So we thought, why not do a little miniature? They were called enluminare, medieval miniatures.

So, there’s a sort of dialogue, a question and answer in song, that the singers seem to respond to. The music is a 17th-century song, a Baroque composition that employs counterpoint. It’s easy to do that today, it takes like 30 seconds. Actually we did three tests with the three singers, then we were editing in our office and just by mere curiosity put the three of them side-by-side in a split screen. We went into a small-not even a studio, a garage, where we rehearsed the songs. I was working with the singers, thinking about the feature film we’re trying to make next year.

It doesn’t matter.įilmmaker: How did you originally intend to screen this?Ĭosta: It was a test. But I like to go to the Louvre or the Prado just to buy some postcards of paintings I like in the gift shops. Of course I saw it on a big screen in Vienna, and it looks great. Pedro Costa: I’m the guy who once said Bresson looks very good on an iPhone, so I have no problem with how you see it. Costa chose to combine them in The Daughters of Fire as a sort of “proof of concept” for a planned feature film.įilmmaker: What is the best way to view The Daughters of Fire? I had to watch a screening link. In museums the films are projected separately in three different rooms. The films are part of Canción de Pedro Costa, a museum exhibition currently touring Europe.

That incident is the starting point for The Daughters of Fire, an experimental short by the Portuguese director Pedro Costa.Ĭosta splits the screen into panels portraying three women-Adelaide, Clotilde, and Irodina-singing over an arrangement of Biagio Marini’s “Passacaglia (Opus 22).” The film ends with footage from A Erupcao do vulcao da ilha do Fogo, a 1951 documentary by ethnologist Orlando Ribeiro. In 1951, a volcano erupted on Fogo, one of the Cape Verde islands.

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