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"Portugal's late, great enfant terrible." —Film Comment“One of the masters of comical depravity.” —The New YorkerJoão César Monteiro is, along with Manoel de Oliveira (whose films he occasionally acted in), one of the giants of Portuguese cinema. Born into a family that was fervently anti-fascist and anti-clerical, his work is deeply polemic in its criticism of repression within Portuguese society, yet also madly entertaining with its sexually explicit humor and intense disregard for conventional filmmaking. His body of work reveals a mind that was boundlessly intellectual, uncompromisingly nonconformist, refreshingly funny, and more than a little creepy. All film descriptions courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive, except for The Last Dive and Hovering Over the Water. All films in Portuguese with English subtitles.Special thanks to Harvard Film Archive for organizing the retrospective, as well as Instituto Camoes Portugal and Paulo Cunha Alves, Consul General of Portugal in Boston.
Village Voice on the BAMcinématek series Perverse Poet: João César Monteiro "Actor-director João César Monteiro’s films often take place in just a few quiet corners of Lisbon, but their philosophical scope encompasses everything between his cajones and the cosmos." MoreSlant Magazine interview with BAMcinématek program director Florence Almozini and Haden Guest (Harvard Film Archive)"João César Monteiro's world is a strange one. Over 21 films made from 1969 to his death in 2003, the Portuguese auteur built worlds out of flat screens, a still camera, and soundtracks consisting of people talking softly—all of which would sound terribly boring, save for the men running around in pig masks and the gods with the giant dildos. It's an extremely dark, extremely funny world without a center." More