WHO is he?
Portuguese film director, screenwriter and editor, who has made close to 30 fictional and documentary features and as many short films since his debut way back in 1931. At 105, Oliveira is the oldest filmmaker alive with his career well into its ninth decade. He has been honoured with the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement — twice — by the Venice Film Festival.
WHAT are his films about?
Themes
One of the most prominent ideas in Oliveira’s body of work is the relationship between theatre, literature and cinema. In Oliveira’s films, these three forms are in perpetual conversation and it is often suggested that cinema is not the independent, pure form that its champions misguidedly claim to be. Love haunts these films in all its shapes — twisted, tortured, relentless, unrequited, all-consuming and even beyond the grave — and becomes something of a bridge between art and life.
Style
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Oliveira’s directorial style is its anti-realism, in which the theatrical and literary aspect of narrative filmmaking is deliberately brought to the foreground. Actors never emote; they do not look each other in the eye and often address the camera directly. They deliver their lines flatly, as though reading from a book. The sets are highly artificial and the production design is often dominated by a single colour. The musical soundtrack is frequently marked by toccatas. Repetitive narrative situations, wry humour, inclusion of outmoded film techniques and modernist self-reflexivity are important elements in these films.
WHY is he of interest?
Oliveira’s working life spans about three-fourths of the age of cinema itself, yet that historical detail is only of minor interest compared to the artistic achievements of his films. Incredibly enough, it is his work during the past few years that witnesses him at the top of his game and repudiates any form of patronising that might exist in view of his age.
WHERE to discover him?
The Strange Case of Angelica (2010) revolves around a photographer who is called to photograph the corpse of a beautiful young woman before her burial and falls hopelessly in love with the image he has captured. Like all of Oliveira’s pictures, it is a film of great tenderness and amazing insight and doubles as an investigation into the very nature of cinema, in which dead objects resurrected and preserved for eternity continue to haunt us.
