Inscrevendo as ruínas da descolonização e dos mecanismos de poder na imagem fílmica: o cinema de Pedro Costa

Abstract

In the cinema of Pedro Costa, the Other is enlightened in a post-colonial context, and the representations of marginalized communities and groups unfold in the light of contemporaneity (in the case of the filmmaker, the communities of Cape Verdean communities or Portuguese people with Cape Verdean ancestry). However, its cinema concerns essentially with the oppressed groups, not only the victims of colonialism, but, in general, the victims of the schemes of social reproduction operated by any form of power. In Pedro Costa’s cinema, the form points to the content the same way the content points to the form. Revealing an idiosyncratic mastery of the filmic language, Pedro Costa is a visionary and singular case in Portuguese cinema, and the ripening of its style is indissociable of the substance with which he sculps the imaginary of his filmography. In this regard, in which way the colonial legacy, still deeply present in the Portuguese cultural and social imaginary, is denounced by the filmmaker, and thus exposed and dissected as a model that, being anachronic in the eyes of contemporaneity, still survives to the present?