Manoel de Oliveira: The First 100 Years
Portugal’s master filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, who turns 100 this December, is the world’s oldest active filmmaker. And “active” is an understatement. Since 1990 this octogenarian/nonagenarian dynamo has directed at least one feature film every year. He is making up for lost time. Though Oliveira began his filmmaking career during the silent era of the early 1930s, he didn’t direct his first feature until 1942, and his second until 1963. He made only three features during the 1970s and four during the 1980s. Now he seems unstoppable.
Better known in Europe than in America, Oliveira emerged as one of the great modern filmmakers with his “Tetralogy of Frustrated Love” (1971–1981). These four movies about unfulfilled romances in repressive societies—The Past and the Present, Benilde or the Virgin Mother, Doomed Love, and Francisca—established Oliveira’s international reputation and revealed his fascination with literary texts. They also crystallized his minimalist, almost anticinematic style of long takes, theatrical tableaux, and copious speech, while introducing such recurrent concerns as women, European history and culture, and the intersection of life, literature, theatre, and cinema. Oliveira’s films can boast the lush literariness of Merchant-Ivory, the subversive impishness of Buñuel, and the spiritual striving of Dreyer, while remaining thoroughly modernist and often self-reflexive.
Oliveira’s upcoming 100th birthday is being commemorated with a series of film retrospectives across North America. The largest tribute takes place in Cleveland in May and June—21 features divided between two venues, the museum and the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. On Wednesday nights between May 28 and June 25, the museum will present Oliveira’s complete “Tetralogy of Frustrated Love.” Five more of the master’s most celebrated films (featuring stars ranging from Marcello Mastroianni and John Malkovich to Catherine Deneuve and Bulle Ogier) will screen on four Friday nights and one Sunday afternoon. All will be shown in 35mm film prints—some from the Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon, some newly struck for this retrospective. Special admission to each of the programs in this series is $10; CMA members, seniors 65 & over, and students $7. No passes or Panorama vouchers will be accepted.
This series was organized by the BAMcinématek, Brooklyn (Florence Almozini), and coordinated by Antonio Pedroso. It is presented with the support of Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema, Instituto Camões, and Lusomundo. Special thanks also to Manoel de Oliveira.
For More information and to buy ticket visit: http://www.clevelandart.org/educef/viva2005/film/Film.asp
| Manoel de Oliveira: The First 100 Years posted on Sunday April 27, 2008 |
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