As for publications, in addition to his collaborations scattered in various international magazines and newspapers, he published several works in the fields of pedagogy, philosophy, and mainly, the history of cinema. Among the latter are research papers published by the Portuguese Cinematheque – Cinema Museum on filmmakers and film genres: Luis Buñuel (1982), Alfred Hitchcock (1982), John Ford (1983), Fritz Lang (1983), Nicholas Ray (1984), Josef von Sternberg (1984), O Musical ('The Musical', 1987, dedicated to this film genre), Howard Hawks (1988). His works also include Os filmes da minha vida/Os meus filmes da vida ('Films of My Life/My Films of a Lifetime', 1990) and Os filmes da minha vida 2 vol. ('Films of My Life', Vol. 2 2007). The first volume brought together the first series of his chronicles published in the newspaper O Independente from 1988 to 1989. The second brought together fifty-two chronicles that he published in the same newspaper, between 26 January 1996 and 23 May 1997 under the title "Os melhores filmes da nossa vida" (The Best Films of our Lives).

In both works, João Bénard da Costa selected some of the films he considered special and discussed them in depth. His reflections, always well-grounded, are still markedly personal because, as he warns in the introduction to the second volume: "I will not be – will never be – objective. I will not serve 'ready-to-wear' films, such as those that invariably top the invariant lists of the 'best films of all time'. The best, only the best for me. I only know about my life and not yours. Even more serious, I believe mine is ours and ours is mine." (Os filmes da minha vida, Vol. 2, 2007, p. 12).

In 1991 he published Histórias do cinema português ('Stories of Portuguese Cinema'), which is perhaps where he most harmoniously combined his inherent and unique subjectivity to an absolute desire to convey historical objectivity – which, as mentioned, has always been present in his work, even if indirectly or subtly. In addition to paragraphs in which he describes the historical, social and political context of Portugal, an example of this are his footnotes that appear throughout this work, presenting short biographies of important figures in the history of Portugal, alongside the path of the history of Portuguese cinema: such as the kings of Portugal, Mário Soares or Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. His attention to historical events is explicitly revealed at each step: "Interestingly, the evolution of Portuguese cinema over these 14 years has drawn a similar curve to Portugal's political curve." (Histórias do cinema português, 1991, p. 165)

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