere of specific neighborhoods, buildings, and rooms, or the unprecedented richness and textured clarity of his images—especially those shot, in the case of his more recent films, on digital video.
Costa turned to moviemaking at a period when Portugal was coming to grim terms with its colonial legacy. It was in part from his original, unorthodox ways of watching the work of some filmmaking masters—Yasujiro Ozu, Straub-Huillet, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, and Jacques Tourneur, to name a few—that Costa found a vocabulary with which to confront his country’s past. Labels slide off his movies: they are “formalist,” yet they pulse with life and warmth; they are ascetic but also deeply expressive; they are patient and yet possessed of a powerful momentum and a strong sense of rhythm.
Ever since his second feature, Casa de Lava (1994), Costa’s films have been anchored in two related places: the Cape Verde archipelago and Fontainhas, the slum in which many people from that long-colonized country found themselves after moving to Lisbon in search of work. It was in Fontainhas that Costa shot In Vanda’s Room (2001), now a landmark in the history of docu-fiction cinema. By that time, the neighborhood was already in the late stages of demolition, and in Costa’s work since it has manifested a ghostly, burnt-out presence. These two more recent features, Colossal Youth and Horse Money, both starring the nonprofessional actor Ventura, are some of the glories of modern cinema. On the occasion of the U.S. release of Costa’s latest, Horse Money, we are proud to present a comprehensive survey of this modern master’s cinematic world.
http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/let-us-now-praise-famous-men-the-films-of-pedro-costa
“Os seus filmes são impressionantes na forma como combinam o trabalho da luz, da sombra e da composição, de um velho mestre, com um rigor antropológico. Os actores são frequentemente habitantes de quem ele se tornou amigo e com quem colaborou ao longo dos anos: imigrantes de Cabo Verde cujas vidas falam do legado do colonialismo. Se isso soa a algo de académico, os filmes em si são hipnóticos e cheios de alma. O senhor Costa estará presente em várias sessões.”
Para além das oito longas-metragens de Pedro Costa, o cineasta leva a Nova Iorque também uma escolha de filmes portugueses (Verdes Anos de Paulo Rocha, Trás-os-Montes de António Reis), de Jean-Marie Straub e Danièle Huillet (Não Reconciliados / Nicht Versohnt) e americanos (The Fearmakers de Jacques Tourneur e Land of the Pharaohs de Howard Hawks), sob o título comum “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”… (título que remete para o livro do escritor James Agee com o fotógrafo Walker Evans).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/indies-from-the-80s-and-a-pedro-costa-retrospective-1436988405?mod=e2tw
Just look at any film by the Lisbon-born, 56-year-old director Pedro Costa, whose body of work includes eight features and a handful of remarkable shorts, and you’ll find something thrillingly rare in contemporary cinema. It might be the moral ferocity with which Costa, who made his first feature in 1989, films the lives and trials of Lisbon’s immigrant poor, the intense focus with which his camera captures the shape and atmosphere of specific neighborhoods, buildings, and rooms, or the unprecedented richness and textured clarity of his images—especially those shot, in the case of his more recent films, on digital video.
Costa turned to moviemaking at a period when Portugal was coming to grim terms with its colonial legacy. It was in part from his original, unorthodox ways of watching the work of some filmmaking masters—Yasujiro Ozu, Straub-Huillet, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, and Jacques Tourneur, to name a few—that Costa found a vocabulary with which to confront his country’s past. Labels slide off his movies: they are “formalist,” yet they pulse with life and warmth; they are ascetic but also deeply expressive; they are patient and yet possessed of a powerful momentum and a strong sense of rhythm.
Ever since his second feature, Casa de Lava (1994), Costa’s films have been anchored in two related places: the Cape Verde archipelago and Fontainhas, the slum in which many people from that long-colonized country found themselves after moving to Lisbon in search of work. It was in Fontainhas that Costa shot In Vanda’s Room (2001), now a landmark in the history of docu-fiction cinema. By that time, the neighborhood was already in the late stages of demolition, and in Costa’s work since it has manifested a ghostly, burnt-out presence. These two more recent features, Colossal Youth and Horse Money, both starring the nonprofessional actor Ventura, are some of the glories of modern cinema. On the occasion of the U.S. release of Costa’s latest, Horse Money, we are proud to present a comprehensive survey of this modern master’s cinematic world.
http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/let-us-now-praise-famous-men-the-films-of-pedro-costa
