Abstract | This article reflects on the ways in which Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa’s Cavalo Dinheiro (2014) and Vitalina Varela (2019) restore the right to narrate and materialize the effects of trauma related to migration and colonialism. It explores the inscription of diasporic bodies and subjectivities in contemporary postcolonial spaces, more specifically in the context of the representation of immigrants and descendants of Cape Verdean immigrants in Portugal. We draw on the notion of materiality as a prism for this analysis, both in the sense of the materiality of the cinematographic apparatus used by the director, and in the sense of the materiality of the image itself and its formal operations in the construction of the experience of history and trauma. We argue that these formal operations, especially the use of temporality (historical and filmic) and framing that create distance, not only reveal an aesthetic of their own but also a political and ethical engagement in Pedro Costa's cinema. |
---|