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Rotterdam 2015: ‘João Bénard da Costa—Others Will Love the Things I Loved’ defies conventional criticism

João Bénard da Costa (1935-2009) was the director of the Portuguese Film Museum in Lisbon for 18 years, and he is responsible for what it is today. He was also a writer, poet, critic and actor. The biographical documentary about his life and work made by his fellow countryman Manuel Mozos is one of those films that defies film criticism in its conventional form. If film criticism is deficient in general for trying to speak about a medium that entails several tracks—image, dialogue, music and so on—by using a single-track medium, i.e., words, then the conventional form of film criticism can be deficient, as it is in this specific case. The history of da Costa’s life work is what it is, however poetically presented it may be—it is literally a collection of the things he loved, presented for others to love (or not): the texts he has written, parts of movies he preferred seeing, poems, paintings, photographs and so on. The director takes on the role of a curator in the collection of da Costa’s artistic and intellectual legacy, allowing us to make out the silhouette of the man himself only through the rich collection of his life work.

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NYFF 2014: Don’t look the gifted ‘Horse Money’ in the mouth

Horse Money is an elusive entity, a picture of eerie dreamscapes and squalid urban degradation devoid of earthly logic. Our unknowing guide is a retired brick layer named Ventura, acting as a cipher for the displaced souls of the Cape Verdean immigrants, consorting us through a saprogenic world. Director Pedro Costa crafts a hallucinatory, soul-searching labyrinth out of the squalor and grime of the Lisbon slums, known to locals as Fontainhas. It’s almost soporific in its unending calmness, but it (mostly) avoids pretensions. Ventura drifts in a solipsistic daze through various scenes of displaced landscape and artifice. He does various non-activities with unvarying detachment: he meets his estranged ex-wife, and tries to make a call on a broken phone, and uses a urinal in a derelict bathroom, and visits a doctor. Each event is visually striking, yet completely uneventful (though a door does slam at one point). The lighting is hard and Costa works often in steep contrasts; Ventura moves in and out of shadows, disappearing and reappearing like the motif from a dream.

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Bruno Dumont and the Problem of Foreign Language TV

Bruno Dumont is joining the ranks of acclaimed filmmakers trading in the big screen for the home screen.  Set to develop a police drama for French network ARTE, this will be his first foray into television. Dumont’s work, which includes L’humanité (1999) and Hors Satan (2011), has long been controversial and his filmmaking practises have …

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João César Monteiro’s Recollections in a Yellow House (1989)

Recollections in a Yellow House Director: João César Monteiro Portugal, 1989 Introduced in an opening quotation, The Yellow House in the title of Recollections in a Yellow House refers to a prison. This film, a self-proclaimed comedy by João César Monteiro, follows a cinematic version of Monteiro living in a boarding house and worrying about life, sex …

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João César Monteiro’s Snow White (2000)

Branca de neve (Snow White) Director: João César Monteiro Portugal, 2000 João César Monteiro ’s interpretation of Snow White is clearly meant to incense and challenge our understanding of storytelling and the cinematic medium. Running little over an hour, the majority of the film’s running time is series of dialogues against a black screen, occasionally interrupted by breaks …

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Red Dawn (João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata, 2011)

Alvorada Vermelha – Red Dawn Directed by João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata 28 minutes, 2011 A documentary on a meat market in Macao evokes question of life, death and morality. Opening with a high heeled shoe in foreground in a presentation of the mundane, we are introduced to our world under the …

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