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Cinematography is the science or art of motion-picture photography and filming either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as film stock.
Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by the objects in the environment. This is different from visual acuity, which refers to how clearly a person sees. A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing even if they have 20/20 vision.
Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; a language is any specific example of such a system.
Career
Most of his filmography consists of documentary films, pure cinéma vérité. Many include fiction elements (docufiction and ethnofiction). He uses the techniques of direct cinema not only as a tool for practicing salvage ethnography but also as a means to compose sober, "musical" and poetic narratives, interesting cinephiles and suitable for common audiences.
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, invented by Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with the use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality.
Docufiction, often confused with docudrama, is the cinematographic combination of documentary and fiction, this term often meaning narrative film. It is a film genre which attempts to capture reality such as it is and which simultaneously introduces unreal elements or fictional situations in narrative in order to strengthen the representation of reality using some kind of artistic expression.
Ethnofiction is a neologism which refers to an ethnographic docufiction, a blend of documentary and fictional film in the area of visual anthropology. It is a film type in which, by means of fictional narrative or creative imagination, often improvising, the portrayed characters (natives) play their own roles as members of an ethnic or social group.
Mists (Brumas) was selected for the 60th Venice Film Festival, New Territories (2003) [8][9][10][11] Mists is the first film of an auto-biographic docufictiontrilogy on time and human wanderings: Faraways (Longes).[12]Drifts (Derivas), the second one, a comedy, released in Portugal, January 2016, is "a portrait of Lisbon drawn through the peregrinations of two unfit venerable brothers across the city".[13] The third and last film of the sequel is Cliffs (Arribas) [14] in which the protagonist goes back to his homeland via time travel. There he will face disquieting situations and puzzling characters.
Mists (Brumas), 2003, is a Portuguese feature film by Ricardo Costa. It Is the first of a sequel docufiction trilogy entitled Faraways (Longes). The second one is Drifts (Derivas) and the third one Cliffs (Arribas)
The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world and one of the "Big Three" film festivals, alongside the Cannes Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival. The Big Three are internationally acclaimed for giving creators the artistic freedom to express themselves through film.
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games, and are less common in other art forms. Three-part works that are considered components of a larger work also exist, such as the triptych or the three-movement sonata, but they are not commonly referred to with the term "trilogy".
Unlike most Portuguese films, all the films by Ricardo Costa have been made with very low or no budgets and no support from the national institution that finances cinema, the ‘Portuguese Film and Audiovisual Institute (ICA)’, dependent on the Ministry of Culture.[15]
A low-budget film or low-budget movie is a motion picture shot with little to no funding from a major film studio or private investor. Many independent films are made on low budgets, but films made on the mainstream circuit with inexperienced or unknown filmmakers can also have low budgets. Many young or first time filmmakers shoot low-budget films to prove their talent before doing bigger productions. Many low-budget films that do not gain some form of attention or acclaim are never released in theatres and are often sent straight to retail because of its lack of marketability, look, story, or premise. There is no precise number to define a low budget production, and it is relative to both genre and country. What might be a low-budget film in one country may be a big budget in another. Modern-day young filmmakers rely on film festivals for pre promotion. They use this to gain acclaim and attention for their films, which often leads to a limited release in theatres. Films that acquire a cult following may be given a wide release. Low-budget films can be either professional productions or amateur. They are either shot using professional or consumer equipment.
The Ministry of Culture is a Portuguese government ministry, responsible for issues related to the Portuguese culture. The current Minister of Culture is Graça Fonseca.
Biography
Costa completed his studies in 1967 at the Faculty of Arts at the Lisbon University. After submitting a thesis on the novels of Kafka, Franz Kafka: uma escrita invertida (Franz Kafka, Writing In The Mirror), he earned a PhD in 1969.[16] He was a high school teacher and owned a company (pt: MONDAR editores), where he published a number of sociological texts and avant-garde papers, literature and cinema. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, he became a filmmaker. He was a partner of Grupo Zero, with others such as João César Monteiro, Jorge Silva Melo[17] or Alberto Seixas Santos. Later, he became an independent producer with the company Diafilme, where he produced several of his films and some of other directors. He organized film screenings and cycles in Paris (Cinémathèque Française and Musée de l'Homme).[18][19][20][21][22]
Lisbon is the capital and the largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 505,526 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits with a population of around 2.8 million people, being the 11th-most populous urban area in the European Union. About 3 million people live in the Lisbon metropolitan area, including the Portuguese Riviera. It is mainland Europe's westernmost capital city and the only one along the Atlantic coast. Lisbon lies in the western Iberian Peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean and the River Tagus. The westernmost portions of its metro area form the westernmost point of Continental Europe, which is known as Cabo da Roca, located in the Sintra Mountains.
