José Fonseca e Costa
José da Fonseca Costa ( * June 27, 1933 in Vila Robert Williams, Angola) is a Portuguese film director.
Career
He grew up in Angola and came to Lisbon with 11 years. Even as a youth he was interested in the cinema and was early in film clubs active, especially in Cineclube Imagem, where he became a member. He studied law, he broke off, to devote himself entirely to the cinema and professionally. Since the late 1950s he also became politically active after he met in the underground transforming independence movements of the Portuguese colonies. In 1957, he was briefly detained by the secret police PIDE. In 1958 he was involved in the campaign for the candidacy of the opposition Humberto Delgado. He applied around the same time the state television Rádio e Televisão de Portugal ( RTP) to a position as assistant director. He passed the recruitment test, but was not adjusted after the intervention of the PIDE.
Subsequently, he held more frequently in Paris, where he became friends with young film critics, including Claude Chabrol, Jacques Doniol - Valcroze and other editors of Cahiers du cinéma. He worked for the Portuguese publisher Arcádia, for which he, inter alia, Cesare Pavese and Eisenstein translated. In 1961 he went to Italy to Michelangelo Antonioni at the filming of Love 1962 ( org. " L' Eclisse " ) to assist. He then returned to Portugal, where he worked as a commercial director and his first short films turned.
In 1969 he was co-founder of the film collective Centro Português de Cinema, for which he with O Recado (English: "The message " ) was filming his first feature film. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, he turned to be employed with the celebrations for the revolution, but still without in the RTP for RTP a documentary about visiting Georges Moustakis in Portugal. In 1975, he directed his second feature film, Os Demonios de Alcácer Quibir (English: " The demons of Ksar -el- Kebir "), a political work in the style of the Portuguese Novo Cinemas.
With the onset of disillusionment after the Carnation Revolution intensified among the filmmakers of Portugal, the discussion about " cinema as entertainment " or " cinema as an art with a social mandate ." The liberated from censorship filmmakers were able to inspire no broad public, contrary to expectations with their dedicated works after the revolution. The cinema now on a defined as a means of expression of the avant-garde. For the other, the film had an equal basis to serve both the entertainment and the food for thought and could be separated in any case by the audience of their own country. Fonseca e Costa struck down this road and landed in 1981 with his action and humor - packed film Kilas, o Mau da Fita a great success with the public.
His film Sem Sombra de Pecado (English: "Without shadow of sin " ) from 1983, according to the narrative e aos costumes disse nada by David Mourão - Ferreira, attracted especially by the work of cinematographer Eduardo Serra sensation of his subsequently enhanced international career. Fonseca e Costa turned to Serra in 1988 another film, A Mulher do Próximo (English: " The wife of the neighbor" ), which was awarded at the Film Festival of Huelva.
1996 filmed Fonseca e Costa with Cinco Dias, Cinco Noites (German: " Five days, five nights "), the novel by Manuel Tiago, one in 1995 resolved literary pseudonym of Álvaro Cunhal, the resistance fighter and longtime chairman of the Portuguese Communist Party ( PCP). The French- Portuguese co-production ran at various festivals ( Toronto IFF) and received various awards, including for the music of António Pinho Vargas. With its Brazilian- Portuguese production Viuva Rica Solteira Não Fica (English as: " rich widow does not stay alone for long " ), he became again the favor of the audience. The film is in March 2012 still among the 40 most viewed Portuguese films since 2003. Recently, he filmed with Os Mistérios de Lisboa or What the Tourist Should See the first discovered in 1988, written in English Lisbon Travel Guide by Fernando Pessoa from the year 1925. With speakers in 7 different audio tracks (including Peter Coyote and Imanol Arias, German Guilherme Dutschke ) and an exclusive Fado Fado singer of Duarte, he shows in extensive air and close-up places in today's Lisbon then described. The film was made under the auspices of the President Aníbal Cavaco Silva.
2007 staged Fonseca e Costa for the first time at the theater, the play Pequenos Crimes Conjugais (German: " Small Crime in marriage " ) at the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in the spring of 2012, he staged again at the theater, this time O Libertino by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt ( orig.: " Le Libertin ", dt, " The Libertine " ) at the Teatro da Trindade in Lisbon, with lighting by Eduardo Serra.
Reception
Along with names like António - Pedro Vasconcelos, António da Cunha Telles Luís Galvão Teles or to Fonseca e Costa opted for a cinema that only continued the themes of Cinema Novo, in imagery and structure but to the general public easier access. The places great success in the Portuguese cinema gave Fonseca e Costa quite, but similar international success came to him denied.
On his audience orientation, the narrative and cinematic innovation in comparison with internationally award-winning directors often remained limited. However, he offered beautiful images and put in his films value on a good script with a relevant topic. So he stayed in the ways the ideals of Cinema Novo faithful. The filmmakers of his country, he acquired with his work respect. He was honored on the Fanta Porto Film Festival for his life's work, but also for his critical spirit 2009.