One of contemporary cinema’s most daring and uncompromising artists, Pedro Costa is being honored with a complete retrospective at the Tate Modern in London, a rare distinction for a filmmaker still in his prime. The series, which starts today and runs through October 4, includes not only all of the fifty-year-old Portuguese director’s work—nine films in total, from 1989’s O sangue to his current Ne change rien—but also programs of movies that have inspired him: by Godard, Eustache, Warhol, and Straub and Huillet. Costa has been getting a lot of other attention recently too. One Hundred Thousand Cigarettes: The Films of Pedro Costa, a book of writings on his work, was just published in Portugal. And the Cinémathèque française is busy preparing its own retrospective, slated for January. In honor of the Tate show, Sight & Sound has run an interview with Costa by Kieron Corless and an in-depth career analysis by Quintín in its October issue, and in the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw touts Costa as the “Samuel Beckett of world cinema.” This week also sees the release of O sangue on DVD in the UK from Second Run. Criterion will release a box set of Costa’s Fontainhas Trilogy—Ossos, In Vanda’s Room, and Colossal Youth—also including the shorts Tarrafal and The Rabbit Hunters, in early 2010.
2 Comments
Sat 26 Sep at 07:14 PM
Mattl
Great news that Criterion will release a box set of some of Costa’s films. Time for viewers in the US to discover his work.
Thu 10 Dec at 02:48 PM
Sachin
Is there a release date for the Pedro Costa DVD set? Does Early 2010 mean in the March-May time frame?
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