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung", Der Process, and Das Schloss. The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those found in his writing.
The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, and it may offer a critique of the relationship between producer and consumer.
History
Mythical and real[23] characters interact in traditional narratives as well as nowadays in everyday life. They feature people that embody the values of the civilization. People like these have been studied by Marcel Mauss. Mauss argues in his book The Gift[24] that rural societies (like those pictured in a number of Portuguese films shot in the sixties and seventies) practiced “old exchange systems centered around the obligations to give, to receive, and, most importantly, to reciprocate.” (...) “In so doing, he refutes the English tradition of liberal[25] thought, such as utilitarianism, as distortions of human exchange practices”.
Country people like these have been an object of research by Viegas Guerreiro as well, who comes to similar conclusion as Mauss.[26] Beyond political motivation, other Portuguese filmmakers, more sensible to poetical expression (António Reis, Margarida Cordeiro, António Campos, Ricardo Costa) attempt to unveil something less visible in the life of certain villages. They are more akin to Viegas Guerreiro, who takes part in the film Pitões, aldeia do Barroso as an ethnography consultant and as actor. (See: Barroso region).
This concern stems from the need felt by most Portuguese filmmakers to respond to the dictatorship of Salazar, to which they had to submit for over forty years. Dictatorship only finished in Portugal with the Carnation Revolution in April 25, 1974. Some of these filmmakers chose to strictly follow Mauss's options by adopting the criteria of militant cinema, making exalted movies.[27][28] Others more sensitive to Guerreiro 's appeasing character try other techniques.[29]
In some way moved by the idea that explains a sentence of Marcel Mauss, a well-known French sociologist and anthropologist, ("There is more poetry in a grain of reality than in the brain of a poet"), certain Portuguese filmmakers, especially after the Carnation Revolution, traveled around their country, from camera in hand. With state funds or in co-production with the national broadcast TV station, the RTP, some made "engaged films" (cinéma engagé, i.e. political cinema), but never with lack of charm. Others make films in which reality, as an expression of actual events, appears with that poetical charge, as Mauss refers. Films shot with low budgets but in full liberty. Films portraying reality, a genre to which all those productions fit, would last for a few years and would generate important or even remarkable works, some of which were forgotten.[30]
Costa identifies himself more with that simple idea than with the purpose of changing the world, something intended by most of young Portuguese directors who suffered the traumas of Salazar's dictatorship. They now make political films to help their country heal its wounds and breathe. Trying the same other way, Costa cultivates a style in which reality turns into poetical expression, into human portrait, into an interrogation point. Mise en scène, the fictional attraction, will be for him a permanent temptation.
Peasants fighting for life in similar landscapes, epic fighters in not so remarkable wars, have been studied by Portuguese researcher Viegas Guerreiro, who comes to identical conclusion as Mauss.[31] Beyond political motivation, others more sensitive to poetic expression (António Reis, Margarida Cordeiro, António Campos, Ricardo Costa) venture to find something less visible, something deeper in the lives of certain villages and certain people. They identify more with whom, like Viegas Guerreiro, concentrates his work on observation and only then expresses himself. That is why Guerreiro takes part in (pt) Pitões, a village of Barroso as an ethnographic consultant and as an actor in one of the scenes of this film (See: Barroso region).
