“I think my film represents above all the proof, to those who want to understand and accept it, that poetry can’t be filmed, that it is useless to try.” —João César Monteiro

Look at a photograph of the underappreciated Portuguese auteur João César Monteiro, who died in 2003, and you will see a man resembling a cross between Nosferatu and Woody Allen. Its no wonder then that his cinematic fingerprints are some of the most memorable you’ll ever see. It’s not clear under what influence Monteiro worked, but he was certainly international cinema’s randiest rapscallion. Practicing his own brand of slowed-down slapstick, his films puncture preconceptions about power and age, beauty and desire. Never has the cinema dared to depict obsessiveness so unblinkingly and with such contained irony. Join us in sharing these indelible images as we honor the legendary man from Portugal who is remembered both for his madness and for his acts of overwhelming cinematic charity.

Special thanks to Haden Guest at Harvard Film Archive for organizing the retrospective, as well as Instituto Camoes Portugal

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“Though far less of a household name, João César Monteiro was for Portuguese cinema what Luis Buñuel was for Spanish, a gleefully caustic satirist and libertine whose targets may have been the usual suspects of sexual, religious, and political propriety, but whose means of attack against them were highly unusual.” —Art Forum

Read more about Monteiro and this series at the Village Voice

Read a conversation about the series with Series Curator Haden Guest (Harvard Film Archives)