Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa

Letters from Fontainhas:
Three Films by Pedro Costa

Two or Three Things I Know About Fontainhas: No Quarto da Vanda

Assorted thoughts on Pedro Costa's No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda's Room):

The similarities to Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her are striking.
Costa, like Godard, spends a lot of time observing the physical infrastructure of the place, not as an existent reality, but as a process, laying bare the essential components of construction/destruction involved in the realization of physical structure. In these films, we mainly see the machines involved in these processes, revealing their impersonal, structural basis (as in: the structures of capitalist development). The negative effects of this 'development' are explored in greater depth in Colossal Youth.

One interesting architectural component of the neighborhood was the mixing of public and private space. The ad-hoc construction of the neighborhood's buildings created porous boundaries between these spaces; Vanda's room is separated, in lieu of a fourth wall, only by a blanket. The result is a community connected by more than location or history, but also by the everpresent publicness of even private space. [This architectural structuring of community is lost by the demolition of the neighborhood and the residents' re-placement in public housing. One flaw of the bourgeois individualism enforced by the government's housing policy is the forced loss of this intimate sense of community.] The fluid lines between inside and outside are especially present in Costa's sound design, which is nowhere near as 'realist' as it seems; much of the construction noise heard offscreen was recorded separately and added after the fact (Note: I recollect Costa saying this, but don't have this in my notes. If you can confirm or deny, please weigh in. Update: see comments). Costa emphasizes the liminality of space in part through this sound design, which lacks the dialectical opposition of Godard's Two or Three Things in favor of creating a porous boundary between interior and exterior. Costa's construction and emphasis of this porosity focuses our attention on the Fontainhas community being lost by the 'upgrades' given to their physical environment. This community is rooted in their shared familial-historical-linguisticultural-socio-economic situation, but also in the solidarity created by the physical facts of their liminal situation.

Costa's interest in doors/rooms/liminal spaces is just one extension of his interest in the mixture of public and private space. Streets, per Costa, "can be more secretive than houses." The residents feel connected to their homes, to their space - a connection lost by the time of Colossal Youth. The neighborhood itself is like a secret world, harder to see than to look at. Costa approaches this world like a student, seeing oppositions - Vanda and the women in one world, the boys in another - that both insiders and outsiders would miss. As someone who has integrated himself into the community, but who can never fully lose his 'outsider' status for reasons of education, socioeconomics and profession, Costa is uniquely positioned to see both forest and trees.



Costa shot for 2 years and spent another year editing the footage to make the film. The story developed over the course of shooting, based on things that happened (Costa: "I dont have ideas for films"). Then a scene would be performed once, though the first take was always, according to Costa, bad. A week later they would shoot the same scene again, and it would be funny, interesting. Costa never wrote anything down; it was instead a mental editing process, an effort at improving what had been done before. One scene details the reactions of Vanda and another character to the death of Geny, who lived in the neighborhood. The first take, shot on the day of the event, was too emotional, full of too many tears. The scene was shot many times, once every week or so. The take used in the film was shot 6 months after the event. (The take used was emotionally understated, and Vanda was unhappy with it; she preferred the more emotional first take.)

Costa is allowed these liberties because he has integrated himself into the community. The neighborhood is, in a way, his office, where he goes every day to work. Costa told us about his dream of starting a TV station in the neighborhood, one that caters to and produces content from Fontainhas itself. But the neighborhood itself is moving toward the point when it no longer exists (the end result of the 'development' we see in No Quarto da Vanda is the transplantation and resettlement so central to Colossal Youth). Costa hopes to "test this impossibility" of continuing to work in the neighborhood: "the main work, I think, is still to be done there for me."

Saudade and Colossal Youth

Fado, Portugal's traditional music that shares the intensity of emotion of flamenco or the blues, relies on an emotion called saudade. Saudade isn't limited to fado, though; it's a theme of many varieties of art from Portugal. Hard to translate, it's an emotion that reflects a deep yearning for something lost, something that can't be regained but that still leaves a flicker of hope... Saudade runs deeply through Colossal Youth.

