Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#76 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Dec 20, 2019 6:37 pm

No decent DVD of the uncut Vale Abraão, right?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#77 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 21, 2019 12:02 am

Vale Abraão may be the most successful attempt I've seen at capturing the feel of reading a novel to the medium, and yet there are moments purely cinematic about it (my favorite being the shot of Leonor Silveira spinning around in the swivel chair). It's an interesting choice to make the ‘female mystery’ character the main one, and to take the narrative a step further to make her mysterious even to herself. The ideas of the film center around existential ambivalence toward impermanence and control: chasing happiness and ego-boosts through others to achieve reprieve from life's banalities that force unwanted introspection to the intangible, beauty as a blessing and a curse when applied socially, and the inability to perceive anything wholly as the trigger to internal disharmony.

Ema resents complacency because it evokes a feared perception of invisibility, and so she sets her sights on only the most extreme of emotional pulls: desire. She wants to desire and wanted to be desired, a role that is impossible to remain fixed but that she nevertheless seeks to validate her identity and stabilize the fleeting emotional security that allows her to unbind from the constraints of her objectification within her patriarchal culture. Ema embraces such objectification to issue herself control when no other systemic force will aid this process of self-actualization, and yet she remains alone, divorced from herself, just as she is fragmented from the society in which she lives. In MO’s milieu, there appear two kinds of people: those who become complacent, apathetic, and passive; and those who fight such a state. Ema fights through manipulation as a strength, for the film maturely refuses to pass judgment on her for embodying this resilience. She doesn’t appreciate the people she encounters who don’t mirror her position, like the men who are disinterested in her despite acknowledging her beauty.

This beauty is a fascinating conception that even MO seems puzzled by and in awe of; it’s at once a tool of pragmatic social success and ego empowerment and also a spiritual enigma of inexplicable wonder, a humble pleasure in a gift from the heavens for mankind. And yet this beauty is also reduced to meaninglessness in the sense of holding no objective weight or fastened subjective contentment for Ema or anyone else. The value of its worth is zero when applied to anything lasting or deep. Ema’s defining quality is both a holy spectacle and a vacuum of significance. This film seems confident with presenting impermanence as the only objective truth in this world before fragmenting even this concept into subjective perspectives that cannot unify but which must exist as divorced parts of the whole.

This differentiation is seen as inherent, predetermined, and serves as the prevention of intimacy or fusion, but is key for the development of the self. That the self must be isolated in a social world is the irony through which MO sees our corporeal stage for being, in addition to the ineffable abstract nature of moral, spiritual, and existential comprehensions that populate our experiences. What I love about MO that feels unique to him, is how he presents these enigmas not as quandaries to be solved or to feel a particular way about, but as facts, and when viewed without a specific temperament, the peripheries of possible attitudes and fleeting emotional and philosophical stances towards these enigmas themselves can become impermanent and accepted as such. MO does not impress upon his audience even his own subjective interest as a coating to the layers, but simply presents the layers themselves as a complex organism eager to be explored in the beauty, ugliness, pleasures, discomfort and all that lie between those extremes that encompass the nature of the cosmos. The third-person omniscient narrator of his novel-film could be god itself, but even the introspective knowledge about Ema and the other characters’ thoughts and feelings is distanced and loose enough to be MO’s unreliable narrator himself making assumptions based on the impenetrable surfaces of his and Agustina Bessa-Luís’ created mysteries; or, even more interestingly, could it be that god itself is not as omniscient as it is defined? Perhaps MO is showing that even an all powerful perspective will still miss something between the cracks.

Somehow this concept gives me an overwhelming sense of warmth and comfort, but I can see how it could also dysregulate or even horrify another. Does Ema’s dysphoria stem from being a former rose, stripped of any bearings of identity by life’s wind, to use her metaphor near the end of the film? And if so, is this destiny or something one can overcome with an alteration of mindset or spiritual acceptance? I choose to believe that Ema’s story resembles something at once unique and universal. We all have our character assets that mirror as defects as well, and must grapple with life on life’s terms. The actions we take help us shape ourselves, but the experiences outside of our control make up the majority of our lives. This film, to me, is about what that feels like, the struggles and liberations accompanying that process, and the ultimate surrender each person must make, whatever the form that takes.

