Pedro Costa has been critically acclaimed as one of the most important political film auteurs to emerge at the turn of the new millennium. Equally at home in documentary and fictional modes, his narrative films, a trilogy of which is featured in this symposium, push the boundary between the two, balancing a new ethics of filmmaker-actor collaboration with a style that is rigorously distinctive and gripplingly beautiful in its portrayal of the marginal and dispossessed in urban, postcolonial Portugal. After studying History at Lisbon University and editing at Lisbon School of Film, Costa directed a series of shorts, and then his first feature, O Sangue (Blood) in 1990. A versatile media artist, he presented his first video installation, commissioned by Catherine David, in Rotterdam, Lyon (France), Japan, and Bilbao (Spain). He recently contributed, with the short The Rabbit Hunters, to the Jeonju Digital Project in Korea. His omnibus film, The State of the World, garnered awards at the Locarno Film Festival and in Portugal, and retrospectives of his work have been staged at the Tate Gallery in London and the Harvard Film Archive, as well as the Redcat in Los Angeles. His latest film Ne Change Rien, starring the actress Jeanne Balibar, premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and is currently playing at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles.

For more information, please go to the UCI Film and Video Center website.

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