Amália Rodrigues is to fado what Piaf is to Chanson. Here is what saudade is:
Listen to "Quando Os Outros Te Batem Beijo-Te Eu;" pay special attention at about the 2:07 mark.
[Update: Due to technical problems with the upload, the moment I'm talking about is not at the 2:07 mark in the piece you hear. Trying to fix that soon... any suggestions for alternate ways to embed audio appreciated.]

Amália Rodrigues - "Quando Os Outros Te Batem Beijo-Te Eu"

Wikipedia on Saudade:
"Saudade is different from nostalgia (the English word, that is). In nostalgia, one has a mixed happy and sad feeling, a memory of happiness but a sadness for its impossible return and sole existence in the past. Saudade is like nostalgia but with the hope that what is being longed for might return, even if that return is unlikely or so distant in the future to be almost of no consequence to the present. One might make a strong analogy with nostalgia as a feeling one has for a loved one who has died and saudade as a feeling one has for a loved one who has disappeared or is simply currently absent. Nostalgia is located in the past and is somewhat conformist while saudade is very present, anguishing, anxious and extends into the future."


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"Colossal Youth has more doors than any movie in history" - Tag Gallagher

Pedro Costa: A Closed Door That Leaves Us Guessing

Werner Herzog's documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly begins with a scene of Dieter Dengler opening and closing doors. He explains that doors to him represent freedom, in contrast to his time as a POW during the Vietnam War. (Herzog suggested the scene, in his quest for ecstatic truth).
The doors that are so present in Colossal Youth hint at this notion of freedom, but with same irony as the film's Portuguese title (see my previous post on CY for more). The doors in this film may be open, but their passageways lead to nowhere. This irony is not complete, though, for these doors also are imbued with the slight possibility that they do represent freedom, in spite of our knowing better than to believe it ("When they give us white rooms we'll stop seeing these things"). This is a hope we can only call saudade.



^ Suggested in response to a post by Darren at Long Pauses.

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One final note: I've created a Wikipedia page for Colossal Youth (there wasn't one before!). At the moment there's just some basic info up; I could use some help fleshing it out.

Youth on the March: The Politics of Colossal Youth

"The past is fraternal, utopian, romantic... The present is resigned, unfortunate, mediocre." - Pedro Costa


Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth / Juventude em Marcha has been rightly praised by English-language cinephiles as a work of uncommon poetic spirit. Costa's mix of documentary and fiction storytelling - going back at least as far as 1997's Ossos - places people in the actual settings of their (marginalized, poverty-stricken) lives, performing a fictional version of their lives. His static camera creates a near-oppressive frame; his actors/nonactors are at once more naturalistic and less expressive than those of Bresson. Costa elides action in favor of repercussion, and uses duration to focus attention; what could be boring forces one to look closer, asking the viewer's eyes to do the work of Bresson's montage and the viewer's thoughts to decode what's been left unsaid.

"[S]ometimes in the cinema, it's just as important not to see, to hide, as it is to show. The cinema is perhaps more a question of concentrating our gaze, our vision of things."¹

Most of what I've read on Costa in English focuses on these formal aspects. Some writers have alluded to Colossal Youth as a political film, but they see it as a politics of stasis and of social oppression, a social-realist portrait of the Portuguese immigrant underclass. This is certainly one aspect of Costa's work, but there is a much deeper level of politics to this film.

BACKGROUND:
Portugal's Estado Novo was an authoritarian regime based on Italian fascism and the heir to the Ditadura Nacional, the product of a conservative military coup in 1926. Beginning in the early 1960's, Portugal's African colonies began their battles for independence. The Portuguese Colonial War began in 1961 with the struggle for Angola, and within 3 years included Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Mozambique - all of Portugal's colonies in Africa. "War," singular, because these national liberation movements were fought by Marxist political parties who linked their struggle (see: Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies). The Cape Verdean revolutionary group, PAIGC, was founded by Amílcar Cabral.²

By the late 60's the Estado Novo faced resistance at home as well as abroad. As the war continued, student unrest provided the ideological underpinning for acts of sabotage: Armed Revolutionary Action (a branch of the Portuguese Communist Party) and the Revolutionary Brigades bombed and sabotaged military targets. Discontent within the army surged as they found themselves attacked by guerrillas in a desperate, unwinnable war. On April 25, 1974, a leftist military coup led by the Movimento das Forças Armadas brought down the Estado Novo. Thousands joined the insurgent soldiers in the streets of Lisbon offering them flowers to place in their guns - this was the Carnation Revolution. The MFA promised 3 D's: Democratisation, Decolonisation and Development.³

Two songs were used to code orders for revolutionary action at the launch of the coup. The first, "E depois do adeus" by Paulo de Carvalho, alerted the rebel captains and soldiers to begin the coup. The second was Zeca Afonso's "Grândola, Vila Morena," a song forbidden on Portuguese radio at the time, which signalled the start of the MFA's takeover and announced the start of the revolution.

FORGOTTEN HISTORIES:
At first glance, Colossal Youth gives the appearance of being almost atemporal, with no clearly delineated narrative, a series of scenes that take place in ambiguously defined present. Though there is some blurring of memory and past/present, the setting of the film is both specific and specifically political. As Costa himself said, "there are two parts to this film, a past and a present of the Fontaínhas, that coincide also with the before and the afterwards of the 25 of April."⁴ The "before" scenes are those of Ventura and Lento in the work shed. They fearfully shut themselves in the shed during the April 25th Revolution. Why would they be afraid of a coup that ends the military dictatorship? Costa:

"I realized that the 25 of April, which for me was an enthusiasm, had been for Ventura a nightmare. He arrives to Portugal in 1972, finds well-paid work, gets a contract. Thinks that he is going to escape. Afterwards comes the Revolution and he tells me the secret history of the Cape Verdean immigrants in Lisbon after April 25th, the history that nobody has yet told. They had a lot fear of being expelled or of ending up in prison. They barricaded themselves. At that time I was in the street, I was an adolescent. During shooting, we found an album of pictures of the demonstrations of the 1st of May with thousands of people celebrating, and it’s incredible: you don’t see one black person. Where were they? Ventura told me that they were all together, paralyzed by fear, hidden in the Jardim da Estrela, afraid for the future. He told me that the military police, in full euphoria, went off at night to the shantytowns to "hunt blacks". It seems that they tied them to the trees to amuse themselves."⁵

The present-day scenes - during and after the destruction of Fontainhas - make up the bulk of the film. The neighborhood's destruction leads Ventura to a new apartment, with room for his children (in spite of the fact that there's no mention of children in his file). Does he ever find them? The "children" of Ventura's never seem to materialize, though some accept their role as surrogate children. Costa has said that Ventura's (missing) children are the "children" of April 25th:

Juventude em marcha is also a film about the failure of the 25 of April, because if the Revolution had succeeded, neither Ventura nor the others would have continued in the same abandonment and in the same unhappiness for the last 30 years. I am not going to bring up the irony of the film’s title, but neither is it possible for me to forget that all the "children" of Ventura are children of April 25th. Filming these things the way I did does not put much faith in democracy. People like Ventura built the museums, the theaters, the condominiums of the middle-class. The banks and the schools. As still happens today. And that which they helped to build was what defeated them. There are two parts to this film, a past and a present of the Fontaínhas, that coincide also with the before and the afterwards of the 25 of April. The past is fraternal, utopian, romantic. In this time is the story of the love-letter that Ventura repeats. The present is resigned, unfortunate, mediocre."⁶

COLOSSAL YOUTH vs JUVENTUDE EM MARCHA:
"Colossal Youth" comments on the passage of time and the weight of memory. "Juventude em marcha" carries this meaning as well, but also implies the failure of past radicalism. "Juventude em marcha," literally "Youth on the march," is a revolutionary slogan implying the change of the old order. Ventura is an old man, though, long since left behind by this march. This is a story of the aftermath of revolution as well as the aftermath of youth, and the way we are haunted by ghosts of our past. Ventura spends much of the film looking for his children, but cannot find them. He also asks after Vanda's mother. She responds: "Ventura, my mother's buried in Amadora Cemetery." Ventura's memory is misdirected, his memories shuffled; his head bandage implies as much. To explain his head wound, he says "I slipped and fell off the scaffold." As we learn later, it was not Ventura that slipped and fell, but Lento - and the fall was fatal. Seeing Lento in the 'present' of the film, Ventura himself is literally haunted by the loss of his younger self's hopes for the future. Also in the film's present, Vanda (a recovering drug addict, supplied with methadone by the state) speaks to Ventura about the problems of drugs and poverty: "When they give us white rooms, we'll stop seeing these things." Whether this is genuinely hopeful or fatalistically resigned because it is so plainly untrue, we can recognize this as a call for revolution.
Ventura's hopes as a young man certainly involved such a revolution. In the film's past, he plays a record for Lento, Labanta Braço by Os Tubarões:

