Ossos (1997) Portuguese director Pedro Costa combines documentary and narrative styles to innovate what has come to be called “the cinema of stillness.” This film studies the Fontainhas district of Lisbon, where immigrants from Africa struggle to stay alive.
I see your lips darkening the wall
In city streets in the rain
All the clichés of agitprop
And sometimes your lips move
Reciting their fascist slogans
Staining the wall with blood
So many crossing the border
Horizons share their own flat line
Homeless in condo corridors
With somebody’s baby for sale
Your lips purse from the gas
Seeping from the stove inside
Rooms stripped bare or bruised
Purple from too many beatings
Where her johns come and go
The baby abandoned on a green couch
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