There is an ubiquitous weight felt throughout this film, emphasizing history with many people declaring the present as possessing an ennui hopeless to overcome due to the decline of civilization. However, I only see a world in which change occurs and a race of people whose balance is obstructed by change, in essence a continuous disruption of harmony that produces discomfort, coping with an immense moving system that is representative of the unattainable dimensions of our largest structure of macrocosm, and so vast and impenetrable that our characters feel they are drowning in its vagueness masked as suffering. This overwhelming sense of thwarted belongingness might swallow some of us up in the process of such existential crises, though this dissembling of the self that Ema experiences is hardly representative of her entire life, in which her emotional journey was anything but static. This is where the unreliability of the narration comes in full force, whether her own insights are misjudged or if god is. I don’t think this is a cynical film, but I suspect I’m in the minority there. Just because a story doesn’t have a happy ending doesn’t mean the story wasn’t beautiful or worth telling, and the same can be said of life itself. After all, doesn’t Ema say herself that it is an honor to suffer amongst the beauty of the world? It seems to be the honor itself that we choose on whether to accept or not, a much more humanistically respectable position than acceptance over the nature of life, which would be a state of psychologically weak defensive ignorance rather than the self-aware philosophical plain MO affords his characters.

The ending to this film is oddly one of the most tranquil. The last lines of this story come from a writer, “None of this matters, but no one imitates better than me, a beautiful life.” Transforming artifice into authenticity, and nihilism into serenity and gratitude, is the cherry on top of an already perfect film.

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#78 Post by Stefan Andersson » Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:53 am

In 1957, André Bazin met Oliveira in Porto. The meeting was briefly documented in Cahiers du Cinéma No. 75, and is also commented on in this editorial, from Cahiers No. 711, May 2015:
https://www.cahiersducinema.com/produit ... -mai-2015/

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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#79 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 03, 2020 11:19 am

Stefan Andersson wrote:
Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:53 am
In 1957, André Bazin met Oliveira in Porto. The meeting was briefly documented in Cahiers du Cinéma No. 75, and is also commented on in this editorial, from Cahiers No. 711, May 2015:
https://www.cahiersducinema.com/produit ... -mai-2015/
Thanks Stefan, interesting read! I think it's a perfect summary of MO that the following passages dub him as both a realist and a magician who signifies illusions, two labels we often think to be mutually exclusive but actually become one in the same with MO.
The meeting is doubly magical: firstly because 'it makes a definitive stitch between the Notebooks and Oliveira right on the spot of founding realism; and you have to imagine that Oliveira is then almost ten years older than Bazin. Bazin is 39 years old and Oliveira 48. Secondly because he makes Oliveira a “neo-realistic” before the hour, the Portuguese filmmaker never decidedly in the hour of cinema history, always arriving or before or after. The disparate and late career makes us switch to a form of science fiction - he who was born on December 11, 1908 and died a hundred and six years later, in activity , on April 2, 2015.
The “monumentality” of the work, hence the sometimes distant respect with which some people look at it, is nothing but an illusion: the work is labile, elusive, clever, deeply ironic. It is not made of stone, like a building, or of marble, but of multiple appearances of the living. It is made up of "hunts", "acts", "strange affairs" and "singularities".
For MO, this elusive distance, artifice, and irony are all elements of true realism in acknowledging the limitations of perspective and revealing the multiple facets of life through such distance, which often signals disconnect but here signifies that as natural as well as the only method to achieve a bridge between perspectives and lenses into other aspects of life, which can really only be done through art (specifically literature and film). These "multiple singularities" involve the viewer too. I think of the repetition in Francisca where characters repeat some lines twice in a scene, and the movement may have progressed at this point between people onscreen as well as our own perspective shifting in deciphering the meaning behind each singularity - the same language producing different perspective, emotions, analysis. This itself is a rather ironic approach, and insinuates the layers to MO's skills in the medium as well as his complex comprehension of how art and life operate together and apart.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#80 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 07, 2020 12:01 am

