António Campos

António Campos (1922-1999) authored more than forty shorts and only five features (of which, only the very last, “Terra Fria”, was shot on 35mm). Born in a provincial town, Campos saw himself as an outsider and many of his films were indeed made and first shown in amateur and non-professional circles. However, his work was soon discovered and cherished by the “novo cinema” generation, gaining the admiration and advocacy of authors such as Paulo Rocha. After his early films in 8mm in the late 1950s, Campos became an employee of Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, from which he received a grant in the early 1970s to film the rural village of Vilarinho das Furnas soon before it was submerged by a new dam. His following films continued to confront the borders between fiction and non-fiction, and between documentary and ethnographic film, hence establishing Campos as an important, albeit neglected and often self-estranged element in the noblest tradition of Portuguese author cinema, alongside Paulo Rocha, Manoel de Oliveira, or Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis. A treasure to be (re)discovered in the centennial celebration of his date of birth.