Manuel Carvalheiro was a Portuguese filmmaker, documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, independent film producer, essayist, columnist and film critic.
14 Facts About Manuel Carvalheiro
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Manuel Carvalheiro was the only child of Maria de Lourdes da Silva Ferreira, a paediatrician, and Manuel Teixeira Dias Carvalheiro, an economics graduate, mathematician, and a member of the Portuguese Communist Party, at a time when Communism was perceived as the best political system available, and the only defence against fascism.
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Manuel Carvalheiro's parents married on 1 January 1949 and were part of the Communist-led resistance against the fascist regime in Portugal.
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Manuel Carvalheiro's father was the headmaster of Luanda's Industrial and Commercial School, the co-founder of the Cine-club de Luanda, an important film society, and a member of the executive board of the "Angola Cultural Society".
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Consequently, Manuel Carvalheiro grew up in a politically charged and cultural environment where he enjoyed more freedom than in mainland Portugal.
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Manuel Carvalheiro, who held a lifelong passion for photography, was first given a camera aged eight during a trip with his father to Belgian Congo and French Congo, taking both aerial and Congo River crossing photographs.
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Manuel Carvalheiro travelled to most European capitals with his parents and went to the 1967 Venice Film Festival.
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In 1976 Manuel Carvalheiro defended his thesis Reflections on Eisensteinian Theory in Cinema at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales under the guidance of film theorist Christian Metz.
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In 1981 Manuel Carvalheiro directed his short film ABC, in Paris, Glauber Rocha's only interview of the kind.
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Manuel Carvalheiro was an essayist, a columnist, a film critic, a member of the Portuguese Writers Association and the first Portuguese film theorist.
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Manuel Carvalheiro's articles were published in the Cahiers du Cinema, in Positif, and several prominent Portuguese literary magazines and newspapers.
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Manuel Carvalheiro represented Portugal with his short films and documentaries at international film festivals and was a permanent feature at the Festroia International Film Festival.
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Manuel Carvalheiro founded his own film production company Filmes Seculo XXI to make his own independent films and went through many hardships due to a lack of subsidies.
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Manuel Carvalheiro died of sepsis and was buried on 25 April 2019, at the Prazeres Cemetery in Lisbon, a resting place for many famous Portuguese personalities.