Alberto Seixas Santos (1936-2016) – Express

Died early hours of this morning in his home of Lisbon, the filmmaker Alberto Seixas Santos. His latest film, "Time Goes by", 2010, had scheduled their farewell scene. Cineclubista in the 60′s in this decade he studied cinema in Paris and London, did movie criticism in the daily press, has gone through the documentarismo industrial sponsored to debut in feature film with "Brandos Costumes", in 1974. His work, anchored in the root primordial where, marked by the death of his Father (Salazar), the utopia of the marxist Revolution and the firmness of a cinema that refused to transparency and the simple processes of identification of the spectator, would not be prolific.

Between "Mild Customs" (1974) and "Evil" (1999), the two solid pillars on which the film of Seixas Santos is based – not too many movies. But I would say that these two would have been enough to make him a filmmaker bigger. You can’t talk about the end of the salazarismo without the first. You can’t see in the background the legacy of ten years of government cavaquista without question the second. In addition to everything else, these films demonstrate and guide an ongoing dialogue with the Portuguese reality that he, like no other, gave cinematic account over the years.

In the generation of the New Cinema was Seixas Santos who less filmed. But there has not been the most influential character in the destinations of the Portuguese cinema of the last 50 years. Places of power, had it all, the Portuguese Centre of Cinema (the cooperative, under the auspices of the Gulbenkian foundation, where the Portuguese cinema was reborn in the early 70′s), to the board of the Film School of the Conservatory. He was president of the Portuguese Institute of Cinema and director of RTP programs. And had an influence deaf with the political power that allowed that, for years, afeiçoasse laws and regulations, and people to put them in practice. In all the places that it occupied has left its marks in the intransigent defence–, railway – a cinema of author, against the dictates of the market. For a long time it was said that, in Portugal, only shot who he wanted. The fame that exceeded a real power to hold the reins of a film, but the statement was not devo id of sense, especially for those who came to the profession and needed some support. In some way, you can say that it was – with João Bénard da Costa – the critical awareness of a certain Portuguese cinema that, alvorecido at the beginning of the years 60 and in power since 1974, has been on the front line, resisting the waves of the products of rapid and mass consumption that, in recent years, have changed the face of our audiovisual landscape.

With the disappearance of Seixas Santos, closes a cycle. Suddenly, we feel like look at the Terreiro do Paço empty as he did – as Vítor Gonçalves made ("The Invisible Life") there is still a little – because the death took custody arrangements most of our time.

Seixas Santos will be in fervent, from the 17h of Sunday, at the Thalia Theater (Estrada das Laranjeiras 205, in Lisbon), being the funeral on Monday, by 16 h in the cemetery of the olive Groves where it will be cremated.