Jornal da Mostra
Manoel de Oliveira
Nº 376 > 29ª Mostra > 26/10/2005
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Meeting with Manoel de Oliveira fill up Clube da Mostra
Special guest of the 29th São Paulo International Film Festival, honored with a retrospective, the Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, had on Sunday (23rd) an enthusiastic encounter with the public, at Clube da Mostra (Conjunto Nacional – Cine Bombril Hall, 2073, Paulista Avenue). The place was completely filled up with people, as much for talking to the filmmaker as for the release of the book “Manoel de Oliveira”, an association of the Film Festival with the publisher Cosac Naify.Master of the motion picture, almost 97 years old (he will be in December), Oliveira humbly stated: I have never directed anyone. I like the actors’ spontaneity”. By his side, the actors Ricardo Trepa (his grandson) and the Brazilian Lima Duarte (who worked with him in Word and Utopia and Magic Mirror) were talking about the experience of working with the filmmaker. “I glanced my language on Camões language, when working with Manoel de Oliveira”, said Lima about the classic respect the filmmaker has for the language in all his films.
A good example of this detail, raised during the conversation with the public, was a scene from the movie “A Talking Picture” in which actors from different nations – such as the American John Malkovich, the Greek Irene Papas, the French Catherine Deneuve and the Italian Stefania Sandrelli – speak and, even speaking their own language, they understand each other perfectly. About this scene, the filmmaker commented: “There’s nothing better than speaking your own language. Without identity, there is no dignity.
The Western civilization crisis and the terrorism aggravation, themes introduced in many Oliveira’s recent films, deserve another deep remark made by him: “The terrorism, which for sometime existed in Ireland and Spain, is back. What do the Moslems intend to? To have back the power they once had? Like the Crusades, now reversed”. Despite of this global panorama, where the filmmaker equally pointed out the nature extermination, he showed no pessimism: “Faith is fundamental in life. The Creator gave the human being this impetus so he can survive his own miseries. We survive hoping there will be a way out”. Oliveira gets ready to direct a new film in February, 2006. It will be Belle Toujours, a sequence of Belle de jour (1967), by Luis Buñuel.
