Branca de Neve (Snow White) - 2000 - João César Monteiro



Released in 2000
Directed by João César Monteiro



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Interview about Branca de Neve movie






Cesar Monteiro, Poet-Provocateur

"João César Monteiro (1939-2003) remains among the most indelible and unusual figures in the history of Portuguese cinema, a visionary and profoundly eccentric filmmaker whose unique contribution to postwar European film is only gradually being recognized today. A cosmopolite imagination tethered by a provincial attachment to Lisbon, a libertine with an obscurely puritanical streak, an unrelenting aesthete guided by an archaic spirit – Monteiro was a deliberately contradictory and difficult artist who obdurately resisted affiliation with any declared “school” of filmmaking. Monteiro dedicated himself instead to a mode of sublimely, and often perversely, high modernism fascinated by a rich undercurrent between the cinema and the other arts – especially poetry, painting, theater, literature and music. Like the films of his compatriot Manoel de Oliveira (b. 1908), Monteiro’s cinema was also animated by an alternately cryptic and trenchant political agenda that took frequent target at the holy trinity of Church, State and Family still firmly entrenched after the fall of the Salazar dictatorship. In such seminal early works as Paths and Silvestre, Monteiro treated obscure Portuguese myths and legends as Rosetta stones for understanding the darkest shadows of the national unconscious and suggesting the ways in which the country’s imperialist and patriarchal legacies continue to shape its citizens. In opulent late works like God’s Comedy and Come and Go, Monteiro channeled his lasting preoccupation with corporality and perverse sexuality into a sustained interrogation of individual agency and collective desire.  

Raised in a devoutly Catholic family yet an avowed atheist as an adult, in many of his late films Monteiro cast himself in the recurrent leading role of “Joao do Deus”- named for the Portuguese-born patron saint of prostitutes, the infirm and fishermen but a wholly secular figure, a perverse Buster Keaton-like dreamer drawn to young women and possessed of a patient defiance of the established social order. A curious religious logic also guided the development of Monteiro’s extraordinary visual style, which moved from the radical mise-en-scene of the early work towards an increasing austerity shaped, above all, by Monteiro’s proclaimed distrust of artificial light – which reached its apotheosis in Snow White – and his desire to capture the effulgent mystery of sunlight and its shadows."

A Comédia de Deus (God's Comedy) - 1995 - João César Monteiro





Released in 1995
Directed by João César Monteiro


Storyline: João de Deus is the manager of an ice-cream shop owned by an ex-prostitute, Paraíso dos Gelados (Ice-Cream Paradise). Through a unmoved desire of perfection, he seeks, through cleansing and purity to attain heaven. The surrounding world, however, does not comply with his decaying vision of lust and decay as a way of achieving his purpose.


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Le Bassin de J.W. AKA The Hips of John Wayne - 1997 - João César Monteiro


Released in 1997
Directed by João César Monteiro


Storyline: Two actors performing in Strindberg's "Inferno" as God and Lucifer, find themselves competing in real life as well. One of them, Henrique, has spiritual obsession with John Wayne and his way of walking. He and de Dieu, his fellow actor who plays Lucifer and also directs the Strindberg play, engage in a philosophical and spiritual tug-of-war, especially when they meet an author named God, who has plans for another drama to feature both actors.

Written by Jim Beaver



Blue Ruin - 2013 - Jeremy Saulnier






Released in 2013
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier


Storyline: A mysterious outsider's quiet life is turned upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance. Proving himself an amateur assassin, he winds up in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.


God's Pocket - 2014 - John Slattery



Released in 2014
Directed by John Slattery

Storyline: A blue collar worker tries to cover things up when his stepson is killed in a suspicious accident, but a local reporter senses that something's amiss.




Under The Skin - 2013 - Jonathan Glazer







Released in 2013
Directed by Jonathan Glazer


Storyline: A mysterious woman seduces lonely men in the evening hours in Scotland. Events lead her to begin a process of self-discovery.



Interstellar - 2014 - Christopher Nolan






Released in 2014
Directed by Christopher Nolan


Storyline: A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival.