Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa
We conclude our retrospective of the six feature films of critically acclaimed Portuguese avant-garde director Pedro Costa. Since his first feature THE BLOOD in 1989, Costa’s work has been championed by astute critics and savored by increasing numbers of cineastes around the world. The premiere of his masterful COLOSSAL YOUTH at the Cannes International Film Festival in May redoubled interest in his work almost everywhere. Costa’s work demands the viewer’s rapt attention in order to appreciate his darkly Vermeer-like perception of people and places on the outer fringes of society. The very souls of his actors, most of them non-professionals, are laid bare on the screen, and moments of beauty and pathos strike like lightning in a dark sky.
-- Barbara Scharres
Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa was organized by Ricardo Matos Cabo, Lisbon.
COLOSSAL YOUTH
(JUVENTUDE EM MARCHA)
2006, Pedro Costa, Portugal/France/Switzerland, 154 min.
With Ventura, Vanda Duarte
“Unlike anything else I’ve seen--mysterious, exalted, demanding, leisurely paced, and very beautiful.”--Jonathan Rosenbaum, Reader
“Mysterious and wholly beguiling. . . gorgeously lighted as if a direct invocation of Vermeer.”--Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
A sensation in its Cannes festival premiere, COLOSSAL YOUTH represents a colossal contribution to the language of avant-garde filmmaking. Ventura, a gaunt retired laborer, traverses the housing project that has replaced a demolished slum to visit his “children,” other Cape Verdean immigrants. Costa brings all that is marginal to the center in a masterfully absorbing work of strange monologues, contemplative observations, and moments of unparalleled visual beauty. In Portuguese with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
Saturday, December 1, 3:00 pm
Tuesday, December 4, 6:30 pm
WHERE LIES YOUR HIDDEN SMILE?
(OU GIT VOTRE SOURIRE ENFOUI?)
2001, Pedro Costa and Thierry Lounas, France/Portugal, 104 min.
“Quite simply a masterpiece, and probably the best documentary of any kind I have ever seen.”--Adrian Martin, Senses of Cinema
This intriguingly atypical documentary captures the legendary avant-garde filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet in the process of editing their 1999 film SICILIA! The celluloid world is circumscribed by the editing room where the two appear as silhouettes against the larger images of their work in progress. Huillet, in editor’s gloves hunches, sighs deeply, and frequently snaps “Shut up,” while the garrulous Straub looms over her issuing directives, cracking lame jokes, and occasionally singing. It’s an incomparable lesson in cinema in the form of an extended lovers’ spat. In Italian and French with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)