Pedro Costa's Fontainhas Films

The Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (*1959) is one of the most radical and original directors of his generation. Since 1989, he has made eight feature-length films and numerous shorts, many of which are milestones in contemporary cinema. A large part of his work is anchored in a specific place: Fontainhas, a slum without electricity or water on the outskirts of Lisbon, which was settled by immigrants from Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau in the 1970s. Now torn down, it was a place where the consequences of Portugal's colonial history materialized. Costa's 20-year-long examination of the marginalized and excluded of society brought about a revision of his working methods until then and the emergence of a changed cinematographic signature. After renouncing the use of a big team and 35-mm film, he started composing magnificent pictures with a small digital camera and developed a very unique form of documentary fiction. The stretching of time, texturing of light and shadows, and an extremely elliptic narrative style with time jumps further characterize his Fontainhas films.

Arsenal is showing four of Pedro Costa's exceptional feature-length films, all of which have a connection to Fontainhas and its inhabitants, as part of an overview that includes his latest award-winning work CAVALO DINHEIRO (2014), which will enjoy its Berlin premiere. We are particularly pleased that he will present the four films in person.