Pedro Costa: Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? + Q&A

'Quite simply a masterpiece, and probably the best documentary of any kind that I have ever seen' - Adrian Martin, Senses of Cinema

Join us for a screening of Pedro Costa's Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, followed by a Q&A with the director hosted by Chris Petit. Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? is Costa's revealing study of the filmmaking process which captures Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at work in the editing room on their drama Sicilia! (1999).

Pedro Costa was given privileged access to document the uncompromising filmmaking duo of Straub and Huillet - every cut and effect is discussed, and influences from Chaplin to Eisenstein are mentioned alongside the ethical and aesthetic implications of film technique. Costa later described the film as his first comedy and his first love story.

'As the filmmakers alternately engage in recounting personal anecdotes, gentle natured marital sparring, and professional ruminations over their collaborative cinema, what emerges in Costa's reverent and understated portrait is an affectionate, humorous, and indelible image of profound kinship and creative symbiosis - an idiosyncratic, modern-day love story that fuses passion with politics, creativity with conviction - told from the privileged intimacy of irascible, enduring romantics, intellectual peers, social activists, obsessed cinephiles, ageless idealists, and innovative, mutually-inspiring artists.' - Strictly Film School

Read an interview between David Jenkins and Pedro Costa when he was at the ICA in 2012 for a screening of his film Ne Change Rien.

Pedro Costa’s latest work, as part of the portmanteau film Centro Historico (with other segments by directors Víctor Erice, Manoel de Oliveira and Aki Kaurismäki), screens at BFI Southbank on Sunday 5 January at 3pm.

In collaboration with Second Run DVD.