The European Cultural Centre is delighted to present a conversation with Brazilian director Andre Fratti Costa, followed by the screening of three of his films. For over 10 years, Costa’s film production has aimed to share and cover the lives and artworks of well-known Brazilian artists.
“Between images: intervals” (2015, 23 minutes) explores the works and the footsteps of Antonio Benetazzo. The documentary captures the history and memory of the Italian-Brazilian artist and political activist, assassinated by agents of the Brazilian military regime in 1972, at the age of 30. The film revisits a dark past, marked by physical, symbolic and cultural deaths. When an artist dies, Costa questions himself with his homage to Benetazzo, which inevitably also arises as a reflection on the situation on the politics of his country.
Where does an artwork begins and ends? “Thread in Blue” (2011, 13 minutes) which registers an intervention of the artist Regina Silveira at Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), a building projected by the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi. Here, as in a double thread that intersects, we witness a twofold performance: by the artist and the documentarian who interprets and documents at the same time. Both united by the value of an extraordinary architectural work that dictates its contours. São Paulothe city, the house, by Andre Fratti Costa, is something more a background, a material in metamorphosis.
The theme of urban space is also present in the third film in programming: “Film to Read” (2016, 15 minutes). The film follows the execution of the largest urban intervention by one of the best known Brazilian artists, Regina Silveira. Permanently occupying the sidewalk of the Mario de Andrade Library in São Paulo, in a project originally conceived for the New York library. Again the organic dimension of the city that changes its skin and opens up to dialogue. An invitation to rethink the public space.
ABOUT ANDRE FRATTI COSTA
Andre Fratti Costa is a filmmaker, Master in Architecture and Urbanism at FAU-USP, professor of Cinema and Arts at Centro Universitário FAAP, and professor at the Postgraduate Course in Documentary. He directed several award-winning films at national and international festivals. Recently, he had retrospective screenings of his films in Vitória_ES (Brazil), Laguna-SC (Brazil) and was honored at the first ArCH Cine in Rio de Janeiro for his films about architecture.
He is the curator of MOVE CINE ARTE, an international film festival about art that takes place in São Paulo and Venice.
