Three public lectures

Monday 6th; Tuesday 7th and Wednesday 8th January 2014, 2.00pm-5.00pm, Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

Four years after the first complete retrospective of his work in the UK, Pedro Costa, one of the most uncompromising filmmakers in contemporary cinema, is back for a three session masterclass at Birkbeck, University of London. Costa’s work has been acclaimed as a challenging questioning of contemporary film production, blurring genres, rethinking political film and subverting the traditional image of outcasts.

In January, Pedro Costa will introduce three key, but to a large extent under-discussed aspects of his work as a film director: ‘Work’, ‘Language’ and ‘Actor’. Film theorists Laura Mulvey (Birkbeck), Ros Gray (Goldsmiths) and John Kraniauskas (Birkbeck) will act as discussants in each of the sessions.

Pedro Costa (Lisbon, 1959) is a Portuguese filmmaker. His work includes Blood (1989), Down to Earth (1995), Bones (1997), In Vanda’s Room (2000), Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, Filmmakers – Where does your Hidden Smile Lie? (2001), Colossal Youth (2006), Tarrafal (2007), The Rabbit Hunters (2007), Change Nothing (2009).

O Sangue (Blood), Casa de Lava (Down to Earth) and Juventude em Marcha (Colossal Youth) were released on DVD in the UK.

Pedro Costa Masterclass is organized by the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS) and Filmville.