Quote:
A poetic journey in the heart of Portugal. They were two. A man and a woman that met and traveled down from the Tras-os-Montes to the sea. Legends and steep and rocks, faces and sounds… In the film, the chant of a country’s history eight century long is passed on.

Quote:
For his feature debut Monteiro creatively borrowed from traditional Portuguese legends to craft a series of echoing, parallel tales of young couples desperately escaping cruel false fathers, each couple on the run across different regions of the country and during increasingly contemporary time periods. A lyrical and profoundly cinematographic allegory with a glistening sharp political edge, Paths traces a pattern of repressive authority across Portuguese history while also pointing, with cautious optimism, towards the steady presence of youthful resistance. With its stunning choreography of landscape and use of a poetic, associative structure to evoke the longue durée of mythical time, Paths anticipates Monteiro’s mid-career masterpiece Silvestre.

Veredas.1978.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 0 min
Size: 	2.52 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	792x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.375
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 740 kb/s
BPP: 	0.250
Audio
#1:  	Portuguese 1.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s (Spectrum FRA Blu-ray 2025)

https://nitro.download/view/E8EB867CEE537F6/Veredas.1978.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, French, Portuguese

The post João César Monteiro – Veredas AKA Trails (1978) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

imdb wrote:
The dates of the exhibit have been set. Bernd Hoffmann is in Lisbon, which he had already visited in 1974, when he met the young artist Hanna Brauer. The exhibit will present paintings by both artists. Bernd is waiting for Hanna, but neither she nor her paintings seem to have arrived in Portugal. And yet he knows that the woman is in Lisbon. He looks for her among his old revolutionary friends, then turns to the police for help. He discovers that Hanna is dead. A natural death? Suicide?

1984 - Ninguém Duas Vezes (Jorge Silva Melo).mp4

General
Container:	MPEG-4
Runtime:	2h 11mn
Size:	3.77 GiB
Video
Codec:	h264
Resolution:	720x576
Aspect ratio:	5:4
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	3 977 Kbps
Audio
English 2.0ch AAC @ 136 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/F59F8FBC7B44A03/1984_-_Ningueem_Duas_Vezes_(Jorge_Silva_Melo).mp4

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:None

The post Jorge Silva Melo – Ninguém Duas Vezes (1984) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
An author writes a story entitled “O som da terra a tremer”, and the story constantly entwines itself with his private life. Alberto is a writer out of the world because of decisions that are always postponed and sometimes imagined. Between the writer, his personal universe and the story that he’s or imagines to write is lost the notion of boundary. The story revolves around a sailor who one day finds a foreign port and loses a girl. But between the real world and the universe of fiction of Alberto is always difficult to perceive the place of each thing.

1.62GB | 1h 32mn | 770×578 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/6DC1130FA15EDC7/O_Som_da_Terra_a_Tremer.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/6C462045C9AE4EB/O_Som_da_Terra_a_Tremer_corr.srt

Language:Portuguese
Subtitles:English,French (hardcoded)

The post Rita Azevedo Gomes – O Som da Terra a Tremer AKA The Sound of the Shaking Earth (1990) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This bizarre satiric comedy stars writer/director Joao Cesar Monteiro as Joao de Deus, who runs a small ice cream parlor in Portugal. Joao’s employees are mostly teenage girls, and he rigorously drills them in proper procedures and encourages a careful regimen of personal hygiene. But the single and rather lonely Joao has an unusual hobby — he collects women’s pubic hair, saving favorite samples in a scrapbook and claiming to have a few stray hairs from Queen Victoria. Eventually, Joao becomes romantically involved with one of the girls working at his shop, but when that relationship goes south, he finds himself attempting to seduce the 14-year-old daughter of the local butcher, which lands him deep in hot water. A Comedia de Deus was successful enough to inspire a 1999 sequel, As Bodas de Deus. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A.Comedia.de.Deus.1995.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 49 min
Size: 	6.55 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	960x576 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	5 264 kb/s
BPP: 	0.397
Audio
#1:  	Portuguese 1.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s (Spectrum FRA Blu-ray 2025)

https://nitro.download/view/AB1049107CDB419/A.Comedia.de.Deus.1995.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish

The post João César Monteiro – A Comedia de Deus AKA God’s Comedy (1995) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
This quirky Portuguese comedy won a silver lion at the 1989 Venice Film Festival. The story concerns the irrepressible Joao de Deus (played by the director, Joao Cesar Monteiro), an ill-kempt, lusty and none-too-honest resident of Violeta’s boarding house, which happens to have yellow walls. Joao, who has no visible means of support, is in his fifties, and is not above cadging money from his 70 year old mother, who still works as a cleaning lady. He has a wistful sort of lust for the young ladies in the boarding house, and gets a kind of thrill when he is permitted to take a bath in their used water. He strikes up a friendship with a slightly stupid girl who is a mite promiscuous, and even has a brief sexual encounter with her himself. Many slightly “off” encounters occur during the remainder of the film, but despite Joao’s potentially defeating setback near the end, it appears that it won’t be long before he’s back in action.

