Roundup: Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira dies aged 106

Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira died on Thursday aged 106.

Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho sent his condolences in a note sent to local media, pointing out that Portugal had lost one of its most celebrated figures.

"Manoel de Oliveira is a decisive figure in the Portuguese cinema of the 20th century. His capacity for creation of new cinematographic language and his passion for the seventh art projected Portugal around the world," Passos Coelho said.

The filmmaker made over 50 films in his career which began in 1931 when he released a silent documentary about his home-city Porto, the country's second largest city. From the age of 83, he started making around one film a year.

The esteemed filmmaker was known for his vitality and will to fight for cinema even in his old age.

"Long live cinema," Manoel de Oliveira said with enthusiasm when he received the Grand Officier de la Legion d'Honneur award last year.

U.S. star John Malkovich referred to Oliveira as a "force of nature." Oliveira was the only active filmmaker whose career spans both silent and sound works. His avant-garde films challenged concepts surrounding art, nature and beauty, always with a close affinity with philosophy.

In his film The Convent (1995), Oliveira played with the good and evil using unsettling angles and intense soundtracks. The film, starring Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich and Luis Miguel Cintra, is about Michael Padovic, a U.S. academic, who travels with his French wife to a convent in Arrabida, Portugal, to prove his theory that Shakespeare was of Spanish-Jewish ancestry.

In his last film, The Old Man of Belem, which was premiered last November in Porto and shown at the Venice Film Festival, Oliveira explores mankind and the glories of the past and uncertainties of the future.

Producer Luis Urbano, who worked with Manoel de Oliviera on his last two films, Gebo and the Shadow and The Old Man of Belem, said he was "profoundly sad" due to Oliveira's death.

"Manoel parted, and as he would say, he left through a door. Death, according to him, is a way out. He left through that door and we stayed. We all remember the time we spent with him, which was immensely enjoyable," Luis Urbano said in a note to Xinhua.

"Now we must continue with increased strength and conviction what we do and which was the secret to Manoel's longevity: Cinema," he added.

Oliveira's first feature-length film, the neo-realist Aniki Bobo (1942) a story about children from Porto's slums, was a great success in Portugal but got him into trouble because they considered it went against the regime's objectives.

He gained prominence in the 1990s and three of Oliveira's films were nominated for Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or top prize.

Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva, who visited the filmmaker before Christmas last year, said in a public statement that Oliveira was "an example for the new generations," pointing out that Portuguese culture was going through a "moment of mourning."

The government has declared two days of national mourning for the filmmaker, on Thursday and Friday.

Oliveira is survived by his wife, four children and many grandchildren. Endit