Ricardo Costa (filmmaker)

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Ricardo Costa
Born Ricardo Costa
(1940-01-25) 25 January 1940
Peniche, Portugal
Occupation Filmmaker
Years active 1974-present

Ricardo Costa (born 25 January 1940) is a Portuguese film director and producer.[1] [2] [3][4] [5] He is the author of essays on cinema, vision and language.

Most of his filmography consists of documentary films, many of them being contaminated by fiction (docufiction and ethnofiction). He uses the techniques of direct cinema, non only as a tool for practising salvage ethnography but also as an instrument which helps him to compose a sober, "musical" and poetic narrative, interesting cinephiles and suitable for common audiences.

Mists, his penultimate film, was selected for the 60th Venice Film Festival (2003) and premiered in New York in 2011. It is the first film from a biographic trilogy on time and human wanderings: Faraways. Derivas (Drifts), the second one, autobiographical comedy and docufiction, due to be released in 2014, is «a portrait of Lisbon drawn through the peregrinations of two unfit venerable brothers across the city».

Biography

Costa completed his studies in 1967 at the Faculty of Arts at the Lisbon University. After submitting a thesis on the novels of Kafka (Franz Kafka: writing in the mirror), he earned a PhD in 1969. He was a high school teacher and owned a company (pt:MONDAR editores), where he published a number of sociological texts and avant-garde papers, literature and cinema. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, he became a filmmaker. He was a partner of Grupo Zero, with other filmmakers like João César Monteiro, Jorge Silva Melo and Alberto Seixas Santos. Later, he became an independent producer with the company Diafilme, where he produced several of his films and some of other directors. He organizes film projections and cycles in Paris (Cinémathèque Française and Musée de l’Homme) .[6][7][8][9][10]

In some way moved by the idea that explains one sentence of Marcel Mauss, a well-known French sociologist and anthropologist, ("There is more poetry in a grain of reality than in the brain of a poet"), certain Portuguese film-makers, specially after the Carnation Revolution, traveled around their country, from one end to another, camera in hand. With state funds or in co-production with the national broadcast TV station, the RTP, some made "engaged films" (cinéma engagé, i.e. political cinema), but never with lack of charm. Others make films in which reality, as an expression of actual events, appears with that poetical charge, as Mauss refers. Films shot with low budgets, but in full liberty. Films portraying reality, a genre to which all those productions fit, would last for a few years and would generate important or even remarkable works, some of which were forgotten.[4]

Costa, who identifies himself more with that simple idea than with the purpose of changing the world, cultivates a style in which reality turns into poetical expression, into human portrait, into an interrogation point about a time which escapes to Time, without restriction to the place in which such reality, once captured, takes place. The mise en scène, the fictional attraction, will be for him a permanent temptation.

Filmography

Feature films

  • 1976 : Avieiros - Avieiros, Tagus fishermen
  • 1976 : Mau Tempo, Marés e Mudança - Changing Tides
  • 1979 : Castro Laboreiro - Castro Laboreiro
  • 1979 : Pitões, aldeia do Barroso - Pitões, a village of Barroso
  • 1980 : Verde por fora, vermelho por dentro - Green outside, red inside
  • 1981 : O Pão e o Vinho - Bread and Wine (film)
  • 1981 : Longe é a cidade - Far is the City
  • 1981 : Ao Fundo desta Estrada - Further ahead on this road
  • 1985 : O Nosso Futebol - Our Football Game
  • 2003 : Mists - Brumas
  • 2012/13 : Drifts - Derivas
  • Detailed information about these films (English, French and Portuguese)

Short and middle-length films

  • 1974 : No Fundo de Tróia (26') - On the Bottom of Troia
  • 1974 : Apanhadores de Algas (28') - Seaweed Catchers
  • 1974 : Ágar-Ágar (27') - Agar-agar
  • 1975 : Tresmalho (27') - Drifting
  • 1975 : O Trol (25') - Long-lining
  • 1975 : O Arrasto (29') - Trawling
  • 1975 : Oceanografia Biológica (28') - Biological Oceanography
  • 1975 : Ti Zaragata e a Bateira (27') - Uncle Zaragata and his Boat
  • 1975 : Pesca da Sardinha (29') - Sardine Fishing
  • 1975 : Conchinha do Mar (26') - Sea Shell
  • 1975 : Às vezes custa (27') - Sometimes it's hard
  • 1975 : A Sacada (26') - The Miracle Fishing
  • 1976 : Os Irmãos Severo e os Cem Polvos (29') - The Brothers Severo and the Hundred Octopuses
  • 1976 : À Flor do Mar (29') - On the Waterline
  • 1976 : A Colher (29') - The Spoon
  • 1976 : O Velho e o Novo (28') - Old and New
  • 1976 : A Falta e a Fartura (26') - Lack and Wealth
  • 1976 : Quem só muda de Camisa (28') - Changing his Shirt
  • 1976 : A Máquina do Dinheiro (28') - The Money Machine
  • 1976 : Viver do Mar (28') - Living on Sea
  • 1976 : Uma Perdiz na Gaiola (26') - A Perdix in Cage
  • 1976 : Nas Voltas do Rio (30') - On the River
  • 1976 : O Submarino de Vidro (28') - The Glass Submarine
  • 1976 : Cravos de Abril (28’) - April Carnations, Œillets d’Avril (fr): the Carnation Revolution in Portugal
  • 1977 : Sea born (38') - E do Mar Nasceu
  • 1978 : Música do Quotidiano (25') - Everyday Music
  • 1978 : Abril no Minho (50’) - April in Minho
  • 1979 : A Lampreia (6’) - The Lamprey
  • 1979 : A Coca (13’) - Saint George and the Dragon
  • 1979 : Histórias de Baçal - Stories of Baçal
  • 1979 : Esta aldeia, Rio de Onor - This Village, Rio de Onor
  • 1979 : O Pisão (13’) - The Fulling Mill
  • 1979 : A Feira (7’) - The Village Market
  • 1979 : O Outro Jogo (6’) - The Other Game
  • 1980 : Joaquim da Loiça - Joaquim da Loiça
  • 1980 : Pastores da Serra da Estrela (8’) - Shepheards of Serra da Estrela
  • 1980 : Barcos de Peniche (13’) - Ships of Peniche
  • 1980 : O Parque Nacional de Montesinho (50’) - The National Park of Montesinho
  • 1982 : Lisbon and the Sea Lisbon and the International Court for the Law of the Sea for the UNESCO
  • Detailed information about these films (English, French and Portuguese)

Other genres

  • 1989 - 2006 Paroles : Interviews with Jean Rouch - long version, three parts version and TV version (in French)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ricardo Costa at Portuguese Cinema
  2. ↑ Ricardo Costa – article in Portuguese and Lithuanian (Page about Portugal, Vilnius University)
  3. ↑ Ricardo Costa : A Look at Portugal at Cineurope
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 O Cais do Olhar by José de Matos-Cruz: 20th century Portuguese feature films, published by the Portuguese Cinematheque, 1999
  5. ↑ Ricardo Costa and the flowing pictures, article by José de Matos-Cruz
  6. ↑ Cycle at Cinémathèque Française, Paris (from 9 to 20 October 2002)
  7. ↑ Cathalogue CF, page 1 (in French)
  8. ↑ Cathalogue CF, page 2 (in French)
  9. ↑ Cathalogue CF, page 3 (in French)
  10. ↑ Paroles

External links

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