Mists

Mists (Brumas), 2003, is a Portuguese feature-length film by Ricardo Costa.

It is an auto-biography, a voyage to childhood. Shot with no state funds (uncommon situation in Portuguese film production) it is an art film. Formal simplicity – associated with a non conventional, sober and fluid narrative^[1] of time and human condition – is common to most of Ricardo Costa’s films. For him, narrative involves necessarily mise-en-scène and that’s why documentary (real life) tends to turn into fiction. This tendency is fully assumed with Mists, the third Costa’s docufiction, after Changing Tides (1976) and Bread and Wine (1981). Mists is the first film of a new trilogy.

It is premiered at the 60th Venice Film Festival (New Territories – 2003) and released in Portugal on 16 November 2006.

Synopsis

More than fifty years later, the hero meets Maria José again. She used to be a maid at his parents’ house, when he was a child. From her he has heard the most implausible stories. She was then eighteen and he was about six. The young woman became an elderly lady: a wrinkled mother, then a grandmother and a great grandmother, with the sea embedded in her soul. She lives in a fishermen’s village with white and diminutive houses perched at the edge of a cliff in Peniche, an ancient fishermen's town, at a neighbourhood known as "Windows of the Sea".

She now tells the story of her life. She repeats life-giving gestures, illuminating childhood dreams. The camera follows those steps, moves backwards, and then it lurches forward, suggesting a disquieting outcome of situations of these days, like those of the 11th September of that same year. The boys who live around her tell the same story in a different way. To make that possible, all it takes is a flick-knife, a handsaw, a broom stick, bamboo canes, floaters from the sardine nets, a few magic tricks.

Towers crash. The unpredictable Atlantic swaying under the splendour of the mists. Time (CIT. producer’s synopsis ^[2]).

Production

• Producer – Ricardo Costa (filmmaker)
• Director – Ricardo Costa
• Production year – 2001
• Format – 35 mm Dolby SR
• Release – September 2003
• Locations – Peniche, Portugal
• Image studios – Concept and Tobis Portuguesa
• Image master and sound mixing - Téletota (Paris)

• Premiere - 60th Venice Film Festival 2003 (New Territories)

Cast

• The hero – Ricardo Costa
• The grandmother – Maria José
• Her grandson – Rudolfo
• Her grand grandson – David
• Her daughters – Isabel, Beta
• Her sons – Henrique, Paulo
• Her friends – Maria Velha, Maria Joaquina, Maria Bernardina
• The ancient prisoner – (Portuguese) António Dias Lourenço (sea also NYT article)
• The old photographer – Luis C. Peixoto
• The hero’s friend – Isaura

Credits

• Producer and director - Ricardo Costa (filmmaker)
• Script - Ricardo Costa
• Photography, camera, sound, editing - Ricardo Costa
• Assistant director - Maria José Silva
• Image assistant - Maria José Silva, Lígia Pereira, António A.B.C. Marques, António Maurício, Ricardo M. Costa
• Editing assistant - João Brandão
• Image supervisor - Vitor Estêvão a. i. p.
• Sound editor - Ricardo Sequeira
• Sound mixer – Jean-Paul Loublier (see Jean-Paul Loublier)
• Music - Manu Chao and Nuno Rebelo (see Nuno Rebelo) at the ballet school of Museu Municipal de Peniche (Lifecooler)

References

1. ^ Ricardo Costa and the flowing pictures – article by José de Matos-Cruz
2. ^ See producer’s pressbook

Further reading

• Lisbon Debates the Fate of an Empty Building With a Dark Past - New York Times article
• The Peniche Museum (fortress and prison) at Texas A&M University page
• Museu Municipal de Peniche at Lifecooler (Portuguese)

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• Mists - Movie Reviews - print
• Village Voice — Films opened March 23, 2011

External links

• Mists: pressbook with pictures (English, French, Portuguese)
• Mists at Film Up (Italian)
• Mists at The Complete Index To World Film since 1895
• Mists at the 60th Venice Film Festival: line-up at IndieWire (2003)

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• Mists runs at the QUAD cinema in New York City (March 25 to April 2, 2011)
• Mists – Portuguese American Journal, News, 22 March 2011
• Mists – Brown University, News, 22 March 2011
• Mists – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation News, 23 March 2011