Local Durban link to Portuguese film at European Film Festival
One of the films showing at the 8th European Film Festival, which is online and free between 14 and 24 October, is the Portuguese film The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – which has an interesting connection to Durban.
It’s a beautifully shot black and white film, based on the novel by Jose Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. The character - Ricardo Reis - is a persona created by Fernando Pessoa, and Pessoa's ghost is a central part of the film. Fernando Pessoa was one of the greatest of Portuguese poets and is, not everybody knows, an alumni of Durban High School – there is a bust of Pessoa in the Durban CBD.
Film Synopsis for The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis:
Fernando Pessoa, one of the greatest writers of the Portuguese language, established a gigantic parallel universe creating a series of heteronyms to survive his loneliness of genius. Nobel laureate of literature José Saramago wrote this novel about one of these heteronymous characters, Ricardo Reis, a fictitious author, with unique personality and style, who returns to Portugal, after 16 years of exile in Brazil. 1936 is the year of all danger, Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's Nazism, the terrible Spanish civil war and Salazar's Estado Novo in Portugal, but this is all a delicate backcloth to Ricardo's dalliances with women and his mysterious encounters with the ghost of Fernando Pessoa.
"The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is a unique and magnificent work by José Saramago, but if there is another way of telling this novel, equally unique and magnificent, it is this film unravelling by veteran director João Botelho.Botelho's screenplay and direction is crucially supported by João Ribeiro's beautiful black and white cinematography, fostering a unique aesthetic-narrative construction for the telling of this story.’ . Carolina Alves, C7nema
Reviews
In a perfect filmology of sensations, the small gestures, looks, intimate close shots, tell us of memories, thoughts, and secrets in a visually poetic manner that is transcendent of text or dialogue. Carolina Alves, C7nema
Botelho films exquisitely between light and shadow, with a visual richness reminiscent of the best of French impressionism and a tempo that sways the senses. Seville Festival
This film adaptation treats characters and circumstances with a solemnity reverent to the Nobel prize-winners book, enveloping the celebration of the word with a framework that is close to meta-language. Marcello Muller, Papo de Cinema
Visit www.eurofilmfest.co.za for more on the free online festival of 18 new films and to access the screenings.
-ends