This concerns the need felt by most Portuguese filmmakers to respond to the dictatorship of Salazar, to which they had to submit for many years. As a result of this state of affairs, the country remained in painful economic and cultural backwardness compared to most European countries. That caused a huge volume of emigration in the 1960s, particularly from rural areas, both to Europe and to other continents.[32] The isolation of these remote regions, on the other hand, meant that secular traditions, communal uses, and practices of mutual help remained untouched.[33][34]
Most Portuguese filmmakers would experience a golden age in the two decades that followed the Carnation Revolution in April 25, 1974. Some of them chose to strictly follow Mauss's options by adopting the criteria of militant cinema making exalted movies.[35][36] Others, more sensitive to Guerreiro's appeasing character, would try other techniques.[37][38] They will feel good with their conscience and happy to show the world examples of what matters: archaic societies which practice environmentally friendly techniques use ethnobiology (a global imperative today) to protect nature in the same way as a filmmaker uses ethnofiction or docufiction to help improving human knowledge.[39]
Manuel Pardal with his old friend facing the foreman
More than their parents, grateful in a more elegant way to the great American nation for helping Italy get rid of Mussolini, wouldn't this elite miss any opportunity to show off at worldly resonant events like this. Newspapers and television stations from around the world were there, in Venice, in the center of the universe. That is the question. The question for Mists is quite another: in its first screening there was a single spectator: the director. It does not matter. No one noticed, except the festival organization, that wisely decided to take action for the two other exhibitions that followed. What matters is a different kind of resonance, like film reviews as those at Rotten Tomatoes: [42], [43], [44] Film trailers can help putting some light on this issue. Film trailers can help putting some light on this issue. [45], Coffee and Cigarettes [46], Mists[47]Film criticism is a matter of Culture when not applied to influence consumer behaviour. Also in this case what makes the difference is that daemons, more than the angels, haunt the universe of cinema.
Jean Rouch let himself be tempted by both creatures, scalding his feet once for all, when he stepped beyhond a frontier line, going too far. He fell in love with more than one "fifteen years old widows". To anyone who knows him, such nonsense would be expected since he is known as the "transporter of the memory of the worlds".[48]Lionel Rogosin has been one of them. Rogosin, whom Rouch never met and very probably never heard about, was one of them. The first one was Robert Flaherty, some years before. The common point is that both Rouch and Rogosin were inspired by this pioneer. This story has much to do with the history of 1960's and 1970's in film.[49] It has to do not only with the mission of Art films but also with the equipment necessary to make them. Rogosin had to use heavy cameras and sound recorders whereas Rouch thought in inventing light devices for both uses, and so he did. He was able to go a step further by contributing to the creation of portable and ergonomic 16mm cameras capable of shooting in sync with rugged, lightweight sound recorders. The prototype of the 16mm Éclair-Coutant camera resulted from a technical experiment interesting both Rouch and André Coutant [50] The design of the Nagra sound recorder was the result of a similar collaboration of Rouch with Stefan Kudelski. Since then, many models of 16mm sync cameras were manufactured in Europe and in the USA. Portuguese filmmakers and the RTP mainly adopted the Éclair 16. Some of them had German Arriflex 16SR cameras, which fell in disuse as they were too heavy and expensive, and others the American 16mm CP-16, much lighter and cheaper but not so good, that allowed sound recording on a thin magnetic strip of the film. Diafilme, the company managed by Ricardo Costa, owned a Coutant and a CP.
The design of most modern portable digital camcorders is inspired by the 16mm Éclair-Coutant. Costa acquired a Ikegami DVCpro25 camcorder (half the resolution of DVCpro50) [51] to make Paroles) (1998), the interviews with Rouch at the Musée de l'Homme,[52] in Paris. This camera would be used to shoot Mists (2003) and Drifts (2017). In the meantime, high-definitionvideo cameras became much smaller responding to the need of filming with no embarrassment. Cameras that may be held between two fingers would be used to shoot Cliffs on the shores of Peniche, the most western boundary of Eurasia.
