Eighth session of the film programme Um Filme Falado: Os Temas de Oliveira, with conception and moderation by Anabela Mota Ribeiro. This film programme is dedicated to several themes present in Manoel de Oliveira's oevre. This film session deals with the theme History, with the screening of Andrzej Munk and Witold Lesiewicz's The Passenger (1963), followed by a conversation with filmmakers Susana de Sousa Dias and Catarina Alves Costa, moderated by Anabela Mota Ribeiro.

HISTORY

9 NOV | SAT | 17h00

PASAZERKA | THE PASSENGER

Andrzej Munk and Witold Lesiewicz | POL | 1963 | 62’

With: Susana de Sousa Dias (filmmaker) and Catarina Alves Costa (filmmaker)

In the early 60's, Lisa, a German woman living in the US, travels to her birthplace with her American husband Walter on board a transatlantic liner. As they dock in England, Lisa gets upset by seeing a certain passaenger. She looks exactly like a Polish prisoner named Marta, whom Lisa knew back in World War II, when she was an SS guard at Auschwitz concentration camp. Lisa had been convinced that Marta was dead for a long time. The film's plot comes from a novel by the Polish wrier Zofia Posmysz, herself a Holocaust survival, casting a realist glance on the inhumanity of the concentration camp, as seen through the eyes of a female SS guard. As Andrzej Munk unexpectedly died before completing the film, The Passenger was concluded by Witold Lesiewicz, based on the materials Munk had left behind.