João
Bénard da Costa
João Bénard da Costa (1935–2009) was one of Portugal's most influential film critics and the longtime head of the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Deputy director from 1980, he led the institution from 1991 until 2009, shaping its programming and overseeing its renovation, while publishing widely on Hitchcock, Ford, Lang, Buñuel and others. It was there — and earlier at the Gulbenkian's cinema department — that he formed his long partnership with filmmaker Rita Azevedo Gomes, who worked alongside him for over thirty years as a programmer and as the designer of the Cinemateca's catalogues and publications.