Manoel de Oliveira: Talking Pictures

8/9/08 to 9/28/08

The rich, rigorous work of Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira is at once passionate and austere, gracefully weaving philosophy, literature, theater, and storytelling into a purely cinematic experience. We celebrate the upcoming centennial of this still active director with a major series.

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  • Abraham’s Valley, September 28

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Voyage to the Beginning of the World

    Saturday, August 9 6:30 pm
    A film director (Marcello Mastroianni in his last role) tours the Portuguese countryside in this “exquisitely sad and moving reflection on memory and personal roots.”-N.Y. Times
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  • Aniki Bóbó

    Sunday, August 10 5:00 pm
    Oliveira's 1945 debut feature prefigured neorealism with a child's-eye view of Porto, the director's hometown. With short The Hunt.
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  • Rite of Spring

    Wednesday, August 13 7:30 pm
    A rural Portuguese town's passion play forms the center of Oliveira's prescient mix of documentary, fiction, and re-enactments that “takes on a strange, ancient, hieratic force.”-Sight & Sound
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  • The Past and the Present

    Saturday, August 16 6:30 pm
    Oliveira's deliciously Buñuelian satire of the backstabbing rich chronicles a disastrous mansion party. “A caustic comedy.”-NFT, London
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  • Benilde, or the Virgin Mother

    Saturday, August 16 8:45 pm
    A young girl's pregnancy may be truly “divine” in Oliveira's Dreyer-by-way-of-Sirk dissection of Portuguese propriety and religious hypocrisies.
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  • My Case

    Wednesday, August 20 7:30 pm
    An intruder interrupts a play with his own monologue in Oliveira's Pirandellian assault on the fourth wall. “Nothing other than a great, stylistically opened metaphor for man's entrance upon the world's stage.”-Berlin Film Festival
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  • Doomed Love

    Sunday, August 24 3:00 pm
    Young lovers are separated by family feuds and aristocratic mores in Oliveira's update of a classic 1861 novel. “A minuet staged as grand opera.”-Village Voice
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  • Short Films by Manoel de Oliveira

    Wednesday, August 27 7:30 pm
    This program of earlier poetic works by the great director includes his first film, Douro, Working River, a 1931 silent classic. Also The Painter and the City; Bread.
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  • Francisca

    Sunday, August 31 4:00 pm
    Two men become infatuated with an Englishwoman in Oliveira's masterpiece of frustrated love. “As if Straub had collaborated with Ophuls.”-Dave Kehr
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  • The Cannibals

    Wednesday, September 3 7:00 pm
    A lovely maiden falls in love with an upper-class gentleman-but discovers his body is entirely mechanical-in Oliveira's surreal musical collaboration with the Lisbon Opera House. “Perhaps the only genuine opera film to date.”-Toronto Film Festival
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  • Day of Despair

    Sunday, September 7 4:00 pm
    Dramatization of the last days of Portugal's famous 19th-century novelist Camilo Castelo Branco. “Cool, stylized, and elegant.”-London Film Festival
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  • Non, or the Vain Glory of Command

    Wednesday, September 10 7:00 pm
    Portuguese soldiers in 1973 Angola discuss the history of combat in Oliveira's theoretical treatise on war, destiny, and colonialism. An Apocalypse Now of philosophical ideals.
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  • Anxiety

    Sunday, September 14 5:00 pm
    Three stories are combined into one in Oliveira's fascinating examination of death and immortality, filmed in Portugal and Madrid. “A masterpiece with irreverent wit, ironic bite, and anger.”-Jonathan Rosenbaum
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  • The Divine Comedy

    Wednesday, September 17 7:00 pm
    Mental asylum inmates take on the personas of Jesus, Raskolnikov, and Adam and Eve in this imaginative combination of cinema, philosophy, and literature. With Maria de Medeiros.
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  • I'm Going Home

    Saturday, September 20 8:00 pm
    An actor (Michel Piccoli) adjusts to the tragic death of his wife and son in this leisurely paean to everyday beauty. Costarring Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich.
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  • Christopher Columbus: The Enigma

    Sunday, September 21 3:30 pm
    Oliveira's most recent film finds an amateur historian attempting to prove Columbus's Portuguese roots. A fascinating essay on history, nationalism, and the quest for discovery.
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  • A Talking Picture

    Sunday, September 21 5:00 pm
    Oliveira offers an appreciation of the birth of Western civilization to contemplate its demise in this “sharply cut gem of a film” (N.Y. Times) with Catherine Deneuve, Stefania Sandrelli, and Irene Papas.
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  • Belle Toujours

    Wednesday, September 24 6:30 pm
    Michel Piccoli returns in Oliveira's intriguing “sequel” to Buñuel's Belle de Jour, with Bulle Ogier essaying the Deneuve role. A tribute to Buñuel, eroticism, and unsolved enigmas.
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  • Belle de Jour

    Wednesday, September 24 8:00 pm
    Catherine Deneuve is a frigid housewife who indulges her masochistic desires by working in a Paris brothel. A subversive erotic classic from Luis Buñuel.
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  • Abraham's Valley

    Sunday, September 28 3:30 pm
    The gorgeous northern Portuguese coast provides the setting for Oliveira's reimagining of Flaubert's Madame Bovary. “As engrossing as a rich 19th-century novel.”-Variety
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