Essay Film Festival: Visit or Memories and Confessions (Visita ou Memórias e Confissões)

“A poignant filmic will, made in 1982 and withheld until after the director’s death, Visit or Memories and Confessions winds past and future into a Marker-like whorl.” James Quandt

UK premiere

Screening introduced by José Manuel Costa, Director of the Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema.

"This is a film by Manoel de Oliveira, about himself and about a house. It is a film by me, about myself. Right or wrong, it’s done." Thus starts this intimate and unexpected film, released only posthumously following the filmmaker’s own instructions. The late and great Portuguese filmmaker directed Visit or Memories and Confessions between 1981 and 1982 at the age of 73, following an intense period of creativity and the conclusion of his Tetralogy of Frustrated Love. Made in a period of uncertainty, the film is a heartfelt expression of the director’s feelings towards his wife and family, and to the house where they lived for over forty years.

Oliveira muses about his life, sharing his thoughts on family, history, religion, artistic creation and architecture, themes that many will recognise as central to his vast and rich filmography. The film resembles an autobiography but only deceptively so, being also a beautiful reflection by the filmmaker about his own craft, the place of fiction and reality in cinema, and ultimately “a film in pursuit of what is real."

Visit or Memories and Confessions [Visita ou Memórias e Confissões], dir. Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal 1982, 73 minutes. Portuguese with English subtitles

35mm in DCP, Mono

Season multi-buy offer:

If you purchase tickets for 3-4 screenings:
£9 Full price per ticket (rather than £11)
£7 Concession price per ticket (rather than £8)
£6 Members price per ticket (rather than £7)
 
If you purchase tickets for 5-7 screenings:
£8 Full price per ticket (rather than £11)
£6 Concession price per ticket (rather than £8)
£5 Members price per ticket (rather than £7)