John Cope wrote:
Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:10 am
La lettre, which is another film that very much revolves around a female mystery figure but which in this case was adapted from the classic novel La Princesse de Clèves. The other adaptations of this book (The Beautiful Person by Christophe Honoré and Fidelity by Andrzej Żuławski) are also of interest, both revealing and instructive, though I don't think either of them touches the accomplishment of La lettre.
I haven't read the novel or seen the other adaptations, but viewing La Lettre through the lens of the "feminine mystery" was different than even the other films where the female character is the central figure (i.e. Vale Abraão) in that we get to know her quite well but are still almost equally limited, less by objective distancing techniques and more because she is a mystery to herself. Chiara Mastroianni engages in deep self-reflection which she confides in her nun-friend, and is 'honest' with her husband, but there is that MO artifice present in even her self-analysis (for what drives her, for why she tells her husband, for confessing to her friend who is a nun). These are the expected responses, or ones driven by ideology, religion, or to put it simply: the information she has available to her. Though the way her thoughts and feelings are deliberated with the nun, or expressed with her husband, transmit with a deep earnestness, or desire, to be earnest but still maintaining a confused, programmed articulation of the intangible.

The conversations veer towards "reason" rather than emotion, and while emotion is discussed a lot, that remains the enigma. This represents the plights of all people, comfortable in cognitive realms but struggling to make sense of emotions, for we don't exercise those tools or know how to use them. Mastroianni knows she is feeling something, but cannot put her finger on it. Even more than that, her feelings have been pointed out to her.. by her mother, by the findings of her logical investigation into her gasp at the TV news, by her lack of feeling this feeling for her husband. Love is measured against what is not-love, so therefore what is abnormal must signify this abstract concept. There is a comfort in that. The way she tells her husband that her heart belongs to another man is so lifeless that she could be sleepwalking.

While not my favorite, in some ways this is the best example of MO's fusion of artifice and authenticity. We are allowed to be a surrogate for a change here (or as close as we'll probably get to one in an MO film), and yet our experience after joining is that of equal puzzlement as we have received from the elusive films where we were mere spectators. This is also perhaps the most empathetic film he's made (that I've seen) for our acknowledgement of what it's like to be in a state of grasping for meaning and finding air despite an itch sensing something there, a discomfort in mystery but a resilience in trying to find it with the culture, religion, social, and introspective tools that we have available to us, including the finite reign we have on our own hearts (the late-film joke where Pedro and her mother-in-law speak to the camera that they are confused by Mastroianni's actions before declaring that they cannot see into her heart and say, "how mysterious," is such a cheeky on-the-nose simplification of MO's oeuvre that I admittedly laughed out loud at the audacity for the filmmaker to be so self-reflexive). And of course, the letter itself is filled with all the conflict and questioning that makes a life worth living, written by someone who has discovered that ethereal truth.

La Lettre serves as an odd reciprocal film to Benilde or the Virgin Mother where our empathy resides not with Benilde but the family members in crisis ironically unable to deal with the horror of mystery in her connection with God despite their religious beliefs! Although in that film we are removed enough to see them for what they are, and quickly switch over to our own state of bemusement transformed into a state of half-faith in Benilde and half-skepticism in the family, the ultimate lonely middle ground. This film allows us into an intimate space where we get the same feeling, just in a safer space aside an innocent woman just trying to get a handle on life like the rest of us.

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#81 Post by Stefan Andersson » Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:43 am

An essay about the various statues appearing in films by MO and others:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ese_Cinema

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#82 Post by Stefan Andersson » Wed Jul 22, 2020 12:45 pm

A 2019 interview with Paulo Branco, including some brief comments about MO:
https://pontofinalmacau.wordpress.com/2 ... rritorios/

A dossier re: Portuguese cinema, in the Journal of Lusophone Studies, including a couple of downloadable PDF articles about MO in Portuguese, with abstracts in English:
https://jls.apsa.us/index.php/jls/issue/view/23

A Portuguese study of the critical reception of Amor perdicao (PDF):
https://www.uc.pt/iii/ceis20/Publicacoe ... cadernos_2

A Portuguese essay about spectral figures in MO´s films:
https://www.academia.edu/43319805/Galer ... _Rodrigues

A Portuguese collection of essays about s MO´s films:
https://www.academia.edu/37025448/Olhar ... iveira.pdf

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#83 Post by Stefan Andersson » Wed Jul 22, 2020 3:12 pm

An article (downloadable PDF) on A Quinto Imperio:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... da_Memoria

On A Talking Picture:
https://www.academia.edu/39855120/The_l ... _crossings

For the record -- a PDF of the Cinemateca Portuguesa´s MO retrospective:
http://www.cinemateca.pt/CinematecaSite ... iveira.pdf
The entry for Amor perdicao mentions that MO shot separate TV and theatrical versions, using different takes. The Ritinha character featured in segments linking the TV episodes.

