Juventude Em Marcha

5 April, 2015 - 12:00
SPHINX 3

 

Ventura arrived in Portugal in 1972, he found a well-paid mason job and he believed that he would succeed, that he would be able to save up enough money to bring his wife from Cape Verde. Then the revolution took place and he told me the secret story of African immigrants in Lisbon after April 25th 1974. They feared they would be deported or imprisoned. For Ventura this was a moment of condemnation: chaos, delirium, sickness. He was simultaneously a prisoner and guard in his wooden shanty house in Fontaínhas. He survived by repeating and memorizing ‘ad eternum’ his love letter. (...)

It is precisely because I film these things in this manner that I don’t believe in democracy. No one in Fontaínhas believes in democracy. People like Ventura built the banks, museums, theatres, schools and condominiums of the bourgeoisie. And it’s precisely what they helped build that defeated them.” (Pedro Costa)

Juventude Em Marcha (Colossal Youth)

Pedro Costa
,
CH, FR, PT
,
2006
,
35mm
,
colour
,
135'

Colossal Youth brengt het verhaal van Ventura, de imposante Kaapverdiër die de rol van surrogaat vader voor een onbepaald aantal figuren in de marges van Lissabon en de nu met de grond gelijk gemaakte buurt Fontaínhas op zich heeft genomen. Doorheen de bezoeken die Ventura brengt aan figuren als Vanda Duarte (het hoofdpersonage van Costa’s In Vanda’s Room) en de terugkerende herinneringen aan zijn voorbije leven als net geïmmigreerde handarbeider, verkent Costa de aard van en de noodzaak aan het vertellen van verhalen in de loop van het menselijke avontuur.