Revised and updated version
Image from Juventude em Marcha/Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006)
The Rabbit Hunters by Pedro Costa (one of three episodes of a 2007 project created by the Jeonju Film Festival to produce and distribute short films created in digital format and directed by three directors with complete creative freedom. The other episodes are Respite by Harun Farocki and Correspondences by Eugène Green).
Watching any of Pedro Costa’s films grabs hold of our gaze and forces us to personally experience the motion of the film. At times his scenes sting our eyes with their piercing pain, and at times they wrap our eyes in ineffable tenderness. [Shigehiko Hasumi]Like his European contemporaries Ulrich Seidl and Harun Farocki, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa is a veritable pioneer in the fusion of documentary and fiction. As London's Tate Modern museum is about to embark on its fantastic retrospective of the whole of Costa’s oeuvre (at the Starr Auditorium from 25 September–4 October 2009), the ever-timely Film Studies For Free presents its own retrospective of links to valuable (mostly English-language) work about him published online.
Whenever it can, FSFF stands on the shoulders of giants: on this occasion, welcome lifts were given by Girish Shambu, Michael Guillén, David Hudson, HarryTuttle, and Ryland Walker Knight with their respective links lists and discussions or interviews around the time of North American retrospectives of Costa's works and the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Thanks a lot, guys.
FSFF's London readers should also note that Costa will give a talk called 'Thoughts on Films' at Birkbeck College, associated with the Tate retrospective at 7.30pm on Tuesday 29 September (further details HERE).
And, finally, at the very foot of this post, for its francophone readers, FSFF has embedded two rather enlightening segments from a wonderful video interview with Costa (in unsubtitled French) at Cannes in 2009.
- David Balfour, 'Colossal Youth', Vertigo Magazine, No.16, March 2008
- Ana Balona de Oliveira, 'Rooms of Colossal Bones: Pedro Costa's Trilogy', Mute Magazine, June 26, 2008
- Bárbara Barroso, 'Ossos/Bones', Senses of Cinema, 49, 2008
- Updated: Kieron Corless, 'Crossing the Threshold: Interview with Pedro Costa', Sight and Sound, October 2009
- Pedro Costa, 'A Closed Door That Leaves Us Guessing [seminar at the Sendai Mediatheque 2005]', Rouge 10, 2007
- Rob Davis, 'Five Times in Colossal Youth', Errata, March 2, 2008
- Sérgio Dias Branco, Dulce Loução & Elisabete França, 'Ossos e Intimidade', Os Sentidos da Cidade, April 24, 2002 [Portuguese]
- Kenichi Eguchi, 'Pedro Costa - the trembling moment [interview with Costa]', Sempre em marcha, January 20, 2009
- Tag Gallagher, 'Straub Anti-Straub', Senses of Cinema, 43, 2007
- Updated: Miguel Gomes, 'Serenity', Sight and Sound, October 2009
- Michael Guillén,' Pedro Costa Next Stop', The Evening Class, February 29, 2008 [Here are some of the further links to reviews and items of interest linked to by Guillen: Daniel Kasman's notes on the entire Costa retrospective when it hit Manhattan; Dennis Lim's preview for The New York Times; Manohla Dargis focused in on Colossal Youth; Ed Halter's Village Voice preview; Nathan Lee on Colossal Youth; Scott Foundas's preview for L.A. Weekly; Peter Keough for the Harvard Film Archive; Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote up his thoughts for The Chicago Reader; Acquarello reviewed Colossal Youth; critical response profiled by Dave Hudson at The Greencine Daily; further reviews from Scott Foundas, Neil Young, Kevin B. Lee, and Fernando Croce]
- Michael Guillén, 'Pedro Costa: "I have to risk each shot"', GreenCine Daily, April 2, 2008
- Michael Guillén, 'Pedro Costa (and others) on Casa de lava and Tarrafal, Part One', The Evening Class, March 11, 2008
- Michael Guillén, 'Pedro Costa (and others) on Casa de lava and Tarrafal, Part Two', The Evening Class,March 12, 2008
- Shigehiko Hasumi, 'Adventure: An Essay on Pedro Costa', Rouge 10, 2007
- Daniel Kasman, 'A Digital Fugitive: Interview with Pedro Costa', The Auteurs Notebook, June 16, 2009
