After the photographer A. Paz dos Reis had made some documentary shots at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1909 the first national film company (Portugalia Film) was founded and from there Portuguese cinema began to organize itself on an industrial level. Throughout the period of silent cinema, however, production developed on a precarious basis (with the sole exception of Invicta Filmes), characterized by the massive use of foreign directors and technicians. Only between the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s did the first local talents emerge: L. de Barros (author of the first sound feature film, A severa, 1931) and J. Brum do Canto, who will dominate the production of the following twenty years. In this period, moreover, M. de Oliveira made his debut with the short film Douro, faina fluvial (1930). In the 1930s and 1940s, Salazar’s dictatorship did not produce, like Italian fascism, an explicit regime cinema. With the exception of a few rare films extolling official ideology (A Revolução de Maio, 1937, by A. Lopes Ribeiro), social and political themes were usually avoided, with the corresponding predominance of three strands: the film with a rural setting, the historical-literary film and comedy. In 1942 de Oliveira signed his first feature film, Aniki-Bobò, financed by Lopes Ribeiro, a director-producer who will strongly mark, for better or for worse, the history of post-war Portuguese cinema. In the fifties the most interesting debut is represented by Saltimbancos (1951) by M. Guimarães, influenced, also in the following works, by the Italian neorealism. At the end of the decade, moreover, the A. Campos activity began, which still represents the most important figure in the field of Portuguese documentary making.
Only in the 1960s did a renewal movement emerge by a generation of authors open to the ferment of contemporary European cinema. In 1962, Dom Roberto by E. de Sousa was released, which can be considered a hinge film between the old and the new cinema represented, the latter, in the years immediately following, by directors such as Portugal Rocha (Os verdes anos, 1963), F. Lopes (Belarmino, 1964), C. Viladerbó (As ilhas encantadas, 1964), A. de Macedo (Domingo à tarde, 1965), all gathered around the producer-director C. Telles, a character who plays a central role in process of de-provincialization and re-foundation of Portuguese national cinema.
This process was radicalized starting from the seventies with the death of Salazar (1970) and the promulgation of a new law on cinema (1971) which led to the increase in national production. At the very beginning of the decade, the Portuguese Center for Cinema, a cooperative open to authors and financed by the Gulbenkian Foundation, began to play an essential part in defining the most vital orientations, producing the debut works of A. Tropa (Pedro Só, 1970), J. Fonseca e Costa (O recado, 1971), AP Vasconcelos (Perdido por cem, 1971), A. Seixas Santos (Brandos costumes, 1972-74) and F. Matos Silva (O mal amado, 1972), in addition to those of A. de Macedo (A promessa, 1972) and de Olivera (O passado eo presente, 1971).
With the “ carnation revolution ” of 1974, the themes of politics and national history forcefully enter the documentary production of R. Simões (Deus, Patria, Autoridade, 1975) and LF Rocha (Barronhos, 1975), and in that subject by E. Geada, Vasconcelos, Fonseca and Costa, and others. In this period A. Reis and M. Martins Cordeiro made Trás-os-montes (1976), a significant film on the search for Portuguese identity through the popular imagination. The ” revolutionary ” cinema ends in the Eighties with the return to more traditional genres and the definition of the various author’s poetics, characterized by a strong stylistic research., 1981; Le soulier de satin, The satin shoe, 1983; Os canibais, I cannibali, 1988) Portugal Rocha (A ilha dos amores, 1982; A ilha de Moraes, 1984) – continue their prestigious career, alongside the names already emerged in the seventies (among which we remember JC Monteiro, who was awarded at the 1989 Venice exhibition for Recordaçoẽs da casa amarela), those of the newcomers J. Botelho (Conversa acabada, 1981; Tempos difíceis, esto tempo, Tempi difficile, 1988), L. António (Manhã submersa, 1980) and JA Morais (O bobo, 1987). In the nineties the most significant results were achieved by the elder de Oliveira (A Divina Comédia, 1991; O dia do desespero, 1992; Vale Abrão, 1993), again by Botelho (No dia dos meus anos, 1992; Aqui na terra, 1993), from Monteiro (O último mergulho, 1992), from F. Gomes from Guinea-Bissau (Os ôlhos azuis de Yonta, 1992).
Archaeology. – The Portugal does not coincide perfectly with any of the Spanish Roman provinces. It is assumed that some territory of the South-East, on the right bank of the Guadiana river (ancient Anas), belonged to the Betica. AN of Douro was located in the 4th century the ancient province of Callaecia with its capital at Bracara Augusta, today in Portuguese territory. Most of the country was part of Lusitania of which the capital Emerita Augusta (Mérida) is located today in Spain. Very little remains today of the Roman monuments of Olisipo (Lisbon) and Bracara ; in the first case a theater reduced to the foundations and the infrastructure of a spa. In Bracara a basin covered with mosaics, perhaps belonging to the thermal baths or to the peristyle of an elegant domus. More important, also in the light of recent discoveries, are the archaeological remains of Conimbriga and Aeminium. For Portugal religion and languages, please check ezinereligion.com.
The recent excavations of Conimbriga (1964-71) have finally brought to light the monumental center of the city, specifying its historical horizons and establishing the Augustan origins of the oppidum and the Flavian reconstruction of the city on the occasion of its promotion to the rank of municipality. The first urban layout is articulated around two streets; the forum, located on a tuff hill, with the temple, the basilica, the cryptoporticus, the curia, etc., and a thermal plant to the south belong to the Augustan age. In the Flavian age the Augustan buildings were demolished; the new forum is framed by a portico, with the temple in the center of the esplanade on a high podium and cryptoporticus. The thermal plant of the Flavian age, also on the decumanus maximus, has an exceptional development, beyond a neighborhood of industrial houses. Aeminium remains part of the forum complex, with the two-storey cryptoporticus.
Ruins of rich villas are frequent in Portugal, particularly in the plains of the Alentejo, divided into large estates famous, in Roman times, for the breeding of cattle and the culture of cereals, with a moment of maximum expansion in the 4th century (Villas of Torre de Palma, Pisoes, and Santa Vitoria do Ameixial, whose splendid mosaics can be found today in the Archaeological Museum of Lisbon). The villa of Estoi, 9 km from Faro, has a grandiose temple consecrated to the aquatic deities in the 4th century and later transformed into a Christian temple. Regarding the end of the Roman occupation in Portugal, finds of coins prove that the villas continued to be occupied by their owners even at the beginning of the 5th century.
