Ninth and final session of the Film and Talks Programme Um Filme Falado: Oliveira e a História do Cinema, conceived and moderated by Anabela Mota Ribeiro. This programme, dedicated to the relationship between various significant moments and trends in the history of cinema and the work of Manoel de Oliveira, closes with the theme Documentary, with screenings of Manoel de Oliveira's Douro, Faina Fluvial (Labour on the Douro River, 1931) and Porto da Minha Infância (Porto of my Childhood, 2001). After the screening, a conversation will take place with Rita Benis, a film researcher, and Susana de Sousa Dias, a filmmaker, moderated by Anabela Mota Ribeiro.

6 DEC | SAT | 17h00

DOCUMENTARY

DOURO, FAINA FLUVIAL | LABOUR ON THE DOURO RIVER

Manoel de Oliveira | POR | 1931 | 20'

Manoel de Oliveira's sophomore effort of his unique cinematographic oeuvre, Labour on the Douro River combines sequences of visual poetry with a documentary portrait of the various types of work on the Douro River, and more specifically on its right bank, on the city of Porto. Being also the result of the strong inspiration that “symphony films” exerted on Oliveira (namely Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City), the avant-gardism of Labour on the Douro River, especially in terms of the expressive power of the editing, meant that the film was not well received by the Portuguese audience that attended its premiere at the 5th International Critics Congress in Lisbon. However, the reaction of some foreign critics, such as Émile Vuillermoz and Luigi Pirandello, was quite different and they immediately recognized the qualities of the film and the potential of its young director.

PORTO DA MINHA INFÂNCIA | PORTO OF MY CHILDHOOD

Manoel de Oliveira | POR | 2001 | 61'

A first-person film, Porto of My Childhood is a look by its director, Manoel de Oliveira, at his place of origin, the city of Porto, and the time that has crossed and changed them (him and the city). This journey through memory is accessed through the most diverse materials: archival images, photographs, excerpts from the director's own films and the re-enactment of past experiences. An example of one of the most unique facets of Oliveira's cinema – the management of multiple and intricate layers of time – Porto of My Childhood documents, through a subjective point of view and within the limits of what is commonly understood as documentary, the persistence of memory in the face of the transience of reality.