Manoel de Oliveira

Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira ( born December 11, 1908 in Porto ) is a Portuguese film director and screenwriter. He is since 2001 the oldest still active as a director and the only one who has worked the silent movie era.

Career

Oliveira was born in 1908 into a wealthy Portuguese family in Porto. Since he was born before the Portuguese spelling reform of 1911, he writes his name until today in its old spelling Manoel (instead of the modern form Manuel ). In his early years he was active in sports, including auto racing driver also. He initially wanted to be an actor and he also adopted some film roles. He has appeared, among others 1933, the first exclusively Portuguese sound film production of the then burgeoning Portuguese film on, in Cottinelli Telmo's comedy A Canção de Lisboa, on the side of Vasco Santana, among others But the film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City by Walter Ruttmann influenced him sustained and encouraged him to become a film director. His first work was created in 1931 as a silent film: Douro, faina fluvial, a documentary ( German title: Hard work along the Douro River ) on the northern Portuguese Douro River, which flows into Oliveira's hometown.

His first feature film directorial work Aniki Bóbó (1942 ), The Children of waterfront in Porto was before Visconti's " obsession " of 1943, the first film of neo-realism, but commercially a failure. Oliveira turned now to the production of port wine in the family winery on the Douro. Oliveira justified this break so that it was very hard for him during the Estado Novo repressive regime in Portugal to make films. In the late 1950s he worked again reinforced with the movie theater. In 1955 he came to Germany for some time to familiarize yourself with the color film. He managed technical equipment and put two movies in complete in-house production here, but it was not allowing a performance. After a documentary (O Pão, 1959), in which he got to know the traditions in Curalha, a municipality in the district ( concelho ) Chaves, he decided again to a feature film. O Acto da Primavera (English title: The Passion of Jesus in Curalha ) won a gold medal at the International Film Festival of Siena and was a start signal for Oliveira's future international orientation. The film was, however, shown only once in Portugal, and because of some dialogues Oliveira was briefly detained by the secret police PIDE.

Until 1971 he turned despite all the changes in the Portuguese film no more movies more, even after he was not was in 1967 recognized by the film club Porto organized " Study Week on the Portuguese Novo Cinema" as the figurehead of the young movement, and as its precursor O Acto da Primavera applies. In an age go in the other retired, Oliveira then increasingly devoted with all his strength to filmmaking. Since then, arose some 30 feature films, the best known is probably on the banks of the River ( 1994) ( Vale Abraão ). His friend Wim Wenders was de Oliveira in 1994 in his movie Lisbon Story a guest appearance, in which he plays himself. The premiere of his latest film on a play by Raul Brandão, Gebo et l' ombre, with Claudia Cardinale, Michael Lonsdale, Leonor Silveira and Luís Miguel Cintra, had on September 6, 2012 in Paris nationwide premiere after the September 5, Venice Film Festival was premiered.

Oliveira turned, inter alia, with his friend Michel Piccoli, with John Malkovich, Catherine Deneuve and Irene Papas as well as with Marcello Mastroianni ( Mastroianni 's last film as 1996, trip to the top of the world, published in 1997 ) and later with his daughter Chiara Mastroianni. He has won several awards at the Venice Film Festival, Cannes, Montreal and others.

" Oliveira is a genuinely European director, derived from Feuillade and not of Griffith. His audience, even taking into account the television, is not a mass audience, " writes film historian Thomas Brandl Meier.

Oliveira leads not only directed, he also acts as the screenplay and is also engaged in editing and camera work as well as a producer.

Honors

  • 2008: Grand Cross of the Order of Infante Dom Henrique
  • Honorary Doctor of the University of the Algarve (2008) and of Trás -os- Montes e Alto Douro (2011)

Filmography (selection)

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