Opening screening of the film programme Manoel de Oliveira and Portuguese Cinema 3, parallel to the exhibition of the same name, which will compare Manoel de Oliveira's complete works from 1991 to 2015 with other contemporary Portuguese film productions. The programme opens with Manoel de Oliveira's “A Divina Comédia” (1991), presented by António Preto, director of Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira.

15 MAR | SUN | 5PM
A DIVINA COMÉDIA | THE DIVINE COMEDY
Manoel de Oliveira | POR, FRA, SUI | 140'

The Divine Comedy brings together an extravagant gallery of characters in a ‘house of the insane’: Adam and Eve, Christ and the Pharisee, Saint Teresa, Sonia and Raskolnikov, the Karamazov brothers, Lazarus and his sisters, the pianist Maria João Pires, a philosopher with the air of Nietzsche and a Prophet, author of a ‘Fifth Gospel’ which is nothing more than a blank book. Taken from the Bible, the ‘Antichrist’, two novels by Dostoyevsky and the play ‘A Salvação do Mundo’ (The Salvation of the World) by José Régio, this group of notable patients transforms their forced confinement into a heated dispute of views on the world, life and reality. While not all of them have eaten the apple of original sin, they all have something to say in this comedy of humanity, which is also a tragic parable about Western civilisation and a highly original collage of literary texts.