catalogue 2007 en .pdf - Festival international du documentaire de ...

ÉCRANS PARALLÈLESRÉTROSPECTIVE PEDRO COSTAEPPedro Costa, backward and forwardOf the many visits that Ventura will make throughout Colossal Youth (2006), there is onethat is different from the others, and it is the one he made to the Gulbenkian Foundation.It was the usual pretext, to come say hello to one of the sons – in this case the museumguardian – that the man has in such quantity that even he doesn’t know exactly how manythere are exactly. This time the décor is quite different: far from the shack drowned inshadow that he shares with Lento, far as well from the immaculate walls of the new quarter,it is standing between a Reubens and a Van Dyck that he finds the taciturn giant. PedroCosta has given an explanation to this connection. It is both amusing and definitive. It is notout of a pictorial passion that Ventura – the name of the actor and the character he plays– wanted to come to this place but because, when he was a mason, he took part in theconstruction of the wall on which the paintings are hung.Placing the rogue near the many golds in the Flemish painting, the sceneresumes the work Costa has been doing for almost twenty years. His wording suffices forus to understand the very unique place he holds in contemporary cinema. He is dedicatedto giving the luxury of art to those who must ordinarily struggle to obtain the bare minimum.The Portuguese director films the poor, the homeless, the wanderers, the drug addicts,particularly in Fontainhas, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Lisbon which has now beendestroyed, and in which he has filmed a trilogy, Ossos (1997), In Vanda’s Room (2001)and Colossal Youth. Each time he fine tunes the full aesthetic affirmation of the work – hisown – in the absence of the work (in French: l’œuvre et l’absence d’œuvre) of those who,deprived of a job and of any production of their own, confine their lives to ruminating aboutlittle things: drugs, complaints, cleaning a floor or a table destined for imminent destruction.His sixth and latest full-length film, Colossal Youth accomplishes his ambition to the highestlevel, goes even as far as demonstrating what majesty the “cinema” is capable of. It iscompletely dazzling: heroic or vertiginous high-angle shots; incredibly deep blacks andexplosive whites; the homage as a cinephile to F.W. Murnau via the intermediary of a fewghosts, then in the last few minutes of the film, a bark gliding into the water.Then, however, Ventura interrupts the program by stating his disinterest for aesthetics. Theman prefers masonry to painting. The shot is yet another opportunity to frame the CaboVerde (Cape Verde) silhouette in a halo of light, which magnifies it beautifully. But the wallagainst which he is leaning is also part of the reality that destabilizes the description initiallydescribed. This reality reminds us of the profession Ventura long ago stopped practicingafter a bad fall. It also evokes other walls, those, virginal white, of the apartments anemployee at city hall showed him, hoping he would move in with his large family.Pedro Costa could very well borrow the phrase Brecht uttered at a Hollywood dinner: “Whatdo you do?” “I make jewels for the poor.” With Colossal Youth, he has gone further still,cutting a diamond as big as the Ritz for the enjoyment of the homeless of Fountainhas. Theact of communicating art in the places where it doesn’t exist would still not suffice in defining127