BLOOD
O Sangue
Portugal | 1990 | 99 min
Two brothers, a father burdened by anger and sorrow who abandons them, and an unrecognizable space, almost forsaken by man. Above everything, a secret that the two brothers carry around and will mark their life. The narrative of Pedro Costa’s ravishing debut revolves around all this. The titular blood is the one that is shed within a family. It is the metaphor of a bond, but above all of a hidden violence to be found less in visible gestures than in the atmosphere in which the film’s world is immersed. The black and white of the film stock cuts the spaces and envelopes the characters in a blanket of secrecy and mystery. The film’s truth lies here, in a real world pervaded by grief which is no longer capable of revealing itself fully but leaves instead its traces on the faces, silences, motionlessness of the bodies that dwell in it. It is the beginning of a journey that will leave a mark in the cinema of the great Portuguese director, in which the painful abstraction of form exposes an ever deeper and darker dimension of reality. (d.d.)
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: 06 Nov 2023
- Time: 10:30
Location
- Spazio Alfieri - Via dell'Ulivo, 8, 50122 Florence
Organizer
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Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa is one of the most important directors in contemporary Portuguese cinema. Born in 1959, he studied history and art history at the University of Lisbon before starting to work as an assistant director for some of the most prominent Portuguese directors, including João César Monteiro and André Téchiné. His career as a director began in 1989 with the film O Sangue, presented at the Cannes Film Festival in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs section. Since then, he has directed numerous films that have been screened at major international festivals such as the Venice Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival. His film In Vanda's Room (2000) won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was selected to represent Portugal at the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. With his subsequent films Colossal Youth (2006), Horse Money (2014), and Vitalina Varela (2019), Costa continued to work with the same non-professional actors who live in a poor neighborhood of Fontainhas in Lisbon. His work has received numerous awards worldwide, including the Best Film award for Vitalina Varela and the Best Director award for Horse Money at the Locarno Film Festival. Costa is known for his unique aesthetic, which often relies on long static shots and a creative use of light and shadow, for his attention to detail and composition.
