Jaime preceded by O Auto da Floripes

Director: António Reis

1974 / 93min / DCP

“While working as a psychiatrist at a sanatorium in Lisbon, Cordeiro discovered a sketch by the late Jaime Fernandes, a farm laborer admitted to the institution at 38 years of age. He would spend the rest of his days there, turning to drawing late in life. In their first collaboration together, Reis and Cordeiro set out to make a record of this man, a testament to his material existence: the spaces he once inhabited, the things he saw and touched, his writing, his works. Far from a traditional portrait, images of Fernandes are notably absent from the film, except a single photograph at the beginning. With a restless and inventive form, using a handheld camera to “[represent] the helplessness of the human eye,” Reis and Cordeiro refuse to see Jaime as an abnormal or an outsider; rather, he was poor and imprisoned, a man far from home. Screens with O Auto da Floripes, a documentation of a folk performance dating from the 16th century. Made by a collective of amateur filmmakers—among them Reis, then a poet and ethnographer—this short feature was a formative early experience, inspiring Manoel de Oliveira to recruit Reis as an assistant on Rite of Spring (1963).” —Series curators Edward McCarry and Graham Carter (The Theater of the Matters)

Digitization by Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema

Introduction by The Theater of the Matters guest curators, Graham Carter and Edward McCarry on Saturday, February 22nd