Paris-based sales company Luxbox has acquired 13 titles from the catalogue of the late Portugese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira.
The films span the director’s first feature 1942’s Aniki Bóbó through 1993’s Abraham’s Valley. The latter will be given a special screening at the upcoming Directors’ Fortnight. The Cannes sidebar also pays tribute to the director with its 2023 poster and features an image of Portuguese actress Leonor Silveira in tribute to Abraham’s Valley and celebrates the 30th anniversary of its selection at Directors’ Fortnight that year.
The copy of Abraham’s Valley is a 2K restoration of the 35mm original camera negative, conserved by the Portuguese Cinemateca. The negative was reedited by the director in 1998, with the addition of 15 minutes of new scenes from internegative material for a new run time of 203 minutes.
The Portuguese Cinemateca plans to finalise the restoration of the collection of films acquired by Luxbox in 2025. Other titles include 1963’s Rite of Spring, 1978’s Doomed Love, 1988’s The Cannibals and 1991’s The Divine Comedy. The prolific filmmaker died in April of 2015 at the age of 106.
The deal was negotiated between Luxbox’s president Fiorella Moretti and Manuel Casimiro Brandão Carvalhais de Oliveira acting as the legal representative of Manoel de Oliveira’s Right Holders.
Luxbox previously acquired the complete filmography of Hungarian autuer Béla Tarr.
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