MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA - ESPELHO MAGICO

The career of Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira (1908) now spans more than 70 years. Oliveira made his first film, the short Douro, Faina Fluvial, in 1931, and his first feature, Aniki-Bobó, in 1942. He filmed sporadically until the 1970s, when, already in his 60s, he garnered recognition abroad and his output became more regular. Since 1990 he has made at least one film per year. Oliveira’s cinematic practice derives to at least some degree from his dialogue with different forms of literature. In his films the line between cinema and theatre, on the one hand, and between fiction and documentary, on the other, is extremely tenuous. These characteristics are articulated in diverse ways, but particularly through a number of formal traits that run through a large part of his work: literalness of adaptation, an explicitly theatrical mise en scène, emphasis on spoken language, self-reflexivity, and the mixture of diverse genres and modes of cinematic discourse.

Espelho Mágico is a fiction based on the novel A Alma Dos Ricos “The Soul of the Rich”, written by Agustina Bessa-Luís. Alfreda, the main character, isanxious to see the apparition of the Virgin Mary. Under this obsession shelives a troubled life in several events that, apparently disconnected, are aconsequence of this psychic state that affects the rich people’s soul - socialclass to which she and her husband belong. But Alfreda no longer reachesthe light spoken by those who have lightly touched the fatal tunnel, but whohad survived.

Espelho Magico (2005)
35mm, col., French, Spanish, Portugese spoken, English subtitled, 137’

The Ecran d’Art series is a monthly screening of artists’ film and/or video jointly organised by argos and Cinema Arenberg, in collaboration with La Cambre Academy .