Review:
The impoverished tenant of a Lisbon boarding-house, João de Deus (played to perfection by the writer/director) is one of the great miseries of the movies. He muses, in a dispassionate but doomy voice-over, on death, illness, solitude, and the bedbugs that make a nightly attack on his testicles. As the seedy, sexually frustrated, but occasionally kindly protagonist proceeds towards a pathetic, cracked assault on his harridan landlady’s daughter, it’s hard to know whether to laugh, weep or simply slit your wrists. In the end, it’s that wry, detached sense of comic absurdity that saves the film from plunging into maudlin miserabilism. Using long, often static takes, an elliptical narrative, and stark but stylish compositions, Monteiro sidesteps psychodrama to produce something altogether cooler, more thought-provoking, and more perverse. The film makes its slow way towards the appallingly run-down mental hospital of the title, and a denouement as fantastic as it is subversive. A fascinating, quietly caustic critique of the outmoded mores of Portugal’s petite bourgeoisie.

— TimeOut.

Recordacoes.da.Casa.Amarela.1989.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 2 min
Size: 	3.90 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	792x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.375
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 268 kb/s
BPP: 	0.390
Audio
#1:  	Portuguese 1.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s (Spectrum FRA Blu-ray 2025)

https://nitro.download/view/EFFEC1606E74A50/Recordacoes.da.Casa.Amarela.1989.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, French, Italian, Portuguese

The post João César Monteiro – Recordações da Casa Amarela AKA Recollections of the Yellow House (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Laura Rossellini, a widow from Rome, vacations on the Algarve coast one hot summer. One day while sunbathing, she finds a wounded man named Robert drifting in the surf on a rubber raft. She takes him home, and, after he is revived, learns his story. As they talk, their mutual attraction grows, until a group of armed men suddenly arrives looking for Robert.

Review:
A lot can be said about Portuguese director João César Monteiro and his films which are different from one another. One great thing about his works is that they have the ability to impress viewers by making them appreciate the value of a mature story which develops slowly.

This is the reason why a lot of patience is required to truly assess the greatness of his films. João César Monteiro is one of the few directors whose films are not for popcorn munching audiences who excel in inane bigotry. As far as this film is concerned one should not be misled by what is written as synopsis. “À Flor do Mar” is something more than few words which have been written as a condensed statement.

The truth is that there is hardly Any story in the film. What we really see are numerous moods and mood swings of various characters which have no bearing on this film’s beginning, middle or end. By showing an isolated house, a beach and a seashore João César Monteiro has revealed some of the most precious hidden talents of Portuguese actress Teresa Villaverde.

When Laura Rosseilini decided to abruptly interrupt her life in south of Portugal and leave for Rome, taking her children with her, she was absolutely convinced that they would no longer return to Portugal, which was according to her “a dead country”, and that she thought they had left it behind, for ever and ever. However, about a year later, Laura returns to that same house by the seashore, now in a pleasant holiday atmosphere , and she finds what is left of her family and yet something very unexpected …

She returns to an isolated house, barely protected from the confusion hovering abroad. According to “Positif” magazine, the film “perfects the contemplative and melancholy style Monteiro, with some of his sarcasm”.

“This is a film about the loss of belief in the existence of Love, a film of open wounds that have not been healed yet at Laura’s eyes, the main character. “À Flor do Mar” pervades the Light of Perfection and of “Absolute Harmony” which would be the light of Piero, as pervades the various Roberts or Robertos , where we cannot go back (Jordan, Rossellini or Browning), but all this (or all of these) are Ideas without possible materialization..

The Light of Piero is for this film as the Bach’s music, which is heard therein, is. It is an appeal, not a description. Humans are too much indiscreet for those ideas. And the “Harmony” seems to exist only in “Still Lifes” (hence, their importance and the focus on food theme all across this movie) or (another sequence capital) in another décor, when Laura is in the bôite, among incarnated. “
— meetup.com.

A.Flor.do.Mar.1986.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 23 min
Size: 	5.26 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	790x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 986 kb/s
BPP: 	0.457
Audio
#1:  	Multiple languages 1.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s (Spectrum FRA Blu-ray 2025)

https://nitro.download/view/8CC8E675BDD5647/A.Flor.do.Mar.1986.576p.BluRay.DD1.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, French, Italian, Portuguese

The post João César Monteiro – À Flor do Mar AKA Hovering Over the Water AKA By the Seaside (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.