[Brazil@Harvard] At the HFA: Cesar Monteiro, Poet-Provocateur

*At the Harvard Film Archive May 14 – May 20, 2010 * *Cesar Monteiro, Poet-Provocateur May 14 – May 24 *João César Monteiro (1939-2003) remains among the most indelible and unusual figures in the history of Portuguese cinema, a visionary and profoundly eccentric filmmaker whose unique contribution to postwar European film is only gradually being recognized today. A cosmopolite imagination tethered by a provincial attachment to Lisbon, a libertine with an obscurely puritanical streak, an unrelenting aesthete guided by an archaic spirit – Monteiro was a deliberately contradictory and difficult artist who obdurately resisted affiliation with any declared “school” of filmmaking. Monteiro dedicated himself instead to a mode of sublimely, and often perversely, high modernism fascinated by a rich undercurrent between the cinema and the other arts – especially poetry, painting, theater, literature and music. * *_Memories of the Yellow House – A Portuguese Comedy_ (/Recordações da casa Amarela: Uma comedia lusitana/) Friday May 14 at 7pm In his debut as his libidinous alter ego João de Deus, Monteiro stars as a meticulous and melancholy bachelor living in a rambling boarding house and feverishly obsessed with his landlady’s daughter. A ribald yet wonderfully delicate comedy, /Memories of the Yellow House/ traces the indecisive, dangerous ripening of erotic fantasy as João’s voyeuristic rituals push him to further, unexpected extremes. The rich mellowing of Monteiro’s political address is embodied in the figure of the boarding house whose sanctimonious and narcissistic landlady is both a loose metaphor for the repressive, reactionary tendencies of postwar Portuguese society and an affectionately comic figure. Directed by César Monteiro. With João César Monteiro, Manuela De Freitas, Ruy Furtado Portugal 1989, 35mm, color, 122 min. Portuguese with English subtitles _Come and Go_ (/Vai e Vem/) Saturday May 15 at 7pm Driven by his struggle against the illness that would ultimately prove fatal, Monteiro fervently devoted himself to his deeply personal last work, a musically structured meditation on spirituality and desire in which he heroically cast himself in the lead role as an eccentric libertine drifting wide-eyed through a sun-drenched Lisbon. A consciously terminal film, /Come and Go/ offers a poetic summation of Monteiro’s fascination with the body as the most irreverent and mysterious of temples, staging a series of playfully austere encounters between the visibly infirm and prematurely aged director and the women with whom he engages in erotic, linguistic and theological debates. Directed by César Monteiro. With João César Monteiro, Rita Pereira Marques, Joaquina Chicau Portugal 2003, 35mm, color, 175 min. Portuguese with English subtitles _Silvestre_ Sunday May 16 at 7pm A bewitching combinatory adaptation of the Bluebeard tale and a 15th century Portuguese fable of a damsel who disguises herself as a knight errant, /Silvestre/ is both radically feminist and fascinated with the dark, primal logic of the paternal order. Monteiro’s earliest collaboration with producer Paulo Branco was among his first to receive international acclaim, with special attention given to /Silvestre’s/ daring use of deliberate artifice – front-projected backgrounds, extended freeze frames, theatrical performances – to capture the fatalistic rhythm and dream logic of myth. Directed by César Monteiro. With Maria de Madeiros, Teresa Madruga, Luís Miguel Cintra Portugal 1981, 35mm, color, 118 min. Portuguese with English subtitles _Snow White_ (/Branca de neve/) Monday May 17 at 7pm Monteiro moved far away from the visual opulence defined by his earlier films with his inspired adaptation of radical Swiss writer Robert Walser’s anti-fairy tale. Carefully restricting the image track, Monteiro maintains an almost totally black screen in order to focus instead on the voices of Snow White, the Prince, the Queen and the Hunter, engaged in an extended debate about love, free will and the events leading up to the fateful attempt on the maiden’s life. Despite its visual austerity, /Snow White/ is haunted by the arresting images with which it begins – infamous black-and-white photographs of Walser lying dead in the snow after his heart attack outside a Swiss asylum at the age of seventy-eight, a strange realization of the “death of the author” so central to postmodern literary criticism. Directed by César Monteiro. With Maria do Cormo, Ana Brandão, Reginaldo da Cruz Portugal 2000, 35mm, color, 75 min. Portuguese with English subtitles The Harvard Film Archive is located on the lower level of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St. Cambridge 617 495 4700 The Harvard Film Archive does not sell advance tickets. Tickets are available at the HFA box office 45 min. prior to showtime _http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa _