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EVENTS Portugal

Celebrations for Oliveira's 100th birthday underway

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Portuguese maestro Manoel de Oliviera will turn 100 in December but celebrations of the birthday of oldest – and still active – filmmaker in the world have already begun. After the tribute at the latest Cannes Film Festival, Portugal now celebrates the life and work of Oliveira at the Vila do Conde Short Film Festival (July 5-13) and at the very prestigious Porto-based Serralves Foundation.

Rencontre Unique, which was originally part of the collective film Chacun son cinema presented at the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, will screen tonight at Vila do Conde. The director will introduce the three-minute film, which depicts an imaginary meeting between Pope John XXIII and Nikita Khrushchev.

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On Saturday, July 12, the Serralves Foundation will open the biggest exhibition ever organised locally on the work of Oliveira. With João Fernandes, director of the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum, and João Bénard da Costa, president of the Portuguese Film Museum, as curators, the exhibit will feature film clips that draw connections and reflect upon the director’s classic themes, among them the representation of theatre in cinema and the relationship between film and literature.

The Serralves Auditorium will host a complete retrospective of Oliveira's films in September.

Born in Porto in 1908, Oliveira directed his first short film, Douro, Faina Fluvial in 1931. He continued to film during the dictatorship decades but had to wait until the early 1980s to begin a continuous production, directing almost one film every year. After Christopher Columbus: The Enigma [+see also:
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, shown at the latest Venice Film Festival, Oliveira is currently preparing a film based on a short story by 19th century author Eça de Queirós.

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