![]() ![]() Nevertheless, he persisted with his dream to become a filmmaker, even while he managed his family’s factory well into middle age. Finding himself out of favor under the iron rule of Portugal’s Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar from 1932-1968, De Oliveira found it similarly difficult under the socialist government in the early 1970’s as his upper class roots counted against him. ![]() His industrialist father, amongst other things, produced Portugal’s first electric light bulb. He got better with age, making a film a year once he turned 80 until his death. Unapologetically art house and cerebral in taste, De Oliveira confounded his peers with both his longevity as well as the consistency of his output in his latter years. In 1999, he took home the Cannes jury prize for The Letter ( La Lettre). ![]() The latter half of his long, and critically acclaimed, career would see him earn a dozen career achievement prizes from major film festivals, including two career Venice Golden Lions (in 19) and a special jury prize for 1991’s The Divine Comedy ( A Divina Comédia). ![]() If you consider that 1927 project Oliveira’s baptism in the cinema, then he had been a director for 88 years, longer than most of us manage simply to stay alive. – Manoel de Oliveira, on the occasion of his 103 rd birthday, as quoted in Goncalves 2īy the time of his death on Apat the remarkable age of 106, the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira was the oldest living filmmaker still actively working within the industry, and also the filmmaker with the longest career in the cinema, having directed films since 1927, beginning with a tantalizing project on the First World War that was never completed. “Whether we like it or not, it (death) will come one day, but generally people are not in a hurry, and I personally have never been in a hurry in my life this is perhaps why I reached this age.” ![]()
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