Porto da Minha Infância

Porto da minha infância is a charming and rich film, which the grand old man of Portuguese cinema shot in 2010, when Porto was that year”s European Capital of Culture. Oliveira brought the city as he remembers it from the days of his youth back to life using his own, occasionally enacted, memories, the most basic memories that are closest to the city as it was. Oliveira: “I regard the film as a documentary, but to avoid it getting bogged down into a kind of photo album, I sometimes had to reconstruct things. What remains are memories of a kind of life and of images of a time long gone, that eventually do not form an autobiography, even though they do involve me.”

The Dutch Film Museum, EYE”s predecessor, distributed a number of films by Oliveira in the past (Os canibais, Je rentre à la maison, Belle toujours). EYE acquired a copy of Porto da minha infância for the collection, which it is screening to commemorate a headstrong author.