MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA E O CINEMA PORTUGUÊS 3

From 1991 to 2015, with remarkable regularity in its production, Manoel de Oliveira's cinema reached its classic period, exemplified by a formal maturity that responds, from an aesthetic point of view, to his permanent questioning of History and the country. This late phase of the director's career also corresponds to the continuation of a cinema of synthesis and radicalization of many of the formal and thematic proposals of his previous work, which here achieves its definitive international recognition.

The twenty-five years covered by this film programme also trace the profile of the rest of Portuguese film production, in a context that saw various changes and adversities. A time of emergence for a new generation of filmmakers, this was also a period of great international recognition for Portuguese auteur cinema. Nevertheless, this recognition contrasts sharply with the chronic lack of funding which, in the first decade after the turn of the 21st century, reached its lowest point in 2012, when ICA suspended the calls for financial support for production.

However, despite all the obstacles to production, Portuguese cinema — and all those who build it — has struggled and resisted for its existence. At the forefront of this struggle, Portugal and its cinema have always counted, and will continue to count, on the tutelary figure of Manoel de Oliveira and the breadth of his work.