Fernando Gomes

The great fadista, Amelia Rodrigues, made her screen debut in Capas Negras, which took its name from the black capes worn by the students in the university city of Coimbra, where the film is set. The action begins in a tavern where a group of former students are reminiscing about their time at the university. One of the students, Jose Duarte then breaks into song, performing an impromptu fado in the local Coimbra style. The tavern owner's niece, the aptly named Maria Lisboa promptly retaliates with a fado of the Lisbon variety. The melodramatic plot then centers on the frustrated romance between these two characters, and the soundtrack is essentially a musical duel between these two different styles of Portugal's national song.

This is an intriguing avant-garde look at what motivates the leisurely classes in Portugal, for better or worse, by director Manoel de Oliveira. Set in a spacious country home peopled with a wide-ranging cast of characters, the drama begins as the friends of a widow come to console her on the loss of her husband. But at one point, the widow goes upstairs, encounters her husband, and is faced with his accusations about the past. This event and others provide the means of revealing the petty, self-serving, egocentric, and romantic pursuits of the melange of people in the house. - Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Nino is a 300-year-old boy who lives with his uncle, Dr. Victor, a sorcerer and scientist, and his great-aunt Morgana, a 6,000-year-old witch. The three of them live in a castle in the middle of the city of São Paulo. Apprentice sorcerer, Nino has never attended a school, because of the unusual age of 300 years. His parents left him living with Victor and Morgan, because they needed to travel on an expedition into outer space, taking their two younger brothers. In spite of having animal and supernatural friends in the Castle, Nino, feeling lack of friends like him, decides to do a spell he learned with his Uncle Victor, and ended up bringing to the Castle, three children who had just left school. Free of loneliness, Nino receives the visit of the three daily.