Documentary looks back at a mysterious Lisbon through the lens of a 60s cult film, a very specific focus that’s likable even if you haven’t seen the earlier movie
Since his first film in 2000, the mesmerising O Fantasma, Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues has continually cast his gaze over the ever-changing landscape of Lisbon, its physical transformations and its well of mysteries. Co-directed with his longtime partner and artistic collaborator João Rui Guerra da Mata, this evocative documentary views the city through the lens of both autobiographical and cinematic nostalgia.
The film’s starting point is a personal one. Having inherited his grandparents’ flat, Rodrigues is intrigued by the fact that the window of this complex looks over the location of Paulo Rocha’s The Green Years, a 1963 cult classic that spearheaded Novo Cinema, the Portuguese new wave. Antonioniesque in its cinematography and plot, Rocha’s film charted a doomed working-class romance,...
Since his first film in 2000, the mesmerising O Fantasma, Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues has continually cast his gaze over the ever-changing landscape of Lisbon, its physical transformations and its well of mysteries. Co-directed with his longtime partner and artistic collaborator João Rui Guerra da Mata, this evocative documentary views the city through the lens of both autobiographical and cinematic nostalgia.
The film’s starting point is a personal one. Having inherited his grandparents’ flat, Rodrigues is intrigued by the fact that the window of this complex looks over the location of Paulo Rocha’s The Green Years, a 1963 cult classic that spearheaded Novo Cinema, the Portuguese new wave. Antonioniesque in its cinematography and plot, Rocha’s film charted a doomed working-class romance,...
- 7/10/2023
- by Phuong Le
- The Guardian - Film News
“Where is This Street? or With No Before and After,” co-directed by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, is screening in competition at Locarno.
The pic revisits locations and themes from Paulo Rocha’s 1963 film “Os Verdes Anos” (“The Green Years”), a best first film winner at Locarno in 1964 and considered to be a point of departure for Portugal’s Cinema Novo movement.
“We believe that the film works at its own level, and also gains further levels of meaning when viewed in conjunction with ‘Os Verdes Anos,’” explains Rodrigues. “By revisiting locations from the 1963 film, but without people, we planned to make an ode to Lisbon, a symphony of the city, working in the tradition of directors such as Walter Ruttman. This idea, that predated the pandemic, foresaw the atmosphere created by the lockdown which suddenly emptied the city.”
Rodrigues studied under Paulo Rocha at Lisbon...
The pic revisits locations and themes from Paulo Rocha’s 1963 film “Os Verdes Anos” (“The Green Years”), a best first film winner at Locarno in 1964 and considered to be a point of departure for Portugal’s Cinema Novo movement.
“We believe that the film works at its own level, and also gains further levels of meaning when viewed in conjunction with ‘Os Verdes Anos,’” explains Rodrigues. “By revisiting locations from the 1963 film, but without people, we planned to make an ode to Lisbon, a symphony of the city, working in the tradition of directors such as Walter Ruttman. This idea, that predated the pandemic, foresaw the atmosphere created by the lockdown which suddenly emptied the city.”
Rodrigues studied under Paulo Rocha at Lisbon...
- 8/5/2022
- by Martin Dale
- Variety Film + TV
In Paulo Rocha’s debut “The Green Years,” he told the story of a young man from rural Portugal who becomes lost in the machinery of a rapidly evolving Lisbon. Pulsing with similar energy to films of the French New Wave, the style was an effective misdirect for a tale of someone unable to carve a meaningful existence in a system that has no quarter for those that can’t adapt.
Continue reading ‘Change Of Life’: Paulo Rocha’s Restored Second Feature Is A Remarkable Discovery [Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Change Of Life’: Paulo Rocha’s Restored Second Feature Is A Remarkable Discovery [Review] at The Playlist.
- 8/10/2020
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)
Seth Rogen plays dual roles in his latest comedy, American Pickle follows Seth Rogen both as Herschel Greenbaum, an immigrant who falls in a vat of pickled is brined for 100 years, and his great-grandson Ben Greenbaum, who is a computer coder and lives a very different life, to say the least. While there are certainly humorous sequences (a Brooklyn hipster couple’s first impressions of Greenbaum’s pickle stand comes foremost to mind), Rogen is far more interested in the definitions of family and loyalty, themes that are not explored with a great deal of emotional impact, but do add some heart to what...
An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)
Seth Rogen plays dual roles in his latest comedy, American Pickle follows Seth Rogen both as Herschel Greenbaum, an immigrant who falls in a vat of pickled is brined for 100 years, and his great-grandson Ben Greenbaum, who is a computer coder and lives a very different life, to say the least. While there are certainly humorous sequences (a Brooklyn hipster couple’s first impressions of Greenbaum’s pickle stand comes foremost to mind), Rogen is far more interested in the definitions of family and loyalty, themes that are not explored with a great deal of emotional impact, but do add some heart to what...