Thus, in the film Paroles converge two narrative lines of the same story: one of technological nature and the other of anthropological order, this one consisting in oral traditional narratives going beyond ‘moving words’, reaching extreme frontiers in a remote past in order to help us understand how the future will be. Following Rouch's legacy, these lines also converge in the last chapter of the Farawys Trilogy, in which the ‘hero’, the photographer, with no wage, no help and no choice, portraits himself alone trying to decipher the enigma of a petrified primeval tinny marine chordate that he unexpectedly finds, among many other mysterious creatures, on the sea shores of his homeland.[53]
1998 Paroles (editing date 2006) – original language in French: Paroles (Words), interviews with Jean Rouch (long version, three parts version, and TV version)
Short and middle-length films
1974: No Fundo de Tróia (26') – On the Bottom of Troia
1974: Apanhadores de Algas (28') – Seaweed Catchers
1975: Ti Zaragata e a Bateira (27') – Uncle Zaragata and his Boat
1975: Pesca da Sardinha (29') – Sardine Fishing
1975: Conchinha do Mar (26') – Sea Shell
1975: Às vezes custa (27') – Sometimes it's hard
1975: A Sacada (26') – The Miracle Fishing
1976: Os Irmãos Severo e os Cem Polvos (29') – The Brothers Severo and the Hundred Octopuses
1976: À Flor do Mar (29') – On the Waterline
1976: A Colher (29') – The Spoon
1976: O Velho e o Novo (28') – Old and New
1976: A Falta e a Fartura (26') – Lack and Wealth
1976: Quem só muda de Camisa (28') – Changing his Shirt
1976: A Máquina do Dinheiro (28') – The Money Machine
1976: Viver do Mar (28') – Living on Sea
1976: Uma Perdiz na Gaiola (26') A Perdix in Cage
1976: Nas Voltas do Rio (30') – On the River
1976: O Submarino de Vidro (28') – The Glass Submarine
1976: Das Ruínas do Império (28') – On The Empire Ruins The film include in voice over: Horizonte poem 1, Calma poem 2 and Ocidente poem 3 by Fernando Pessoa)[57]
1982 – O olhar antes do cinema (The Eyes Before Cinema: recurring items in creative documentary) [59]
2000 – A outra face do espeho (The Other Side Of The Mirror: the decisive contribution of Jean Rouch to the reinvention of documentary).
2017 – Jean Rouch do avesso (Jean Rouch In Reverse: appendix to the preceding article; the incursions of Jean Rouch in fiction; ethnofiction as a portrait of the Paris "natives" in their natural environment).
Essays
The essays by Ricardo Costa have not been translated yet. They have been published online under the title A Linha do Olhar' ("The Line of Sight" – cinema and metamorphosis, perception and image).
1997 – Os Olhos e o Cinema (The Eyes and the Cinema (first volume from "The Line of Sight": theoretical and historical study on the evolution of cinema since its invention, highlighting the decisive contribution of Georges Méliès). (pt)
2000 – Olhos no Ecrã (Eyes On The Screen – second volume from of "The Line of Sight"; the paper develops the themes of the previous essay, highlighting the ideas and theories that most contributed to the evolution of the art of cinema). (pt)
2002 – Os Olhos da Ideia (The Eyes Of Ideia – third and last volume from The Line of Sight. This paper projects the essentials of the preceding ones on film theory, restricting them to vision and language, opening perspectives on the central concept of Idea, from Plato and Aristotle, and analyzing it as conditioned by intentionality. (pt)
2010 – Linguagem do Cinema (Film Language). This paper gathers information that may be useful to professionals, students, academics or researchers. (pt)
Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.
The Portuguese Workers' Communist Party/Re-Organized Movement of the Party of the Proletariat is a Maoist political party in Portugal.
Direct cinema is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America, principally in the Canadian province of Quebec and the United States, and developed by Jean Rouch in France. It is defined as a cinematic practice employing lightweight filming equipment, hand-held cameras and live, synchronous sound that was available to create due to the new ground-breaking technologies that were being developed in the early 1960s. This offered early independent filmmakers the possibility to do away with the large crews, studio sets, tripod-mounted equipment and special lights in the making of a film, expensive aspects that severely limited these low-budget early documentarians. Similar in many respects to the cinéma vérité genre, it was characterized initially by filmmakers' desire to directly capture reality and represent it truthfully, and to question the relationship of reality with cinema.
