All eyes on Portugal

  Manoel de Oliveira, a titan of Portuguese cinema who died at age 106 on April 2 and was still making films well into his hundreds, is paid tribute during the Week of Portuguese Cinema, which starts on Sunday at the Thai Film Archive.

The event, organised by the Film Archive (Public Organisation) Thailand, Cinamateca Portuguesa, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre and the Camoes Institute, will have two of Oliveira’s films and five entries from other directors.

The selection includes Oliveira’s first feature, 1942’s “Aniki Bobo”, about a gang of street children in the director’s home city of Porto. Oliveira’s portrait of pint-sized thieves and hoodlums initially did not fare well, and the film’s poor reception forced the director to abandon other projects. Today it is recognised as a landmark, and was commemorated in 2013 with a 70th anniversary screening at the International Film Festival of Porto, with Oliveira himself in attendance.

Owing to political and economic difficulties, filmmaking was sidelined for Oliveira through the 1940s, but he re-emerged on the scene in the 1950s with a series of shorts, and then returned to making features in the 1960s. He hit his stride in the mid-1980s, making at least one feature a year until 2012’s “Gebo and the Shadow”.

In addition to “Aniki Bobo”, the Film Archive will also screen Oliveira’s 1990 epic, “Non Ou a va Gloria de Mandar” (“No, or the Vain Glory of Command”), in which Portugal’s entire military history is seen through the eyes of a soldier serving in the Colonial Wars in Africa in the 1970s. It was screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, a frequent haunt of Oliveira.

Portugal’s overseas conquest is also examined in other entries, among them Joao Mario Grilo’s 1996 drama “Os Olhos da Asia” (“The Eyes of Asia”), about a Roman Catholic missionary in Shogun-era Japan. And from 2012 is the epic “Tabu”, directed by Miguel Gomes. It toggles between modern day Lisbon (with scenes in colour), and the 1960s African colonial past (in black-and-white) with its story of star-crossed romance between expats. It screened at 2013’s World Film Festival of Bangkok, and was among the must-see selections of that fest’s programmers.

History closer to home is examined in “Capitaes de Abril” (“April Captains”), a 2000 drama that recalls the 1974 coup that overthrew a rightwing dictatorship in Portugal. It’s directed by Maria de Medeiros, who is perhaps best known outside Portugal for her role as Bruce Willis’ girlfriend in “Pulp Fiction”.

Other selections include the 1963 coming-of-age drama “Os Verdes Anos” (“The Green Years”), which was the debut feature of Paulo Rocha, another prominent Portuguese director. And there’s 1989’s “Recordacoes da Casa Amarela” (“Recollections of the Yellow House”), a Lisbon waterfront drama directed by and starring another of the country’s major film figures, writer, director and actor Joao Cesar Monteiro.

Contemporary society is reflected in “E Agora? Lembra-me” (“What Now? Remind Me”), a first-person documentary in which filmmaker Joaquim Pinto opens up about living with HIV, family life with his husband Nuno Leonel and his experiences in clinical trials for various experimental HIV drugs.

Putting it all in context for viewers at Sunday’s opening film at the Film Archive will be an introduction by Jose Manuel Costa, director of Cinamateca Portuguesa.

Notably, the Archive screenings, including the two films by Oliveira, will be from 35mm prints, an extension of the Archive’s monthly “Film on Film” programme. 

 

• The Week of Portuguese Cinema runs from Sunday to next Saturday at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.
• Admission is free. All films will be shown with English subtitles. Reserve seats online at bit.ly/portuguesefilmthailand.