Blind Mans’s Bluff

Based on the play by the same name by Prista Monteiro, the story provides an extremely vivid description of a world of outcasts, all around, in the miserable life of a blind man begging for alms at the door of his house in Lisbon. All the money he gets is kept in a box, and the box was once stolen. His daughter looks after the house and takes in ironing for a living. She has a boyfriend, a good-for-nothing, like so many others in the neighborhood, unemployed. When the box goes missing a second time, all of the visitors to the house are suspect: the son-in-law?s friend, an old lady and her nephew, three drunken friends. The arrival on the scene of a second blind man with a similar box, renders them distraught and sets the stage for tragedy. Shown at the 18th Mostra.

Born in Porto, Portugal, in 1908. Before being a director, he was race driver and athlete. Made his first short silent film, Douro, Faina Fluvial, in 1931. In the 1940’s, he became a winemaker. He returned to cinema in the 1970’s with authorial films that made him one of the most unique directors in history. Oliveira had all of his movies since Ill-Fated Love (1978, 3rd Mostra) presented at the São Paulo Film Festival. He gained a complete retrospective of his work at the 15th Mostra and at the 29th Mostra, respectively in 1991 and 2005. He won Mostra’s Special Festival Award with The Cannibals (1988, 12nd Mostra), the Critics Prize for Abraham’s Valley (1993, 17th Mostra) and I’m Going Home (2001, 25th Mostra), and the Humanity Award for the ensemble of his work (2004, 28th Mostra). He also directed titles such as Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (2009, 33rd Mostra), The Strange Case of Angelica (2010, 34th Mostra), the segment From Visible to Invisible, part of the film Invisible World (2011, 35th Mostra), produced by Mostra, Gebo and the Shadow (2012, 36th Mostra) and The Old Man of Belem (2014, 38th Mostra). Died in 2015 at the age of 106.

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA