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ReFocus: The International Directors Series

ReFocus: The Films of Pedro CostaProducing and Consuming Contemporary Art Cinema

By Nuno Barradas Jorge

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£105.00

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About this book

Examines the film aesthetics and authorship practices of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, within a production context
  • Investigates the cultural, industrial and economic contexts from which Costa’s working practices emerged
  • Offers a contextualisation of Costa’s filmmaking under different settings and practices including, among others, Portuguese national cinema and European film production, the use of digital video, the international film festival circuit, and the current synergies between cinema and art gallery production and exhibition practices
  • Provides a fresh critical analysis on the nuanced and multifaceted production and consumption mechanisms taking place in contemporary art cinema

This is the first English-language study of internationally acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, examining the cultural, production and exhibition contexts of his feature films, shorts and video installations. It situates Costa’s filmmaking within the contexts of Portuguese, European and global art film, looking into his working practices alongside the impact of digital video, forms of collaborative authorship, and the intricate dialogue between modes of production and aesthetics.

Considering the exhibition, circulation and reception of Costa’s creative output in settings such as film festivals, the art gallery circuit and the home video market, ReFocus: The Films of Pedro Costa provides an essential critical analysis of this major filmmaker – as well as of the multifaceted production and consumption practices that surround contemporary art cinema.

Reviews

The book is meticulously researched [...] Jorge’s book will undoubtedly inspire further interest in the networks sustaining art cinema.
Anybody interested either in Costa’s work or in the contexts within which it exists will find in the breadth and depth of the material presented in The Films of Pedro Costa an invaluable resource.
Even if you’ve seen only one Pedro Costa film, you know what they are all like: their special rhythm, sound, look and feeling. Nuno Barradas Jorge’s important study takes us further, into a detailed account of the films’ production, exhibition and reception. Costa’s art cinema is formed in these layers.
Table of contents

Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 – Cinema’s ‘Primitive Beauty’: Pedro Costa’s Artistic Formation and the Making of Blood (1989)

CHAPTER 2 – Negotiating Filmmaking: Adaptation, Location and Docufiction

CHAPTER 3 – Digital Filmmaking at the Interstices

CHAPTER 4 – Critical Reception and the International Film Festival

CHAPTER 5 – Between the Black Box and the White Cube

CHAPTER 6 – Renegotiating circulation: retrospectives and DVD releases

CHAPTER 7 – A ‘Document of Documents’: Authorship, Intertextuality and Politics in Horse Money (2014)

Conclusion

Bibliography

Pedro Costa’s Filmography

About the author

Nuno Barradas Jorge

Nuno Barradas Jorge is an Assistant Professor in Film and Media at the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies, University of Nottingham. He has published ReFocus: The Films of Pedro Costa (2020). He is the co-editor, with Tiago de Luca, of Slow Cinema (2016). His work appeared in, among others, Portugal's Global Cinema (2017) and Migration in Lusophone Cinema (2014).

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