Archive of films Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl / Singularidades de uma rapariga loura

Portugal / France / Spain
2009, 63 min

Section: Horizons
Year: 2009

"What you don’t tell your wife, what you don’t tell your friend, you tell a stranger....” Once again this year the Horizons section will feature the latest film from the oldest active director in the world. 100-year-old Manoel de Oliveira, who shot his first film nearly 80 years ago, has again cast his grandson Ricardo Trêpa to star in this story of unrequited love.

Synopsis

Macário spends an entire train journey to the Algarve talking to a woman he does not know about the trials and tribulations of his love life: straight after starting his first job as a bookkeeper at his uncle Francisco’s warehouse in Lisbon, he falls madly in love with a young blonde who lives across the road. Her living portrait framed in the window and his decision to marry her initiate a painful journey whose saddest dimension is a false happy end.... Seemingly as a protest against the lifetime awards he received at Venice and Berlin a quarter-century ago, 100-year-old Oliveira is working more feverishly than ever. When in 2003 he shot a film with the provocative title A Talking Picture, he must certainly have been trying to convey that he had more to say. Since then he has added two new titles to his filmography each year. Although he long ago stopped making 400 minute movies like The Satin Slipper (1985), even this hour-long film demonstrates the accomplishments of its cultivated and erudite creator. Despite the fact that he began filmmaking in the silent era, the director displays an admirable ability to stay in step with modern times.

About the director

Manoel de Oliveira (b. 1908, Oporto), legend of world film, shot his first documentary, Working on the Douro River (Douro, faina fluvial) in 1931. Ten years later he anticipated neorealism in his feature debut Aniki-Bobo. He has been an exceptional jack-of-all-trades in the film industry: actor, director, producer, writer, cameraman, editor, and sound technician. His wings were clipped under Portuguese dictator Salazar, yet he still managed to enter a new stage of his career in the 1970s. In both 1985 and 2004 the Venice IFF conferred upon him lifetime achievement awards, as did the Cannes festival in 2008. The following films have screened at Karlovy Vary: Party (1996), Valley of Abraham (Vale Abraao, 1993), Belle toujours (2006), Christopher Columbus, the Enigma (Cristóvão Colombo: O enigma, 2007). He is currently finishing up work on O estranho caso de Angélica (2009).

Contacts

Pyramide International
32 rue de l’Echiquier, 750 10, Paris
France
Tel: +33 142 960 220
Fax: +33 140 200 551
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.pyramidefilms.com

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About the film

Color, 35 mm

Section:	Horizons

Director:	Manoel de Oliveira
Screenplay:	Manoel de Oliveira podle povídky / based on a short story by Eça de Queiroz
Dir. of Photography:	Sabine Lancelin
Editor:	Manoel de Oliveira, Catherine Krassovsky
Producer:	François d’Artemare
Production:	Filmes do Tejo II
Cast:	Ricardo Trêpa, Catarina Wallenstein, Diogo Dória, Júlia Buisel, Leonor Silveira, Luís Miguel Cintra, Glória de Matos
Contact:	Pyramide International