Pedro Costa

Costa’s previous film, Horse Money (2014), was a painful piece on memory,
trauma and loss. Can we ever forget Ventura’s erring through a labyrinth of
hallways? Can we ever forget that scene in the lift, in which Ventura stands next
to a soldier, a memory from the past, a menacing reminder of what has
been? Horse Money was a disorienting piece, an uncomfortable piece because it
not only showed suffering, it made it palpable. Where does Vitalina Varela stand?

Vitalina is, perhaps, an out-of-body experience. It felt as though I was watching

something that happened to me, even though the actual story that the film
depicts is far removed from my own life. And yet, what Vitalina shows is a human
story and as long as one is truly human, one feels the film, one feels Vitalina’s
grief, her anger, her frustration, albeit muted. Vitalina’s story does happen to me,
because I, too, am human. Therefore I see myself in shadowy alleyways, in dark
corners of make-shift houses. I see myself caring for those around me. Perhaps, I
become one of the spirits which Ventura, as priest, speaks about when he tells
Vitalina that she could speak to Joaquim if she were to learn Portuguese. The
spirits speak only Portuguese…

[on what camera they shot Horse Money (2014) with] It's the Panasonic AG-
DVX100, it's HD card, but not 2K. But it's much more difficult to light, every DP
will tell you the same. It's much more difficult to get anything that looks
interesting at all because you have to fight against so much stupid stuff that's put
inside the cameras, and you feel it when you go inside the cinema, if it's not Lav
Diaz or Béla Tarr or Godard or Straub or something, everything's the same. And
it's not their fault, but at the same time you should fight a little bit against that.
My kind of fighting is a funny way of fighting. [2015]

[on the subterranean hallways and vacant rooms in Horse Money (2014)] Most of
them were shot in two different hospitals. Of course one doesn't need to think
about it like this, but Ventura said, "I know a lot of hospitals, I've been there."
Most places are where patients do not go, down, down, down, mainly in the
biggest hospital that you see from the outside. The last one is one of the oldest
hospitals in Lisbon, and that arch is the entrance-exit of the morgue-not of the
hospital but the morgue. I used a trick, I wrote the guys in the hospital that I was
making a true-life documentary about poor Cape Verdeans in this hospital, it's
only an amateur crew of two guys, no lights, nothing, and we only want to shoot
in corridors and won't bother anyone, so they gave us complete access every time
of the night. [2015]
In Vanda's Room (2000) is a film about possession, not only the drugs, but she
possesses the viewer in a certain kind of way that is different from other films.
There are films that practice that kind of magic in different ways. That's what I
call the Brechtian thing. [2015]

Art is not anything else but reality. We should be concerned with thinking about
the things that are there, and not with the things that are not. [2015]

When you see filming on the streets, you have an immediate feeling there's some
kind of imposture there. There's some kind of lie. It's all created to escape reality.
The talk is always of aesthetics when it should be more about the morals and the
money. [2015]