First opened in 1908 on the Praça de Batalha in downtown Porto, the Batalha partially gained its “mythical cinema” status thanks to the current building, inaugurated in 1947. Designed by Arthur Andrade in Art Deco style, the movie theatre is surrounded by glowing fireplaces, giving the impression, at night, of a lighthouse illuminating the square. Due to declining attendance rates (videos, multiplexes…), the cinema closed in the early 2000s, after a screening of Titanic, before a somewhat miraculous reopening in March 2023.
Directed by documentary filmmaker Pedro Lino, this episode of the collection is based on a voice-over conversation between owner Margarida Neves, great-granddaughter of the cinema’s founder, and architect Alexandre Alve, son of the historical director of the movie club. It presents a collage of memories, based on archive footage from the period and extracts from feature films, supplemented by scenes shot during the renovation work. The country’s history can be interpreted in fragments, from the birth of the Republic in 1910 through Salazar’s dictatorship, to the country’s entry into the EEC in 1986. It is unfortunate that, of the many Portuguese feature films, only Aniki Bóbó (Manoel de Oliveira, 1942) is explicitly mentioned. This lack of determination does not, however, preclude a few gleaming moments, such as when artist Júlio Pomar’s mural, covered over by the Salazar regime, is restored like a cathedral painting, or when, in a spectacular instant, Lino films his doc being screened in a packed, brand-new cinema.

Nicolas Didier, “Télérama”, 18 October 2023