The Portuguese Wikipedia page for Amor perdicao mentions a restoration of the film:
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_de_P ... A3o_(1979)

Antonio Prieto on Memories and Confessions:
https://revistabica.com/manoel-de-oliveira/

A text on the house motif in MO´s films, plus a 64-minute video about an exposition on the subject:
https://www.serralves.pt/en/activities/ ... the-house/

Various notes:
http://www.contracampo.com.br/77/olivei ... grafia.htm

Calvin
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#84 Post by Calvin » Tue Oct 20, 2020 4:55 pm


Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#85 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sat Nov 07, 2020 6:05 pm

An exhibition in Portugal re: MO as still photographer:
https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/cultur ... o-cineasta
https://observador.pt/2020/10/22/manoel ... serralves/
A bilingual exhibition catalogue, including text in English, is forthcoming. Probably published by the Serralves Foundation.

10 % of MO´s films have been digitalized (restricted access):
https://www.jn.pt/artes/so-10-dos-filme ... 45322.html

An older article, with MO briefly commenting on Visita, architecture and film:
https://observador.pt/especiais/o-cinea ... -a-filmar/

Trailer for restoration of Francisca:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogPk_u8sTc0

About Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira in Porto:
http://www.porto.pt/noticias/casa-do-ci ... e-do-porto

Stefan Andersson
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:02 am

Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#86 Post by Stefan Andersson » Thu Dec 10, 2020 3:08 pm

"Ditos e Escritos", a volume of texts by MO, will be published in December 2020 by Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira (CCMO):
https://www.publico.pt/2020/11/12/cultu ... ra-1938950

Also:
https://revistabica.com/manoel-de-oliveira/
https://assets.bondlayer.com/nsa343pdfl ... rv2rgo.pdf - on MO+ s political cinema, by Antonio Preto
http://wwws.fclar.unesp.br/agenda-pos/e ... s/3147.pdf - academic study of Mon Cas

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#87 Post by Stefan Andersson » Thu Mar 18, 2021 1:54 pm

Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira, in Portugal, launches a series of 60-second video essays on the cinema of MO:
https://observador.pt/2021/03/18/casa-d ... ealizador/

Videos to be viewable (two already uploaded) on the Serralves Foundation´s YouTube channel, relevant playlist: "SOLE - 1 minuto para muitas imagens":
https://www.youtube.com/user/fundacaose ... shelf_id=0

No subtitles. SOLE = Serralves Online Experience.

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#88 Post by Stefan Andersson » Tue Jun 01, 2021 12:07 pm

On MO and Deleuze:
https://run.unl.pt/bitstream/10362/2703 ... 1_text.pdf

Spanish Cahiers du Cinema, no. 18, featuring an MO section, including a script treatment for Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loira.
https://issuu.com/electrogenos/docs/cahiers_18

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#89 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sun Jun 13, 2021 1:54 pm

MO filmography, with links to info about almost all the films (all in Portuguese):
https://www.serralves.pt/en/institucion ... -oliveira/
Catalogue for a recent exhibition of still photos by MO:
https://www.serralves.pt/atividades-ser ... fotografo/
https://fasciniodafotografia.wordpress. ... rafo-2020/ - says the catalogue is in Portuguese and English
Some online texts by or about MO:
https://www.serralves.pt/institucional- ... mo-textos/

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#90 Post by Stefan Andersson » Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:07 pm

A French text on Le Soulier de Satin:
https://societe.paul-claudel.net/adapta ... -de-satin/

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#91 Post by Stefan Andersson » Thu Aug 05, 2021 6:37 am

Two new books about MO, in English and Portuguese:

Manoel de Oliveira: Fotógrafo / Photographer
Manoel de Oliveira: Sayings and Writings / Ditos e Escritos