Labanta Braço - Os Tubarões

The lyrics are as follows:

Labanta braço se bô grita bô liberdade (x4)

Grita povo independanti
Grita povo liberdado

Cinco di Julho sinonimo di liberdadi
Cinco di Julho caminho aberta pa flicidadi

Grita "viva Cabral"
Honra combatentes di nos terra

[my English translation:]
Raise your arms up to shout for freedom (x4)

Cry out independent people
Cry out liberated people

The 5th of July, synonym for liberation
The 5th of July, open path to happiness

Cry out "Long live Cabral”
Honor the fighters of our land

As Rui Gardnier pointed out, this is a liberation song, but again the political context is more specific; it is a Cape Verdean liberation song, celebrating newfound independence (the 'Cabral' mentioned is Amílcar Cabral; Cape Verde earned its independence from Portugal on July 5, 1975). That is to say, it's an anti-colonial anthem, being listened to by immigrants from the colonies living in the capital of the (former) Empire. Ventura's unreliable memory adds an even more poignant political dimension to this song at the film's end, when he sings "Grita, grita Cabral." Instead of a celebration of a successful revolution, he cries for change, replacing the 'long live' with another cry. For Ventura as well as for Costa, the film chronicles the need for change, and itself cries out for a revolution that lives up to its ideals. The revolution misremembered itself and left Ventura - and all his children - forgotten.


NOTES ON THE PIECE ABOVE:
Special thanks to André Dias at Ainda não começámos a pensar for excerpting that invaluable interview with Pedro Costa, that I wouldn't have otherwise discovered (anyone know where I can get it in full?).
All translations are my own; anyone with a better knowledge of Portuguese than mine is encouraged to offer suggested corrections (especially for the song lyrics, which are in a Cape Verdean criole). I would love to expand this into an article for publication, if there's a venue for it, so any feedback is appreciated. [I'd also like to do an in-depth analysis of the way memory works in the film, but that's a project for another day.]
If you've made it this far, you should watch this trailer for the film:





¹ from Pedro Costa's lectures on film at the Tokyo Film School in March of 2004, collected and published in Rouge as A Closed Door That Leaves Us Guessing.
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² Amilcar Cabral's political thought and role in the liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde is discussed at some length in Chris Marker's Sans Soleil.
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³ For more, see Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (Robert Kramer and Philip Spinelli, 1977).
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^{4, 5, 6} My translation of 2 sections of an interview excerpted at Ainda não começámos a pensar, from an original interview with Pedro Costa entitled "Guarda a minha fala para sempre." Interview conducted by Francisco Ferreira, published in the Nov 25, 2006 edition of Expresso-Actual.
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Freedom Day

In Portugal, April 25 is Dia da Liberdade (Freedom Day), commemorating the start of the Carnation Revolution.



After my recent re-viewing of Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth, I have a lot to say about political contexts and timeline in the film (some specific to April 25). I haven't seen most of these discussed in English, so hopefully I can help bring these issues and contexts to better light. Some of these ideas were addressed by Costa in 2 recent interviews excerpted at Ainda não começámos a pensar. The interviews are in Portuguese, and I don't have time to translate now, but I will reference them again in my upcoming post on Colossal Youth.

Pedro Costa is just like Michael Bay

Juventude em marcha / Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006)

I need to see this film again. Costa's project (and perhaps his career) is sui generis, and I wasn't able to fully appreciate the film on a first viewing because I didn't know the rules by which he was playing. My reflections, then, are mainly on those rules, and how they interact with the processes of spectatorship.


"So if the film is based on understanding, not decipherment, will this give any solace to those hostile or dismissive of it?" - Andy Rector

Understanding stands apart from decipherment in that understanding is a deeper experience. Decipherment is nothing more than the registration of information as it is presented, than the cutting through of obfuscation in favor of clarity.

