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Masters: Manoel de Oliveira

He made his last film at the age of 105. He died only one year later. Manoel de Oliveira was a Portuguese film director and one of the most original film author in the world, who remained active for the longest period of time.

He made his debut in 1929 with a short film titled Douro, Faina Fluvial. The film was edited on a billiard table, as there was no editing table available. His popularitycame much later, though, in 1979, when critics discovered his ground-breaking and unique work, during a review in Paris. “That 100-year-old Portuguese employed a surrealistic vigour and absurd sense of humour to take a look at the modern world,” said Tadeusz Sobolewski, a Polish film critic, commenting on his death.

In Belle Toujours, we see Séverine and Henri from Belle de Jour by Luis Buñuel meet again. Both of them must face problems from the past, but this time in completely different circumstances. Abraham Valley, a stylised travesty of “Madame Bovary”, explores the subject of love. Similarly to Flaubert, Oliveira suggests that people crave for love, even if it comes undone. The cinema equivalent of that 19th-century novel became a journey through the human mind, stylised both visually and psychologically. In Magic Mirror, based on a novel by Agustina Bessa-Luis, the director takes the audience on a trip into a woman's mind that desired to experience a divine vision. The Cannibals is a satire, created in the form of an opera, and combined with humour and poetry, in the background. The grotesque nature of the story and the concept of abandoning any and all prejudices make the film be ahead of its time by at least 20 years. As in the majority of films by Manoel de Oliveira, the plot in Voyage to the Beginning of the World is seemingly simple. Manoel is an ageing film director, who travels on a road trip across Northern Portugal, accompanied by three friends. The film is a homage to the past, the passing of youth, and to memory that can destroy the future. In The Letter, we follow a story of a married woman, who falls in love with another man. The centre of the story is fascination with a nun, who remains closed behind thick walls of a nunnery. The film won the Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1999. I'm Going Home is a story of Gilbert Valence, a magnificent theatre actor, who receives shocking news that his wife, daughter, and son were killed in a car crash. We witness the man trying to reassemble his life. In A Talking Picture, the director demonstrates how easy it is for the world to be destroyed by the very things that tie it together. Rosa Maria, a history teacher at the University of Lisbon, decides to go by ship from Lisbon to Mumbai, together with her 8-year-old daughter. Meeting other passengers on the ship entirely changes the course of event.

In 2008, Manoel de Oliveira was awarded the Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement, at the Cannes Film Festival. He died in April 2015.

2015 Programme

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