Jorge Silva Melo

Jorge Silva Melo, artistic director of the Artistas Unidos theatre company, actor, playwright, theatre director and director. He studied at the London Film School. He founded and directed, alongside Luís Miguel Cintra, Teatro da Cornucópia, from 1973 to 1979. A Fundação Gulbenkian grantee, he has staged works in Berlin with Peter Stein and Milan with Giorgio Strehler. He has closely followed the cinematographic activity of the generation that preceded him and of those who have followed. João César Monteiro invited him, after reading one of his reviews in the Diário de Lisboa/Juvenil, to be his assistant in the film Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. He will then work, in the same capacity, in the director’s next film, Quem Espera Por Sapatos de Defunto Morre Descalço, and the film Pousada das Chagas by Paulo Rocha. He acts in Silvestre, by João César Monteiro, in A Ilha dos Amores, by Paulo Rocha, in the film Acabada by João Botelho, and in O Sapato de Cetim by Manoel de Oliveira. He is a screenwriter for O Desejado, also directed by Paulo Rocha and Xavier, by Manuel Mozos, among others. He is the author of the libretto Le Château des Carpathes (based on Jules Verne) by Philippe Hersant, the plays Seis Rapazes Três Raparigas, António, Um Rapaz de Lisboa, O Fim ou Tende Misericórdia de Nós, Prometeu, Num País Onde Não Querem Defender os Meus Direitos, Eu Não Quero Viver (a partir de “Michael Kohlhaas” by Heinrich von Kleist), Não Sei (em colaboração com Miguel Borges) and Navio dos Negros. He founded, in 1995, the Artistas Unidos company, of which he is currently the artistic director. He directed feature films Passagem ou A Meio Caminho (1980), Ninguém Duas Vezes (1984), Agosto (1988), Coitado do Jorge (1992), António, Um Rapaz de Lisboa (2001), and the short film A Felicidade (2009). He also directed the documentaries Conversas com Glicínia (2004), Conversas em Leça em Casa de Álvaro Lapa (2006), Nikias Skapinakis: O Teatro dos Outros (2008), Álvaro Lapa: A Literatura (2008), A Gravura: Esta Mútua Aprendizagem (2008), António Sena: A Mão Esquiva (2009) and Ângelo de Sousa: Tudo o que sou capaz (2010). This year, he directed the documentary Ainda Não Acabámos: Como Se Fosse Uma Carta, about which he wrote the following: “A wandering through half a century, yes, a letter perhaps. Voyages through my life, I could say, I who enjoy Garrett so much. A “traveling” like he would enjoy, a loose story, memories, projects, encounters. Because during the years, since 1995, I have made several portraits of artists (Palolo, Bravo, Lapa, Skapinakis, Bartolomeu, Ângelo, Sena, Ana Vieira and I am currently working on Sofie Areal and Fernando Lemos), I began to think that this was my life, these encounters, watching, hearing, cutting, showing, provoking. With this film, I want to keep showing what I see.” He has also translated works by Carlo Goldoni, Luigi Pirandello, Oscar Wilde, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Büchner, Lovecraft, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Heiner Müller and Harold Pinter. In 2013, LEFFEST dedicated a retrospective to his oeuvre, featured in an exclusive publication entitled O Cinema de Jorge Silva e Melo e os Sortilégios do Tempo. In 2014, he was a member of the Jury of the Competition, having also participated in the reading sessions, reading excerpts from I Die As a Country by the writer and Greek playwright Dimítris Dimitrádis.