João Bénard da Costa

The Life of Mirrors is one of the sections of the exhibition Luis Miguel Cintra - Small Theatre of the World. A commission by Serralves Foundation to Regina Guimarães and Saguenail, and constructed after an unpublished interview with Luis Miguel Cintra, this film is the result of a long and painstaking exercise of selecting and editing excerpts from films by Manoel de Oliveira in which Cintra participates as an actor. In this way, The Life of Mirrors is a reflective, retrospective essay film, which opens the Carte Blanche, thus establishing a gateway to Luis Miguel Cintra's cinematographic and cinephile career.

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Director Manuel Mozos draws an intimate portrait of João Bénard da Costa, programmer, critic, actor and, for 18 years, director of the Portuguese Film Museum, who passed away in 2009.

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A story about art and educated men, and how their art and culture reveal themselves useless in the face of the harsh realities of the 20th century life.

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Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

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Joáo Bénard da Costa, director of the Portuguese National Film Archives [deceased in 2009], interviews the dean of contemporaneous film directors [96-years-old then]. Two humanists of different philosophical backgrounds, both with their long, entire lives dedicated to culture in general (music, painting, literature) and to film in particular, discuss freely, sometimes haltingly, the director's power as a creator or a magician, the philosophy beyond particular scenes in classic movies, film technique, the importance of color, sound and music to films, art versus entertainment, and much more. Their talk takes place in a museum room, seating in front of "The Annunciation" (a 1510 oil painting by João Vaz, a Portuguese artist), which eventually leads to a discussion of 'Leonardo da Vinci', and the relationship between a trend-setter master and his disciples.

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A special surreal encounter between Nikita Khrouchtchev and the Pope John XXIII.

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A 58 minute documentary about the life of João Bénard da Costa.

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Luciano, fresh out of jail, was taken by his brother, Flórido, to serve in the home of wealthy Alfreda. He was surprised when she told him that her greatest desire was to see the Virgin Mary. Now comes this rich land owner with her sublime pretensions. Isn't it enough for her to have an Aston Martin and a Jaguar in the garage and ten different dresses per season? It was all professor Heschel's fault. Or someone else's. Anyway, to go beyond the promise is heresy. Alfreda said that she wouldn't rest until she saw the Virgin and made her some questions. Filipe Quinta, the Forger, says he has a solution. Meanwhile, Bahia, her husband, listens do music.

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Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.

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Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown.

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An impossible love. Two young people who love each other. Vera and João can’t find in this life the space, time, or identity to resolve their love story.

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A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.

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The story of Father Antonio Vieira, a 17th-century Portuguese priest who lived in Brazil and worked for better treatment of the Indians and to abolish slavery.

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Joaquim is a romantic supermarket employee. He has only one friend Gaspar, who speaks almost only for cinematic quotes. At leisure, go around town looking for the right woman. But when found, she throws herself from a balcony. Then comes a dance, as in a musical, and an obvious surprise... A movie about beauty and glory that has more love stories.

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A look at the life and career of Vasco Santana, one of the most beloved actors of the Portuguese cinema.

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Through a conversation with João Bénard da Costa and his ideas about the Portuguese cinema, an interaction between the construction of the documentary and the sights and sounds clips from some movies is established. Despite the difficulties, the films continue to exist and to resist. Is it worth it? What would happen if they disappeared? Each viewer must find their answer. This film aims to be an approach to Portuguese cinema in its hundred years of existence, opening, hopefully, ways for their dissemination and making light for its knowledge.

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The journey of Michael Padovic, an American professor who arrives with his wife, Helene, at a Portuguese convent where he expects to find the documents needed to prove his theory: Shakespeare was born in Spain; not in England.

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The city during the beginning of cinema. The typical city at the time of the dictatorship. The New Lisbon of the New Cinema. Lisbon after the Revolution. The white city of foreigners. A geographical and moviegoer screenplay of Lisbon through the images of films and testimonies of several filmmakers who filmed in Lisbon.

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A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day.

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Paulo Rocha catches up with his “beloved subject” in Porto, where he made Douro, Faina Fluvial in 1929, and where today Oliveira reminisces about the figure of his father, his first experience of cinema as an actor, his past as a racing driver, his first technical experiences…

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At the end of the nineteenth century, an army force led by Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a cavalry officer, imprisoned in Mozambique the tribal chief Gungunhana, who had rebelled against Portuguese government and sovereignty. Mouzinho instantly becomes a national hero but his raising popularity worries the State.

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Freely based on Gide ('Paludes') and Hawthorne ('Wakefield'), this is a film about a writer who never wrote anything and who blows at nightfall the breath of frost. The poem by Carlos Queiroz to which the above sentences belong is not cited in 'O som da Terra a Tremer', but the atmosphere is that, between written letters never received. Fiction within fiction, stories within stories, like those Chinese boxes in which there is always one inside another. Or the two margins of the same river, always being lateral.

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Episodes from throughout the entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a conscripted student of history recounts them to his fellow soldiers while they march through an African colony in revolt during 1973.

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12-year-old Miguel is punished because he has not done his homework properly: he must stay at his aunt's inn for holidays. First bored, then a friendship begins between him and other inn's regular holiday-makers, like maid Luisa or fisherman João. But doctor Fernando's arrival is going to overwhelm the place's peaceful life and to change Miguel's mind.

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This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de Freitas) both loves and hates him as Joao plays on her wavering emotional state. He is sent to Italy to retrieve wayward family member Antonia (Caroline Chaniolleau), the beautiful young woman with a terrorist boyfriend. Joao is forced to recognize his feelings as the political and amorous climate changes around him.

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During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.

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A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.

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The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.

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A small group of well-to-do vacationers go on a hiking trip into the woods just to find themselves mysteriously lost.

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A man exiled in Paris makes various trips to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution. Each trip is represented by a woman.

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A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives.

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A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives. Based on the novel of the same name by Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.

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This is an intriguing avant-garde look at what motivates the leisurely classes in Portugal, for better or worse, by director Manoel de Oliveira. Set in a spacious country home peopled with a wide-ranging cast of characters, the drama begins as the friends of a widow come to console her on the loss of her husband. But at one point, the widow goes upstairs, encounters her husband, and is faced with his accusations about the past. This event and others provide the means of revealing the petty, self-serving, egocentric, and romantic pursuits of the melange of people in the house. - Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

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The way in which we cross, one time only, the space of a public swimming pool reminds us of life, from birth until the end.

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