Cinema’s ‘Primitive Beauty’: Pedro Costa’s Artistic Formation and the Making of Blood (1989)

This chapter discusses Pedro Costa’s personal and professional development during the 1970s and 1980s. The discussion offered here concerns how formative experiences came to inform aesthetic preoccupations displayed in his directorial debut, Blood (1989), as well as to reflect industrial, social and cultural contexts of the film’s production. Costa’s personal and professional development was shaped by Lisbon’s youth cultures enjoying political freedoms and cultural openness resulting from the Revolution of 25 April 1974. The making of Blood reflects such historical characteristics, while also exemplifying the constraints shaping Portuguese cinema at the time. This first chapter also examines the initial domestic reception of the film, providing further context to Costa’s role as an emerging filmmaker.