- Daniel Kasman, 'Cannes 2009: Costa brief ("Ne change rien", Costa)', The Auteurs Notebook, May 16, 2009
- Kevin B Lee, 'Colossal Youth: Slumland Empire', The House Next Door Online, February 21, 2007
- C.S Leigh, 'Contemplating the New Physicality of Cinema', Believer, March/April 2009
- Miguel Marías, 'No Quarto da Vanda/In Vanda’s Room', Senses of Cinema, 49, 2008
- Mark Peranson, 'A Desperate Utopian Dream - Pedro Costa: an Introduction', Vertigo Magazine, Vol.3, No.9, Spring/Summer 2008
- Mark Pernason, 'The young untold: Pedro Costa shows us the way to go', San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, March 5, 2008
- David Phelps, 'Cannes 2009: There oughtta be moonlight saving time ("Ne change rien", Costa)', The Autuers Notebook, May 15, 2009
- David Pratt-Robson, 'Approaching Colossal Youth', Videoarcadia, December 2008
- James Quandt, 'Still Lives: The Cinema of Pedro Costa', Cinemateque Ontario
- Jacques Rancière, 'Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art', Jounal of Art & Research, Volume 2. No. 1. Summer 2008
- Daniel Ribas, 'Escaping the Future', Senses of Cinema, 49, 2008
- Jonathan Romney, 'Exile and the Kingdom: Colossal Youth', Sight and Sound, June 2008
- Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Cinema of the Future', Chicago Reader, November 15, 2007
- Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'A Few Eruptions in the House of Lava', JonathanRosenbaum.com, June 25, 2008
- Sempre em marcha - great blog about Costa's work by José Oliveira, with lots of items in English
- Girish Shambu, 'Pedro Costa One-Stop', girish, June 11, 2007 - [In this post, Girish also links to the following writings on Costa's work: 'A collection of writings, many of them on blogs, in no particular order: Mark Peranson's Cannes '06 report in Cinema Scope; Dave McDougall at Chained to the Cinémathèque; Darren Hughes at Long Pauses; Acquarello at Strictly Film School; Michael Sicinski's TIFF '06 report at Greencine; Doug Cummings at Film Journey; Daniel Kasman at d+kaz; Jason Anderson in Toronto's Eye Weekly; Dave Kehr on Casa De Lava; Tom Charity's Vancouver '06 report at Greencine; Ruy Gardnier at A_Film_By; and my own post on Costa from last summer']
- HarryTuttle, 'Pedro Costa', Unspoken Cinema, March 8, 2008 Best multilingual links by far
- Ryland Walker Knight, 'Pedro Costa at PFA. Link Dump', Vinyl is Heavy, April 1, 2008
- Kim West, 'Man with the Mini-DV Camera', Site Magazine, Issue 24, 2008 (scroll down)
9 comments:
Sometimes lacunae are better than plain errors, specially in blogs of a pedagogical nature. I find this phrase very very hard to digest: "Like his European contemporaries Ulrich Seidl and Harun Farocki, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa is a veritable pioneer in the fusion of documentary and fiction." Seidl and Farocki pioneers in the fusion of documentary and fiction?!? Why, when, how? If even Pedro Costa can hardly be considered a pioneer... but at least him has films that somewhat correspond to that "fusion"; Farocki, although an amazing director, has not. Seidl doesn't matter anyhow, cause he's a horrible abusive director.
Thanks for expressing your opinion, André. I'm no specialist in the work of these three directors, but I have read the work about all three of them that I have listed in this blog, and I would stand by my comment, even if it is a little 'looser' in expression than I would like now that you've challenged my words. My interest in all three filmmakers (and I certainly don't like the work of all three equally -- or at all in the case of the films of Seidl) comes from the fact that all three are contemporary, and very different, experimenters with 'staging' in their direction (I research and write about forms of auteurism when not behind the Film Studies For Free mask) - albeit ones following on from -- but pushing further than -- earlier pioneers in this exploration. I hope FSFF readers will add their comments to ours, but also that they discover your website - Ainda não começámos a pensar/We have yet to start thinking (http://bit.ly/1q3RTp) - through your comment as I've been happy to do.
