"MANOEL"

“Manoel” derives from the creation of two original soundtracks, made for two films by Manoel de Oliveira. The filmmaker’s universe and his gaze on Porto - his city, so well documented here - worked as the musical staff for the rhythm and ambient of a series of compositions, which are presented in cine-concert format, dialoguing with the films. This dialogue takes on different outlines along the way: sometimes the music strolls together with the film’s pacing and timing, like wind at one’s back. At other times it invades, imposing a new reading upon it, like a hostile storm. Memory – this time the city’s – is once again the main theme.

“Besides, this is what I generally love about cinema: a saturation of magnificent signs, basking under the light of their own lack of explanation. This is the reason I believe in cinema.”

In Manoel de Oliveira conversation with Jean-Luc Godard

Libération, September 1983)

The Artist and the City

Manoel de Oliveira, POR, 1956, 26 min.

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The first work in colour that Manoel de Oliveira directed, using deliberately longer shots for the first time, presenting the city of Porto through the watercolours of painter António Cruz. The artist leaves his studio and travels around the city. The real images shift with the aesthetic impressions on the artist’s canvases, in a caring tribute to the city and to creativity. The film is an artistic symbiosis between two great personalities from the visual arts.

Labor on the Douro river

Manoel de Oliveira, POR, 1931, 21 min.

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Documentary about the city of Porto and its main axis: the Douro River. Presents a sophisticated and rigorous aesthetic going beyond a prompt observation of social reality. In this first work, Oliveira experimented alternative ways of displaying reality, influenced by avant-garde cinema, and by the works of Walter Ruttman, particularly his work “Berlin, Symphony of a City”. “Labour on the Douro River” caused a strong impact among the critics of the time, due to its very intelligent and fast editing and the beauty of its photography. Criticized by Portuguese critics and praised by foreign critics, Oliveira had thus entered the world of cinema.