Pedro Costa -- on process

“At one point I just left the script behind, because I thought that if I’m going to try and shoot this girl in this new place that’s foreign and dangerous, then I have to shoot it from her point of view. So when I would meet with people on the way up to the volcano, I tried to learn more of the language, the history, or the music. There was a lot of improvisation each day, and then I hoped that the next day maybe a miracle would happen, and of course I had this open structure already: this girl didn’t know what she was going to find, so she could find everything.”



“In the beginning when I started making Vanda it was pure documentary —it was the worst documentary ever made. I was there trying to catch things with my camera, and then slowly I realized I was there to lose moments, not to catch them. [...] not to try and catch reality, but to try and lose reality in a way.”