The Cinema of Portugal started with the birth of the medium in the late 19th century. Cinema was introduced in Portugal in 1896 with the screening of foreign films and the first Portuguese film was Saída do Pessoal Operário da Fábrica Confiança, made in the same year. The first movie theater opened in 1904 and the first scripted Portuguese film was O Rapto de Uma Actriz (1907). The first all-talking sound film, A Severa, was made in 1931. Starting in 1933, with A Canção de Lisboa, the Golden Age would last the next two decades, with films such as O Pátio das Cantigas (1942) and A Menina da Rádio (1944). Aniki-Bóbó (1942), Manoel de Oliveira's first feature film, marked a milestone, with a realist style predating Italian neorealism by a few years. In the 1950s the industry stagnated. The early 1960s saw the birth of the Cinema Novo (literally "New Cinema") movement, showing realism in film, in the vein of Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, with films like Dom Roberto (1962) and Os Verdes Anos (1963). The movement became particularly relevant after the Carnation Revolution of 1974. In 1989, João César Monteiro's Recordações da Casa Amarela won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and in 2009, João Salaviza's Arena won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Several other Portuguese films have been in competition for major film awards like the Palme d'Or and the Golden Bear. João Sete Sete (2006) was the first Portuguese animated feature film. Portuguese cinema is significantly supported by the State, with the government's Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual giving films financial support.
Silent films
Portuguese film history began on 18 June 1896, at the Real Colyseu da Rua da Palma nº 288, in Lisbon, when Edwin Rousby presented Robert William Paul's Animatograph, using a Teatrograph projector. This places the debut of film in Portugal around six months after the Lumière brothers' inaugural presentation in Paris.
The early days
The Portuguese audience was familiar with photographic projection, first from cycloramas, dioramas and stereoscopic views and, later, from the magic lantern, with the projection of transparent photographs through a glass plate then coloured. On 28 December 1894, the German photographer Carlos Eisenlohr opened his "Imperial Exhibition" at the galleries of the Avenida Palace Hotel. He presented a novelty to this already knowledgeable Lisbon audience: the live photograph – shown not through an Edison Kinetograph, as announced at the time, but by the Elektrotachyscop or Schnellseher, also called the Electro-Tachiscópio Eisenlohr, an invention by Ottomar Anschutz. The device projected images of actions, of a dog passing by or the galloping of a horse, contained in small disks that produced moving images of extremely short periods.
In the beginning of 1895, the tobacco shop Tabacaria Neves presented Edison's Kinetoscope (in fact, a copy of said invention, built in London by Robert William Paul, ordered by the Greek George Georgiades, who presented the machine in Lisbon). Unlike preceding inventions, the Kinestoscope allowed individual viewing and a film made up of 1,380 photographs enabling a 20-second projection of 20 seconds.
The machine that was used for movies at the Real Colyseu was not the Lumiére brothers' Cinematograph, but a competitor, the Theatrograph, by Robert W. Paul. The machine projected behind the screen, allowing life-size images to appear for about a minute. The first presentation of it was well-received and in the following months, many of the same machines swirled in the cinemas of Lisbon, vying for the favour of movie audiences.
At the Real Colyseu of the Rua da Palma of António Santos Júnior, on 18 June 1896, Edwin Rousby showed films by Robert William Paul's production house, for whom Rousby worked. About a minute in length each, these "animated views" were shot by operators who worked for the British producer: "Parisian balls", "The Pont Neuf in Paris", "The Train", "The Serpentine Dance", "A Barber and Shoeshine Store in Washington".
Rousby then met Manuel Maria da Costa Veiga, a photographer with electrical and mechanical skills, who assisted him in preparing his sessions. Costa Veiga himself began acting as an exhibitor, acquiring a projectoscope from Edison that same year and showing films in Lisbon venues.
Robert W. Paul also sent his operator Henry Short to southern Europe, to record the animated views of landscapes for use by the English producing house. Short passed through Portugal, registering several views that, although destined to be shown in London, would be integrated into Rousby's program at his Portuguese sessions in 1897.