The Spell of the Empire

Evocation of Salazar's birth, his passage through Coimbra and salient facts of his political life.

Recent population growth in the capital leads to an ambitious development plan, involving public and private initiative as documented here, pinpointing over 60 locations (streets, roads, parks, schools) being modernized or built anew. The narrative and soundtrack are grandiloquent, in the propaganda style required by the Producer (the Municipal Council of Lisbon, then directly dependent of the national government), but the images and data are now of historical relevance.

A portrait of the relations between neighbours in a Lisbon courtyard. A story made of small episodes of humour, friendship, rivalry, love.

A love triangle set in Lisbon between German singer Nina, bullfighter Garrido and local girl Branca.

The story of how the conflicting relationship of Eduardo and vaudeville actress Isabel is affected by the passion he feels for their neighbor, Mariana, a young overprotected, and the unexpected visit of his uncle Plácido, a moral teacher.

The first Portuguese documentary. A remarkable look at the lives of the working people of Nazaré, a fishing town in Western Portugal.

While rehearsing the annual play, a clerk tries to regain the attention of his beloved, in a comedy of equivoques.

Two schoolboys, Carlitos and Eduardo, fight for the affection of a girl, Teresinha.

The most well-known fascist propaganda film in Portugal. A communist man falls in love with a woman of Salazarian beliefs and changes his way of looking at things.

The adventurous life of Portugal's epic poet, Luis de Camões.

Jorge, a successful engineer and employee of a ministry and Luísa, a romantic and dreamy girl, star as the typical bourgeois couple of the Lisbon society of the 19th century.

Falacha is the captain of a fishing boat, who loses his men in a shipwreck. Among them was the husband of Aurélia, who holds Falacha responsible for the tragedy. Maria, Falacha's daughter, falls in love with Manuel, Aurélia's son, a situation that their mothers refuse to accept.

Seven years after the disastrous Battle of Alcácer Quibir, where King Sebastian and the nobleman Dom João disappeared, the latter's wife Dona Madalena de Vilhena finally gives up hope that he'll return and marries the knight Dom Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, with whom she has a daughter, who is afflicted by a fatal illness. Now only the tutor Telmo Pais retains the hope that the lost husband is alive, a premonition that may be confirmed after two decades, with the arrival of a mysterious pilgrim...

The fatalism caught up and the amorous tragedy between Teresa de Albuquerque and Simão Botelho, who survives the intolerant litigation of her noble families.