The first films made in Portugal were by Aurelio da Paz dos Reis, and were screened in Porto, in November of 1896. As is evident by their titles, and as descriptions from those times confirm (since none of them survived), they copied similar films by the Lumiere Brothers and their collaborators.

However, the great adventure of Portuguese cinema begins essentially in the late twenties, when, under the influence of various European vanguards (Soviet, German, French), truly remarkable films appear, mainly documentaries by Leitao de Barros, Jorge Brum do Canto and especially Manoel de Oliveira [Douro, Working on the River (1929), a wonderful visual poem/hymn to the river of his hometown]. Over the next decades, Oliveira will continue his solitary course, with films such as the pre-neorealist Aniki-Bobo (1942), as well as several outstanding documentaries, free of the orders of the fascist dictatorship of Salazar, who, with few changes among his staff, governed Portugal until the "Revolution of the Carnations", in 1974.

During the sixties, a new generation of filmmakers appeared on the scene (Paulo Rocha, Fernando Lopes, Ant?nio de Macedo, et al.), who had studied abroad and were clearly influenced by the French "nouvelle vague". Their films (almost all of which were produced by Antonio de Cunha Telles, a key figure in this first phase), form a new cinema ("novo cinema"), the ranks of which certainly include Manoel de Oliveira, who, at that time, was making the extraordinary film The Passion of Jesus (1963).

During the second phase, in collaboration with the newly-founded Portuguese Film Center (Centro Portugues de Cinema) and the Calouste Gulbekian Foundation, which undertook to finance certain films, the new Portuguese cinema develops yet further, punctuated by the remarkable films of Manoel de Oliveira, Jo‡o Cesar Monteiro, Paulo Rocha, and Ant?nio-Pedro Vasconcelos, while Alberto Seixas Santos, with his first feature Gentle Habits (1974), juxtaposes the rise and fall of Salazarism with the daily oppression imposed by a traditional father/tyrant on the members of a middle-class family. Another significant film of this period is the second feature by Fernando Lopes, A Bee in the Rain (1972), a loose adaptation of the novel by Carlos de Oliveira about the moral and social decadence of a pair of landowners, in a world riveted on old values.

Immediately following the "Revolution of the Carnations" (April 25, 1974), which abolished censorship and fascist laws, numerous "militant" documentaries recorded, with fervent creativity, what were up until then "forbidden" aspects of reality. During that period, the film that truly stood out was Tras-os-Montes (1976), a masterly documentary essay, that portrayed the poverty-stricken province of northeastern Portugal candidly, unaffectedly, and with an intense tinge of poetry. The gaze that filmmakers Ant?nio Reis and Margarida Cordeiro cast upon the myths, legends, and traditions of the region, takes on the dimension of a magical dirge.

Towards the end of the decade, the great filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira established himself internationally, with his film Amor de Perdic‡o (1978), which, albeit a faithful adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco's novel, allows Oliveira to "write" his own cinematic visions and obsessions, with singular spirituality and lucidity.

In the early eighties, the conditions of film production had improved noticeably, and Portuguese cinema receives mounting acclaim at European film festivals. New names surface, among which stand out those of Lauro Ant?nio and, especially, Jo‡o Botelho.

In his film Morning Mist, and with the help of a classical and sensitive narration, Ant?nio brings out the contradictions and conflicts of the enclosed microcosm of a Catholic seminary during the forties, while Botelho makes his mark with two films: A Portuguese Goodbye (1985), where he settles the score with the past, as much his personal one as that of his country, and Hard Times (1987), an adaptation of the novel by Charles Dickens, which, with its insightful and practically Brechtian style, transports the archetypal heroes of the novel to modern-day Lisbon's industrial zone, which is rife with unemployment, social injustice and poverty.

At the beginning of the same period, Paulo Rocha recounts the spiritual and emotional journey of Portuguese author Wenceslau de Moraes (1854-1929), who spent half his life in the Far East. The Island of Love (1982) is a powerful film, where two civilizations converse with each other. Starting off his career as a producer, Paulo Branco enables Ant?nio-Pedro Vasconcelos to realize the important film Oxal? (1980), while, from the mid-eighties onwards, several newcomers stand out: Vitor Goncalves with A Girl in Summer (1986), a lyrical retrospective of a young girl's sexual awakening; Jose Alvaro Morais with O Bobo (1987), "a Pirandello-type exercise in staging a play..." We should also mention Pedro Costa's evocative and esoteric film Blood (1989) and the heart-wrenching Alex (1991) by Teresa Villaverde.

A veteran director, Jo‡o Cesar Monteiro is acclaimed for his Recollections from the Yellow House (1995). Monteiro is a unique case in world cinema: anarchical, provocative and libertine, he lampoons conventional morality, but not without self-deprecation.

Finally, in his film Evil (1999), in view of the end of the century and the millenium, Alberto Seixas Santos poses imperative questions concerning the personal, existential impasses of our time, innovating the model of the "modernist" film, and provoking a timely speculation that reaches out to the concerns of the public.