VITALINA VARELA
Portugal | 2019 | 124 min
Already seen in Cavalo dinheiro, Vitalina Varela takes Pedro Costa back to the dark alleys and houses of Fontainhas, a neighbourhood in the Lisbon outskirts. The woman comes to Lisbon short after her husband Joaquim’s death for a long-awaited journey, but what she finds on her arrival is emptiness, absence. Hers is a story that, as often happens in the cinema of the Portuguese film director, conjures a trauma, a wound, that remains offscreen. Only images (beginning with those of the woman’s face) and words can evoke it. The film’s present is determined by the past, the black that envelopes bodies and places. Vitalina’s deep wound reverberates in the spaces of the neighbourhood, that seem to be haunted by the inhabitants – Lisbon’s Cape Verdean community – as if they were living dead sentenced to a motionless limbo with no way out. But it is cinema itself that proposes a movement: it is the transfiguring power of the cinema of Pedro Costa that postulates itself as a possibility of redemption. (d.d.)
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: 11 Nov 2023
- Time: 14:30
Location
- Spazio Alfieri - Via dell'Ulivo, 8, 50122 Florence
Organizer
-
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.