"Manoel de Oliveira: Fotógrafo / Photographer, a publication with photographs that belonged to the director’s personal collection – images, produced between the late 1930s and mid-1950s, that were kept for several decades but remained mostly unpublished. His activity as a photographer reveals a rather hidden facet of the filmmaker and opens new ways of looking at his cinematographic work. Also including essays by photography expert David Campany, among others, this bilingual book (EN/PT) can be ordered on the website of the Serralves Foundation that published it together with Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira. Last month, these two institutions also released the first volume in their new Manoel de Oliveira Collection that will disseminate documents and notes from the filmmaker’s extensive archive. De Oliveira always pursued intense theoretical reflection for his film projects and with this collection they aim to reposition him amongst the group of leading theoretical-filmmakers of the twentieth century. Manoel de Oliveira: Sayings and Writings / Ditos e Escritos, available in a Portuguese and English edition, gathers speeches, interventions, annotations, letters, aphorisms and scattered writings, but also, for example, two rediscovered poems from 1986 that deal with his relationship with cinema. With almost 300 pages, the texts cover the entire trajectory of the filmmaker, from his film debut in the 1930s until his last shorts around 2014. According to António Preto, researcher and director of Casa do Cinema, the texts that de Oliveira wrote about each of his films will be collected in another volume."

https://loja.serralves.pt/pt/sem-descon ... grafo.html
https://loja.serralves.pt/gb/inicio/681 ... tings.html

Source: https://sabzian.be/note/new-book-releas ... ummer-2021


Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#93 Post by Stefan Andersson » Wed Nov 17, 2021 8:05 am

On an exposition in Portugal of MO´s still photography, with brief mentions of unmade MO projects, and (in the first link) early info about an exhibition (opening Nov. 30) about MO and Augustina Bessa-Luís:
https://www.dn.pt/cultura/manoel-de-oli ... 66966.html
https://gulbenkian.pt/en/news/manoel-de ... tographer/
https://assets.bondlayer.com/nsa343pdfl ... gy4ba2.pdf

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#94 Post by Stefan Andersson » Fri Dec 31, 2021 8:21 am

Two new books on MO, on the house motif in his films, and on his collaborations with Agustina Bessa-Luís:

https://loja.serralves.pt/gb/sem-descon ... house.html
https://loja.serralves.pt/gb/publicatio ... -luis.html

António Preto comments on the working relationship of MO and Bessa-Luís:
https://www.jn.pt/artes/a-relacao-criat ... 57378.html


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therewillbeblus
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#96 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Apr 19, 2023 2:09 pm

Are there any details as to whether this will be the longer/uncut version, or in the correct AR? That'd be a dream, it's probably MO's best film.

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John Cope
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#97 Post by John Cope » Wed Apr 19, 2023 3:56 pm

I can't imagine that it wouldn't be the long cut and in the proper AR. This is indeed a dream come true. Been waiting for a decent release of this for what feels like forever. Certainly it's one of the most beautiful films ever made (it's about beauty), my own favorite Oliveira too and one of my favorite films period. The thankfully OOP US DVD release is an abomination, in the wrong aspect ratio and dubbed for some reason in French (both of these features are especially egregious here as they compromise the film's beauty and its delicacy as language is as important as the image). The Portuguese release, which I think is still available out there somewhere, is infinitely superior just for getting those details right (as well as for featuring the longer director's cut which brings the film up to 3.5 hours). Anyway, hopefully all those availability issues will be rectified soon. This also reminds me (as though I needed reminding) to get into gear with my own long, long gestating piece on this film which I've been dragging out for literally years. It's one of two like that and the excuse is the same both times: it's always uniquely difficult and intimidating to write about your favorite works, the greatest works, as they unavoidably carry with them a much greater sense of responsibility. Still, I'd like to finally complete it for this 30th anniversary.

Calvin
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#98 Post by Calvin » Wed Apr 19, 2023 4:25 pm

Luxbox list both 189 min (short version) and 203 min (full version) on their page for the film but no further technical details for the restoration yet.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#99 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Apr 19, 2023 5:22 pm

Calvin wrote:
Wed Apr 19, 2023 4:25 pm
Luxbox list both 189 min (short version) and 203 min (full version) on their page for the film but no further technical details for the restoration yet.
If they're listing the runtime for the "full version," I have to think they restored it

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yoloswegmaster
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Re: Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015)

#100 Post by yoloswegmaster » Fri May 05, 2023 4:50 am

Luxbox has aquired the rights to 13 of Oliveira's films, from 1942’s Aniki Bóbó through 1993’s Abraham’s Valley.

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