Ricardo Costa

Ricardo Costa completed his studies in 1967 at the Faculty of Arts at the Lisbon University. After submitting a thesis on the novels of Kafka * "Franz Kafka : writing in the mirror" - he obtained the degree of "doctor of philosophy" (PHD) in 1969. He was a high school teacher and owned a company where he published a number of sociological texts and avant-garde papers, literature and cinema, during the period of fascist domination in Portugal. During this period he also made some films, but it was only after the "April Revolution" of 1974 that he became a film professional (director and independent film producer). He collaborated with the Radio Televisão Portuguesa (RTP) as an independent producer for several years since 1975. He produced and directed two series of documentary films, some approaching fiction. : "Mar Limiar" ("Sea Horizons"), a first series about the sea and the life of Portuguese fishermen - 40 films, 25 minutes, and "Homem Montanhês" ("Mountain Men"), a second one, four feature films on mountain communal villages, three episodes of 30 minutes each. Despite being produced for television, these films are pure cinema and illustrate a tendency. The director followed one of the paths available to Portuguese cinematographers at the time. - The theater of reality is pure life. And dreams start here, like movies His presence in the field at the time of Portugal's liberation from fascism (between 1974 and 1977), led him to work with TV stations, such as ARD and CBS, which broadcast many of the historical images he shot. Submitted to documentary, he directed and produced his first fiction film. in 1978/1980, a non conventional creation, which was suspected to be surrealistic. Fiction projects standing by, reality imposes itself. He mixes up both genres once again and produces Brumas (Haze), his latest feature film. He wrote several essays on cinema, vision and language and organized projections and cinema cycles in Lisbon and Paris (Cinémathèque Française and Musée de l'Homme) among others.