O Sangue

Director: Pedro Costa

1989 / 95min / DCP

Costa’s first feature, premiered when he was barely 30, is both a work that stands alone in his oeuvre and that is of a piece with his later films in its focus on Portugal’s dispossessed, with its story of two brothers forced to go on the lam after their father’s death. Shot in shimmering black and white, and developing an air of sumptuous fairy-tale enchantment that recalls Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, O Sangue is worlds apart from the austerity of his haunted later works, with Costa even making highly effective use of a non-diegetic pop needle drop (The The’s “This Is the Day”). Presented in a brand new 4K restoration supervised by Costa, O Sangue is the compassionate and disarmingly beautiful opening of an astonishing career.

This DCP results from a digitization of the original 35mm camera negative and from original 35mm monaural magnetic and optical sound elements preserved at Cinemateca Portuguesa, Museu do Cinema / ANIM. Negative 4K scan on wet gate Oxberry-Cineric scanner and audio recording supervised by Franco Bosco at ANIM. Digital grading and image restoration supervised by Carlos Almeida at Irma Lucia Efeitos Especiais, Lisbon. Colorist: Gonçalo Ferreira. Image Restoration: André Constantino, Ana Cunha. Uncompressed monaural soundtrack supervised by Hugo Leitão at Estúdio Espreita o Som, Lisbon. Image and sound restorations approved by the director, October 2021–February 2022. Special thanks to José Manuel Costa, Rui Machado – Cinemateca Portuguesa, Museu do Cinema / ANIM and Clarão Companhia Prod.