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From Sight & Sound: "On the final day of #LFF, Portuguese master Pedro Costa was in town with his magnificent new film VITALINA VARELA, winner of the top prize and Best Actress at Locarno earlier this year. It’ll be released by Second Run early next year, but here are a couple of bites from the Q&A…⁣
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“With Horse Money, I wanted to go deep into things with Ventura, things that are to do with my own personal history. A long time ago there was a revolution in my country, and it was a very happy time for me. I had a sequence that I wanted to do, a musical sequence, and I wanted to shoot a lot of interior spaces. I was doing location one day, and we had this house but it was abandoned. The guy who lived there died. He was kind of a dealer, no one knew if he was murdered or just died. Then the door opened and Vitalina came out, and it was already a film. She came out of that blue door and she was dressed in black. She’d been there for 3 months maybe. She’d come to the funeral and then locked herself in the house, ashamed, afraid and in grief. I asked if I could shoot in the house and she said yes, and we got talking a bit. I think she was afraid I was police or something. I immediately thought there was a possibility of something. We worked on those few scenes that are in Horse Money, and I just really loved being with her. This kind of work for me is a real pleasure, nothing against professional actors, but this is something else, on a different level. These people have absolutely no relation to film or art, maybe music a little bit. To get this kind of work, to get them interested, it’s priceless. I have no money, so I have to say priceless.”⁣
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“I think cinema, to survive, has to do certain things, the things I do. The ceremonial, ritual thing that cinema has, has to be preserved. It’s hard work, you have to take care of it. Taking care of these people and taking care of cinema is the same thing. We have no money to do it, less and less, and films are difficult to show, so I’m so grateful that Second Run show it here. It’s small but it’s still very courageous. It’s work that isn’t being done any more. I would like to keep this flame burning a little bit, but there’s so much more”"

I still have Horse Money to watch, but having liked each Costa film less than it's predecessor, I hope my remaining two will change that. But anyway, I was hoping this would happen, and I'm continuely in awe of Second Run.

Via Facebook, Second Run has just confirmed a release date of March 6.

Blu-ray, I'm assuming? I didn't see formats mentioned in the FB post but I have to imagine it would be an HD release.

It would be a tad surprising if it wasn’t, I feel.

It's been awhile since they've released anything DVD-only. No chance they'd do that with this film.

Yeah, it's been more than 2 1/2 years (though they have done a couple of BD-only releases since then)

March 6 is a Friday. They're clearly talking about the theatrical run of the film, not the home video release.

Caught this earlier today - it's the film's opening weekend at Lincoln Center, so hopefully it'll be around for quite a while. Absolutely stunning to look at, and though they upgraded the camera, it didn't feel like Costa made any fundamental changes to his rigorous methods, which made the visual achievement even more impressive. (From a Cinema Scope interview: "I won this camera in a prize at the Munich Film Festival. The ARRI/OSRAM prize. Two traditional, respected German corporations. Godard can tell about ARRI and OSRAM. OSRAM invented the lamps to light up the Olympics in that year, so. I won that camera there, and it’s a good camera, so we have this bigger, better camera. But it doesn’t mean easier.")

Still processing it, but this feels like a masterwork of film noir, which is not what I expected, and it doesn't look like I'm the only one who feels that way about the film.

Second Run are partnering with ICA in London on a Pedro Costa retrospective from 3 – 15 March 2020. Pedro Costa will be in attendance for most screenings.

I wonder if SR would be interested in releasing the Fontainhas trilogy? MoC's release of Colossal Youth is OOP, and I don't believe Ossos or In Vanda's Room have ever had a UK release.

To tie in with our release of VITALINA VARELA, Pedro Costa will be in the UK this week for a series of Q&As and post-film discussions.

ICA London - Tuesday 3rd March
HOME Manchester - Wednesday 4th March
Cambridge Arts Picturehouse - Sunday 8th March

VITALINA VARELA opens in UK cinemas Friday March 6:
ICA London
HOME Manchester
Tyneside Cinema Newcastle
Bristol Watershed
Cambridge Arts Picturehouse

www.secondrundvd.com/vitalina

"A new Costa is an event – not 'event' like a party, 'event' like an earthquake... Costa’s cinema is down-to-earth and bigger than life."

Little White Lies on Pedro Costa's VITALINA VARELA

DVD and Blu-ray on May 26.

∙ Vitalina Varela (2019) presented from a director-approved HD transfer of the film
∙ New filmed interview with director Pedro Costa.
∙ Booklet featuring writing by film critic Adam Nayman and Tom McSorley, Executive Director of the Canadian Film Institute.
∙ Teaser trailers
∙ Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C)
∙ Original soundtrack in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio & 2.0 Stereo LPCM
∙ MORE TBC

FWIW, starting tomorrow, Lincoln Center is making this available to view from home in lieu of their theater closures.

Amazon UK does not want to ship the Blu Ray of this item to USA. Does anyone know why?

Amazon UK is not taking any orders from the US right now given the current world situation

Well, this was (unsurprisingly) astonishing, but it also feels very dependent on having seen Costa’s other films beforehand. There’s a little thrill of recognition when we see

Spoiler

Ventura’s shaking hand for the first time

, and it feels like Costa is deliberately playing around with our expectations of what his films will be like and contain. (The first time we see Vitalina genuinely shocked me.)

I’m still mulling over the implications of the film, but it feels both like an extension of and a distillation of everything that has come before it in the director’s filmography.

swo17 wrote: Sat Mar 28, 2020 2:50 am Amazon UK is not taking any orders from the US right now given the current world situation

Hopefully they still ship orders that were placed before this ban but have not dispatched yet

Soundchaser, where did you see the film?

Grasshopper is doing an at-home shindig where you can rent the film for three days and they’ll split the proceeds with your local theater. More info here.

(I hope Second Run doesn’t mind that I’m posting this in their thread! I also plan to buy their Blu-Ray whenever this nightmare is over...)

therewillbeblus wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:12 am

swo17 wrote: Sat Mar 28, 2020 2:50 am Amazon UK is not taking any orders from the US right now given the current world situation

Hopefully they still ship orders that were placed before this ban but have not dispatched yet

Yes, I've gotten shipping notifications in the last week from pre-orders I placed months ago

soundchaser wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:19 am Grasshopper is doing an at-home shindig where you can rent the film for three days and they’ll split the proceeds with your local theater. More info here.

(I hope Second Run doesn’t mind that I’m posting this in their thread! I also plan to buy their Blu-Ray whenever this nightmare is over...)

I’ve always been confused that for such a beloved label on this site there is hardly any discussion in their release threads, other than links to other articles or awards - so I suspect its welcome!

It looks like you can order the Second Run directly through their website for £23 shipped, or through Arrow for £26

soundchaser wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:07 am Well, this was (unsurprisingly) astonishing, but it also feels very dependent on having seen Costa’s other films beforehand. There’s a little thrill of recognition when we see

Spoiler

Ventura’s shaking hand for the first time

, and it feels like Costa is deliberately playing around with our expectations of what his films will be like and contain.

That actually makes me uncomfortable to watch the movie.

Spoiler

While I had other problems with it, the manipulation of Ventura's dementia in Horse Money felt genuinely exploitative bordering on abuse so his appearance again makes me feel that Costa hasn't changed his approach.

I've never felt a strong connection to Costa's work, and from the little I remember agree with knives' concern with that film though more of an offputting sensation rather than solidified stance, but hearthesilence's comparison to film noir has me very intrigued in what I assume would be an entirely different kind of approach to the genre.