Jornal da Mostra

Pedro Costa gains in visibility for his radical film making
“Colossal Youth”, by Pedro Costa
Nº 417 > 29ª Mostra > 29/05/2006



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Edição:
Renata de Almeida e Leon Cakoff

Pedro Costa gains in visibility for his radical film making

Documento sem título The fact "Juventude em Marcha/ Colossal Youth" is among the 19 films in Competition at the 59th Cannes Film Festival has brought Pedro Costa`s radical cinema into the limelight. His radicalism starts with Cape-Verde Portuguese, a language very often difficult for the Portuguese themselves to understand. No concessions can be expected from this film maker, fascinated by the Dostoevski universe in the suburbs of Lisbon among Cape-Verde immigrants that have been portrayed in his former fiction films in their entirety - as mirrors of reality: "O Sangue" (1990), "Casa de Lava" (1994), "Ossos" (1997), and "No Quarto de Vanda" (2000), all of these shown in past editions of Mostra.

Pedro Costa`s film making brings a parallel world into view, that is invisible to the hasty eyes of progress - time for the characters and time in real life. To make no concessions to superficiality in film making is the hallmark of this unique Portuguese film maker. Cape Verde immigrants have always exerted a fascination over the director, ever aware of their problems. What we find in "Juventude em Marcha" is touching solidarity, a pilgrimage through hovels about to be demolished, as though the inhabitants were also about to disappear.

The community gradually move the shanty-town dwellers to clean, new, simple quarters, into apartments. We follow along with the yearnings of Ventura, a brick-layer recently abandoned by his wife Clotilde, as he searches high and low for her, from one friend`s house to another, meanwhile mistaking everyone for his own children. Each plane in this film is impressive and precious. The light we see invariably fills the settings with dramatic effects of its own, with a special contribution. The planes are long, the dialog quiet: the photography in each sequence, in each frame, can be appreciated, explored, unhurriedly. Finally, we are witness to a love letter that Ventura quotes from memory, off the cuff - a letter that will never be written, but that we also will store away in our memories as a poem of hope for better days ahead and for a re-encounter with distant love.

"Sometimes I am afraid of building these walls", says the brick-layer to his beloved in the imaginary letter. "Me with a trowel and cement, and you with your silence." Silence from so many of us, Pedro Costa would seem to suggest - silence in face of so many social tragedies that the drama of immigration unleashes worldwide.

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