The Cinema of Portugal started with the birth of the medium in the late 19th century. Cinema was introduced in Portugal in 1896 with the screening of foreign films and the first Portuguese film was Saída do Pessoal Operário da Fábrica Confiança, made in the same year. The first movie theater opened in 1904 and the first scripted Portuguese film was O Rapto de Uma Actriz (1907). The first all-talking sound film, A Severa, was made in 1931. Starting in 1933, with A Canção de Lisboa, the Golden Age would last the next two decades, with films such as O Pátio das Cantigas (1942) and A Menina da Rádio (1944). Aniki-Bóbó (1942), Manoel de Oliveira's first feature film, marked a milestone, with a realist style predating Italian neorealism by a few years. In the 1950s the industry stagnated. The early 1960s saw the birth of the Cinema Novo movement, showing realism in film, in the vein of Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, with films like Dom Roberto (1962) and Os Verdes Anos (1963). The movement became particularly relevant after the Carnation Revolution of 1974. In 1989, João César Monteiro's Recordações da Casa Amarela won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and in 2009, João Salaviza's Arena won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Several other Portuguese films have been in competition for major film awards like the Palme d'Or and the Golden Bear. João Sete Sete (2006) was the first Portuguese animated feature film. Portuguese cinema is significantly supported by the State, with the government's Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual giving films financial support.
Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conveniently sized for travel and because they allow greater freedom of motion during filming. Newsreel camera operators frequently gathered images using a hand-held camera. Virtually all modern video cameras are small enough for hand-held use, but many professional video cameras are designed specifically for hand-held use such as for electronic news-gathering (ENG), and electronic field production (EFP).
The cinema in Niger grew from ethnographic documentaries in the colonial period to become one of the most active national film cultures in Francophone Africa. Filmmakers such as Oumarou Ganda, Moustapha Alassane, Mahamane Bakabé, Inoussa Ousseini and Moustapha Diop have had their work featured around the world. The Niamey African Film Meeting is one of the premier film events of the continent. Unlike neighboring Nigeria, with its thriving Hausa- and English-language film industry, most Nigerien films are made in French and Francophone countries have been their major market, while action and light entertainment films from Nigeria or dubbed western films, fill most Nigerien theaters.
António Campos was one of the pioneer filmmakers of visual anthropology in Portugal. Mainly using pure documentary techniques, he shot ethnographic films and tried docufiction. As well as in fictional films, he used the methods of direct cinema to portrait the life of ancient human communities (ethnofiction) of his country.
Solveig Nordlund is a Swedish-Portuguese filmmaker.
José de Matos-Cruz is a Portuguese writer, journalist, editor, high-school teacher, investigator, encyclopedist. From 1980 to 2010, he worked at the Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon. He is a prominent historian of the Portuguese cinema.
Morangos com Açúcar – O Filme is a 2012 Portuguese drama film directed by Hugo de Sousa, based on the TV series of the same name. It stars Sara Matos, Lourenço Ortigão and others.
Guerreiro is a Galician and Portuguese word for "warrior". It can be found as a surname in Portuguese-speaking countries.
Silvio Tendler is a Brazilian filmmaker. With more than 40 films released by 2014, including feature and short films, Tendler is one of the most respected Brazilian documentarist. Due to his focus on people like Juscelino Kubitschek, João Goulart, and Carlos Marighella, he is known as "the filmmaker of the defeated" or "the filmmaker of interrupted dreams".
Changing Tides is a Portuguese feature-length film by Ricardo Costa, his first docufiction, preceding Bread and Wine (1981) and Mists (Brumas) (2003). The central character of this film is Manuel Pardal, a repentista an improviser poet, who practices oral poetry while oral tradition typical of the southern regions of Portugal, Alentejo and Algarve. In the director's filmography, Changing Tides is succeeded by two other docufictions : Bread and Wine (1983) and Mists (Brumas) (2003), the first film of the trilogy Faraways.
Bread and Wine is a 1981 Portuguese feature-length film produced and directed by Ricardo Costa, his second docufiction after Changing Tides – 1996/7. The third is Mists (Brumas) – 2003. Like Changing Tides and Bread and Wine, Mists may also be classified as Ethnofiction.
Paroles is a feature-length documentary film in the form of interview, composed of a series of conversations with Jean Rouch, filmed by Ricardo Costa at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, between April and May 1998.
↑ Myth and Reality – paper by Mircea Eliade(“Myth is an extremely complex cultural reality, which can be approached and interpreted from various and complementary viewpoints.”)
↑ HERITALES (2nd International Heritage Film Festival, May – December 2017) festival on intangible heritage organized by the University of Évora, with Ricardo Costa as chairman of the jury
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