Portuguese

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This Proustian documentary, made when Oliveira was 93 years old, explores the great Portuguese film-maker’s relationship with his home town, Oporto, the place which inspired his first film Douro, Faina Fluvial way back in 1931. Using old photographs and newsreels with dramatic reconstructions, he offers a vivid portrait of a city caught between the old and the new. When he was a child, Oporto didn’t even have proper cinemas, film shows were improvised in sheds, Oliveira (born 1908) recalls. Most of the landmarks familiar from his youth have vanished. The brothels and cafés where he and his artist friends used to while away their days are long since closed. Even the house where he grew up is in ruins. The city I remember only remains alive in my sad memory, he sadly reflects. Poignant and playful, this is one of the old master’s most accessible late films.Read More »

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Elena, a young Brazilian woman, travels to New York with the same dream as her mother, to become a movie actress. She leaves behind her childhood spent in hiding during the years of the military dictatorship. She also leaves Petra, her seven year old sister.

Two decades later, Petra also becomes an actress and goes to New York in search of Elena. She only has a few clues about her: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary and letters. At any moment Petra hopes to find Elena walking in the streets in a silk blouse.Read More »

This movie is about one of the worst periods for the Brazilian people. Shows the days of military dictatorship when the Brazilian people against the government were put in jails, tortured, and some of them assassinated by the military and para-military people. At the same time, the same government censored the press and didn’t allow anything but news about three times-champion soccer team. While the people made parties, etc for the soccer team, in the underground, people suffered all kinds of torture.Read More »

António Variações was a unique man. He was born in a small village in Amares, in the north of Portugal. At an early age, unhappy with his life working at a local factory, he came to Lisbon to stay with some relatives. But he was different and he wanted more. He wanted to travel and see the world and he emigrated, starting to work as a barber. But his love for music and performance was so strong that he came back so he could sing in his own language, even if with his looks and outfits he was a victim of prejudice. And even without knowing anything about music he fought for his right to do it the way he believed it was best.Read More »

In a cloistered village in the country, time seems to have stopped. When a photographer named Rita arrives from outside, the initially reticent townsfolk open up to her. Only the village priest continues to find Rita’s presence worrisome, especially when she begins asking about the locked cemetery.Read More »

Orson Welles goes to Brazil to shoot his documentary It’s All True.
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A fictional account of Orson Welles’ real passage to Brazil where he was supposed to film a cultural film called “It’s All True”, to present a positive image of Brazilian people and the country’s grandiosity’s to the U.S. government, a project that was part of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. But Welles got enchanted with everything around him and got distracted from the project, that never got fully made. This movie speculates what really happened to Welles that prevented him from fulfilling his work.Read More »

Helena (Rosa M. Penna) is the adolescent girl who is driven to suicide over her fear of growing older and assuming responsibility for her life. A couple reads her diary and watches home movies of the girl to try and understand her personality and motivation for taking her own life. Adriana Prieto, Arduino Colasanti and Joel Barcelos also star in this tragic tale of a young girl’s inability to cope with life. -allmovie.comRead More »

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Fernando, a solitary ornithologist, is looking for black storks, a species under threat, along a remote river in northern Portugal, when he is swept away by the rapids. Rescued by a couple of Chinese pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela, he plunges into an eerie and dark forest, trying to get back on his track. But gradually, as he encounters unexpected and uncanny obstacles and people who put him to the test, Fernando is impelled to extreme actions which transform him. Little by little, he becomes a different man, inspired, multi-faceted and finally, totally enlightened.Read More »

Documentary about Humberto Mauro, his work and its importance.Read More »