The Political Gesture in Pedro Costa's Films (25)

This book offers a new reading of the work of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa. His use of political gesture is shown to push the limits of filmic representation that goes beyond the depiction of a social reality. This book offers a new reading of the work of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa. It provides a formal and detailed analysis of his films to suggest that Costa’s formal procedures generate a contingency of meaning. The book proposes that Costa’s films suggest a critical thinking posited through the materiality of the cinematic medium that is capable of exposing the limits of filmic representation itself. In addition, the author argues that Costa’s political gesture derives from the articulation of the intrinsic elements of the filmic medium rather than the depiction of a social reality.