Manoel de Oliveira’s life spanned a century and the history of cinema.

In the late 1920s, he repeatedly watched Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (considered by many to be the most beautiful love story ever on the big screen), breaking it down scene by scene, rivetted by Murnau’s visual eloquence and modus operandi. Two years later, he made Douro, Faina Fluvial, in which we can recognize his fascination with the power of the image, albeit in a documentary genre that distances him from Murnau’s fiction. If the history of cinema is inseparable from Oliveira’s practice – if it reflects, influences and shapes a plural form of filmmaking – his film language is asynchronous with world film production and the great movements that guided it. Oliveira was a singular author, with his own vision, often in defiance of collective discourses or trends. Take the astonishing case of the musical Os Canibais (1988), made when the genre had long been out of fashion and seemed anachronistic.

This year, the film programme Um Filme Falado focuses on great films that identify the history of cinema: Silent Film, Expressionism, Melodrama, Neorealism, Comedy, Major Studios, Classic, Musical and Documentary. As always, two guests from different areas will comment on the films, providing different views, questioning the limits of each genre. We continue to show the work of great filmmakers whose genealogy Oliveira is part of, in many cases allowing us to discover or revisit great classics on the big screen. Besides Douro, Faina Fluvial, the last film to be shown is Porto da Minha Infância (2001). With a 70-year gap, they reflect on the way Oliveira himself viewed the documentary genre