Thank you Catherine for not taking my harsh "opinion" personally :) I nonetheless always find it very hard to understand how can one "think" about films one doesn't like, except if what one doesn't like is precisely what needs to be thought of... On the fusion of documentary and fiction, and please let's not enter in the "who came first" game, if those you've mentioned are to be considered pioneers, what is Kiarostami then, to mention an obvious example? If you allow me one cinephile suggestion, an incredible contemporary and not so well known "experimenter with 'staging' in direction" is the Cambodian Rithy Panh.
I disagree with the new topos fad of film critics who say we can't call film either documentary or fiction because that limit is challenged (as if Flaherty never existed). It's the point of all cinema to play on the fence, at some degree... There is never pure documentary when a camera crew steps on reality.
How is Vanda less of a documentary than any reportage we watch on the news (staged/edited/influenced)?
As for other "precursors" in this vein (maybe not all European) : Flaherty (Nanook...); Epstein (Finis Terrae, Le Tempestaire); Kalatazov (The Salt of Svanetia); Buñuel (Las Hurdes); Peleshian (Seasons); Chantal Akerman (Là-bas...); Lav Diaz (In the land of Encantos...); Alain Cavalier; Sokurov (Confession); Avi Mograbi... or even Michael Moore.
Thanks for joining us, Harry. Yes, on one level, none of this is new (I agree with Harry about the precursors, of course - would add a few obvious others like early Visconti and Herzog), and so 'pioneer' is the wrong word. And yet a lot of what I am referring to is new, at least in relation to how the discourses of fiction/ documentary fusion are now being deployed to orient or direct our spectating (I am writing a book precisely on this topic at the moment, but some reflections of mine have been published already in a [non-open access] tome on Film and Television After DVD [eds. Bennett and Brown]). In a section of the book version of this work on contemporary auteurism, I am particularly interested in Seidl, Winterbottom, and Reygadas (among other directors) and matters of so-called'real sex' in fiction films. On a different note, I'm a big admirer of the Makhmalbafs, as well as Kiarostami (all the subjects, of course, of future FSFF posts), and love the words of the latter on these matters that Jonathan Rosenbaum cites in his essay on Costa listed above: 'In my mind, there isn’t as much of a distinction between documentary and fiction as there is between a good movie and a bad one.' The suggestion you make, André, about the films of Rithy Panh sound like the the former kind, and I very much look forward to following up your cinephilic generosity.
In France they call the documentary/fiction distinction "la tarte à la crème". Somehow, we can't call anything either documentary or fiction, because the line is blurred for ever, since recently. I don't think this question matters any more for this new "docu-fiction" trend than ever before. The question about "manipulation/transcendence of reality" matters just as much for "pure" documentaries and for "pure" fiction (where this fusion is not ambiguous).
Likewise, does the technicality of "real-sex" really matter to the "truth of cinema"? It's a topic for social studies, to explore the lives of performers on set. Does it matter if actors fake it for the camera, but get it on in their backstage trailer? Isn't sex in real life a big show anyway (simulation)? Could an external observer make a pertinent classification between acting and prostitution?
Thanks so much for the Rithy Panh suggestion. I have really enjoyed following up on it - there's a lot of his work and many video interviews, etc, freely available online, so I have started publicly collecting links to these at http://delicious.com/filmstudiesforfree/Rithy_Panh
Harry, thanks too for your comment about the technicality of "real-sex" and the "truth of cinema". I'll respond more fully on my Directing Cinema blog as soon as I can and will comment again here once I've done so.
Well, I'm curious to read what you'll say about what "real-sex" brought to cinema. Please let me know when it's available.
Hi Harry, just a quick response. "Real sex" brings nothing new or different, in your terms, to cinema than, say, Herzog does when he directs Kinski to perform all the push-ups at the beginning of Woyzeck (1979). I agree completely, in your terms and in answer just to the questions you ask, that "real sex" in movies is a technicality. As you will see, though, I also ask further and different questions from you about the matters of, both, "technicalities" and "cinema". I wIll let you know when I've put up a longer consideration!
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