- 8/7/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Above: The Green YearsPaulo Rocha, the key figure of Portuguese modern cinema, was 28 when he filmed his virtuoso black-and-white debut, The Green Years (1963). It’s a film so mature, with such musical verve and pictorial elegance, we can only marvel at the energy that was in the air in Europe in the 1960s, when the continent’s new waves were taking shape. Rocha’s is a case of maturity arrived at quickly, namely after his cinema studies in Paris, and then his apprenticeships under the masters Manoel de Oliveira and Jean Renoir, as assistant director on Oliveira’s features, The Bread (1959) and Act of Spring and Renoir’s The Elusive Corporal (1962).In The Green Years, two young lovers, a shoemaker, Júlio (Rui Gomes), and a maid, Ilda (Isabel Ruth), are transplants to Lisbon. Though at times nostalgic for their villages, they’re mostly dazzled by the brisk pace, suaveness and...
- 8/5/2020
- MUBI
“Better remember, you were born in a backward village, and you need to learn to hang on. Almost all my neighbors were run out of the city….The city has devoured many, but hasn’t laid a hand on me.”
Lisbon and its people are perpetually at odds with each other and themselves, seeking their identity and struggling to eke out a meaningful life, in Paulo Rocha’s captivating 1963 debut “The Green Years.” Newly restored, the film is considered a landmark in New Portuguese Cinema, but this is no exhumed relic.
Continue reading ‘The Green Years’: Paulo Rocha’s Restored Debut Is A Captivating, Cinephile Treat [Review] at The Playlist.
Lisbon and its people are perpetually at odds with each other and themselves, seeking their identity and struggling to eke out a meaningful life, in Paulo Rocha’s captivating 1963 debut “The Green Years.” Newly restored, the film is considered a landmark in New Portuguese Cinema, but this is no exhumed relic.
Continue reading ‘The Green Years’: Paulo Rocha’s Restored Debut Is A Captivating, Cinephile Treat [Review] at The Playlist.
- 8/5/2020
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
"Be very careful with the boys in Lisbon." Grasshopper Film has released a new US trailer for Paulo Rocha's The Green Years, a 1963 coming-of-age romantic drama from Portugal. The film won a few awards during its initial premiere at film festivals back in 1963, but never got an official US release. The film has been restored in glorious 4K (overseen by Pedro Costa and the Portugeuse Cinematheque) and is getting a virtual cinema re-release in August this summer. Julio, aged nineteen, has just left the provinces to settle down in the outskirts of Lisbon. He lives in a poor area with his uncle Afonso and starts working as an apprentice shoemaker. At the shop, he gets to know Ilda, a young housemaid and regular customer. Ilda is pretty, joyful and modern and Julio falls for her. The two young people, although very different from each other, soon fall for each other.
- 7/31/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
A figure whose deserved place in the European canon never came, Portuguese filmmaker Paulo Rocha is getting a second look. This August, Grasshopper Film will make available his first two features, The Green Years and Change of Life, debuting 4K restorations overseen by the Portuguese Cinematheque and Pedro Costa. We’re proud to debut a trailer for The Green Years that shows the fruit of these labors—a vivid, enticing window into the early days of a new wave.
A colleague of Jean Renoir and Manoel de Oliveira—the latter quoted here—Rocha began his career with a thorny love story not at all unlike another new wave kickstarter, Le Beau Serge, photographing Lisbon in both its modernity and old-world habitat. Watching The Green Years recalls the early days of one’s cinephilia, when entire worlds opened with a new name, a new country, and the incessant desire to see more.
A colleague of Jean Renoir and Manoel de Oliveira—the latter quoted here—Rocha began his career with a thorny love story not at all unlike another new wave kickstarter, Le Beau Serge, photographing Lisbon in both its modernity and old-world habitat. Watching The Green Years recalls the early days of one’s cinephilia, when entire worlds opened with a new name, a new country, and the incessant desire to see more.
- 7/30/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How...
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How...
- 1/13/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Top box office movies of 2013: If you make original, quality films… (photo: Sandra Bullock has two movies among the top 15 box office hits of 2013; Bullock is seen here in ‘The Heat,’ with Melissa McCarthy) (See previous post: “2013 Box Office Record? History is Remade If a Few ‘Minor Details’ Ignored.”) As further evidence that moviegoers want original, quality entertainment, below you’ll find a list of the top 15 movies at the domestic box office in 2013 — nine of which are sequels or reboots (ten if you include Oz the Great and Powerful), and more than half of which are 3D releases. Disney and Warner Bros. were the two top studios in 2013. Disney has five movies among the top 15; Warners has three. With the exception of the sleeper blockbuster Gravity, which, however dumbed down, targeted a more mature audience, every single one of the titles below were aimed either at teenagers/very,...
- 12/31/2013
- by Zac Gille
- Alt Film Guide
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