“ANDThis exhibition is the first moment of a cycle of exhibitions that will focus on Manoel de Oliveira’s archive, fully deposited at Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira in Serralves. It is expected to be the first of three moments. There will be two more exhibitions that will continue this first moment”, explained today the director of Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira, António Preto, at a press conference, to officially present the exhibition ‘1. A Bem da Nação (1929-1969 )’.
The exhibition, which opens today, in the late afternoon, focuses on the first 40 years of Manoel de Oliveira’s cinematographic production – that is, it takes place between 1929, the year in which the shooting of his first film begins, ‘ Douro Faina Fluvial’ (1931), and the year 1969, which corresponds to the time when Manoel de Oliveira produced ‘As Pinturas do Meu Irmão Júlio’ (1965) and the creation of the Centro Português de Cinema, the cooperative “responsible for a new breath of Portuguese cinema and specifically the production of Manoel de Oliveira, which obtained the first funding”, explained António Preto, co-curator of the exhibition, with filmmaker João Mário Grilo.
The first objective of this exhibition is to make known the “posthumous fragment”, added, in turn, João Mário Grilo, declaring that the exhibition is “a kind of unfilmed film that Manoel Oliveira left” through the archive that the director made in life.
Under the title ‘A Bem da Nação’, an expression known during Portuguese fascism and used in hundreds of official documents addressed to Manoel de Oliveira during the dictatorship of Oliveira Salazar, like millions of Portuguese people, the exhibition also reveals the totality of director’s library.
Among the hundreds of books by Manoel de Oliveira, works of Portuguese literature stand out, such as those by Camilo Castelo Branco, Jose Régio and Agustina Bessa-Luís, writers of reference for his cinematography, along with works of foreign literature by authors such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and his “Gulag Archipelago”, to Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
For João Mário Grilo, this exhibition is a tribute to a “historic figure who is immeasurable in Portugal”.
In ‘A Bem da Nação’, the exhibition, access to the “intimacy” of the director’s creative processes, reassessing his doubts and his convictions, the persistence and inversions of path that make him one of the most irreverently inventive artists of the last 100 years.
The exhibition is a true “unarchive of the archive”, of “listening to what he tells us and showing what he shows us”, this exhibition “is both a shipyard and a call for works, a ‘work in progress'”, reads in the press dossier given to journalists
“It is an obligation of Casa do Cinema to show the director’s estate”, noted João Mário Grilo, advancing that the next exhibition will be about the film ‘Amor de Perdição’, based on the homonymous work by Camilo Castelo Branco, which he classified as “revolutionary ” in the history of Portuguese cinema, with its four hours duration.
The filmography made by Manoel de Oliveiro between the period 1929 -1969 includes “Douro, Faina Fluvial” (1931), ‘Aniki-Bobó’ (1942), ‘O Pintor ea Cidade’ (1956), ‘O Pão’ (1959 ), ‘Acto da Primavera’ (1963), ‘The Hunt’ (1964), ‘As Pinturas do meu Irmão Júlio’ (1965).
The exhibition ‘1. A Bem da Nação (1929-1969)’ is officially opened today at 7 pm at the Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira, at the Serralves Foundation, and is open to the public from Friday, March 17, until the 17 of September.
This is the first exhibition of a cycle entitled ‘Manoel de Oliveira and Portuguese Cinema’, with the aim of making known the director’s archive, created over more than eighty years of work, and fully deposited in Serralves.
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