The 46th screening in the “Manoel de Oliveira and Portuguese Cinema 3” film series, held in conjunction with the third part of the exhibition of the same name. The screening will feature Paulo Rocha’s If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal (2013), with an introduction by writer and videographer Regina Guimarães.

14 OCT | WED | 5:00 PM

SE EU FOSSE LADRÃO... ROUBAVA | IF I WERE A THIEF... I’D STEAL

Paulo Rocha | POR | 2013 | 97'

Drawing on family memories and the subject matter of his films, Paulo Rocha revisits his origins and the major influences on his life and work in a fluid and complex narrative that is consciously testamentary, though only indirectly autobiographical (he portrays himself through his father and the characters in his work). The film’s initial driving force is the evocation of the director’s father’s childhood and youth, particularly his obsessive dream—shared by many at the time—of emigrating to Brazil, where he actually left for in 1909 (although the actual chronology, as well as the facts and names, are altered or sometimes shifted to align with his other films). But this familiar theme intersects from the outset with the vast world of Rocha’s work, in a puzzle of thematic connections that reaches inward and backward (the search for the center, or the origin…) as much as outward (the constant expansion of meaning, the identity of a country). Paulo Rocha thus speaks of his own need to leave, and of questioning Portugal from a distance—his formative years in Paris, followed by a long stay in Japan—just as he speaks of death, but also of illness and a fear that have become endemic, corroding a country. At the same time, key figures from his body of work emerge in the excerpts from his films: men such as the Japan-based writer Wenceslau de Moraes (1854–1929), the poet Camilo Pessanha (1867–1926), and the painter Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887–1918) - all of them represent both the creative brilliance of the early 20th century and, quite rightly, a problematic relationship with their country of origin. On the other hand, the film is also a repository of another defining dialogue in Paulo Rocha’s work—in this case, particularly associated with Amadeo—in which inspiration drawn from universal culture merges with a genuine, one might say anthropological, study of Portuguese popular culture, focused especially on the northern region of the country (the fishermen of Furadouro, the Douro Valley…).