Understanding beyond decipherment is rarely present in movies, even those that posit themselves as artistic statements. Yet a few are successful enough to encourage - or even demand - understanding.

Pedro Costa is demanding. Pedro Costa is demanding understanding. A demanding, more forceful than an asking, and requiring reciprocal effort.

In Colossal Youth, there isn't that much decipherment even made possible. The narrative confusions are few, because the narrative itself is little.

The frame in Colossal Youth transmits oppression. Beyond its limits might be freedom - if only we could get there. Then, we might know.

Costa's characters are trapped in the frame. Not by something as simple as bars or even framelines, but instead by exterior space, which seems to press inward even as they gaze outward. Characters are frozen inside.

If the body perceives something before the mind, does it necessarily follow that the mind will understand? No, but Costa isn't worried about the stragglers.

Silence, observation, statis. These are the components of action.

An economy of shots for a poverty of economy. Showing things without saying things.


Expansion:

The presentation of information is a giant part of how we register film artistry. Mostly, this means that discrete details are given, which later add up to a whole story. This story can be convoluted or simple. Through the understanding of the story, we can come to understand a greater truth. In these films understanding is a progression of fact and logic. A + B = C. In one story a geisha is taken advantage of and loses her chance at happiness. Therefore, we experience human sadness and loss, and also a social critique of the Geisha system.
Information presented by other means is often lost in the shuffle. As a filmmaker, though, I know that information presented secretly is also secretly preserved, subconsciously eliciting responses in the audience. In most movies, this additive information encourages the perception of the plot in order to facilitate the mathematical process of plot perception and meaning.
Occasionally an artist arises who carries such incredible meaning in his/her formal choices that they becomes the main conduits for meaning in a film. Pedro Costa is just such an artist.
Costa's observational, static shots close off all but a very small portion of the world. But the most interesting thing to me is the mindset you're put in as an audience member: frames do not move. space is rarely established beyond the frame. little action occurs. Trapped in these long-duration shots, you can only tolerate or walk out. Either one is a statement on our freedoms to decide our own level of investment in the world we are shown. We have more agency than Ventura. In staying, a gulf opens up between Ventura and you the viewer. In those long takes of limited space, Ventura remains in his world. Your presence is optional. [Is it often that Ventura enters or leaves the frame? I recollect that its rare.]
Colossal Youth demands an intense level of attention/concentration. As very little "happens," it takes a dedicated investment to decipher the details of the plot. But Colossal Youth also demands a physical concentration. The body grows accustomed to stasis, to silence. If given over to it, watching the film can approach a meditative state. Or, it can be a battle (to stay awake, to stay in your seat). Both the battle and the submission earn us greater knowledge of Ventura and the poverty of his social and economic concerns.
In watching Costa's movie, then, presentation of information is given mainly through the use of formally rigorous stylistic cues, notably the use of silence, the absence of camera movement, and the narrow (lack of) construction of space. But much of this information is presented so subtly that I responded to it physically before recognizing it intellectually. Which brings me to my post's title:

Pedro Costa is just like Michael Bay

Why?
Because Michael Bay is if nothing else, an auteur of the visceral. Quick shots that make you feel a sense of motion are his M.O. Watch an action scene from, say, Pearl Harbor in super slow motion. Note that adjacent shots will often contain contradictory visual information. The direction of a plane's flight path or the direction of shrapnel after an explosion might change from one shot to the next, but at full speed as an audience member what's most important is the sense of kinesis. Michael Bay is literally a director of action.
Pedro Costa is the opposite. Colossal Youth relies on stillness and the near-inability to move. But like Michael Bay, it has the effect of causing a visceral response before (above? in lieu of?) an intellectual one. Both work with the physical effects of cinema, in the same way a composer of music might choose certain frequencies for their physiological effects.
Like Michael Bay, Costa's formal choices are an agenda unto themselves. But Costa's choices are also an implicit politics - of identification and social mobility. These politics, and their physiological underpinning, are one piece of what makes Colossal Youth a spectacular work of art.


did i really get through an entire post on Colossal Youth without mentioning Bresson? how?