MEMORIES AND CONFESSIONS

Manoel de Oliveira (1908–2015), titan of world cinema and axiom of a conservatively free-spirited modernity, did quite obviously not expect to live for more than one hundred years. This is why he already completed his filmic testament when he was just over seventy years old: Memories and Confessions (Visita ou Memórias e Confesses), situated somewhere between fiction and documentary film, between historical reenactment and reverie, and which was to be released only after his passing. The sale of his house as part of a shifting of his properties, companies and estates were the occasion for shooting this film – or in other words: de facto the end of his existence as a full-time entrepreneur and the beginning of his life as an artist. Oliveira asked his confidante Agustina Bessa-Luís, the grande dame of modern Portuguese literature, to write a text about him, which he could use as a point of departure for this project. He adds further reminiscences, especially about the time of Salazar, but also about this or that woman and everything he has experienced in the meadows of his estate and in its magic garden full of brooding trees. Or at least that’s what he believed, because as the master himself mischievously says: Fiction is the true reality of cinema.