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  Manoel de Oliveira

  The great master of the Portuguese cinema is Manoel de Oliveira (b. 1908) - an absolutely astonishing example of vitality and talent. At the   age of ninety-three (he made his first film when the movies were still silent), Oliveira remains active and continues to create at an   impressive rate. Since 1990 he has made an average of one film a year, directed major international stars who have succumbed to the lure   of his talent (such as Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli and Irene Papas), received the most varied   awards and won the respect of the cinematographic community all over the world.

  His fame extends to the United States, where retrospectives of his work have been shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival (1992), the   National Gallery of Art in Washington DC (1993), the San Francisco Film Festival and the Cleveland Museum of Art (1994). On top of all this,   his films have begun to be successful at the box office too - as was the case with Je Rentre à la Maison (2001) in Italy.

  Another of the major figures of Portuguese cinema is João César Monteiro (b. 1939). A member of the generation which founded the so-  called 'New Portuguese Cinema' in the 1960's, it was only from the mid 1970's that his work achieved its full expression. He is now one of the   most original European directors, making extremely provocative films in which the base meets the sublime. The key landmarks of his work in   the 1990's include O Último Mergulho (1992), A Comédia de Deus (1995), Le Bassin de John Wayne (1997) and As Bodas de Deus (1998).   A Comédia de Deus won him the Jury's Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1995.

  Amongst the younger generation, it is only fair to single out Teresa Villaverde (b. 1966). Having begun her career with an ephemeral   passage before César Monteiro's cameras (À Flor do Mar, 1986), in the 1990's she surfaced as a director. Her films are full of suffering and   tend to be stories about adolescent characters who come into various kinds of conflict with the society around them. One of her films (Três   Irmãos, 1994) was to win Maria de Medeiros the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival.