Starting in 1933, with A Canção de Lisboa, the Golden Age would last the next two decades, with films such as O Pátio das Cantigas (1942) and A Menina da Rádio (1944).

Aniki-Bóbó (1942), Manoel de Oliveira's first feature film, marked a milestone, with a realist style predating Italian neorealism by a few years.

He presented a novelty to this already knowledgeable Lisbon audience: the live photograph – shown not through an Edison Kinetograph, as announced at the time, but by the Elektrotachyscop or Schnellseher, also called the Electro-Tachiscópio Eisenlohr, an invention by Ottomar Anschutz.

About a minute in length each, these "animated views" were shot by operators who worked for the British producer: "Parisian balls", "The Pont Neuf in Paris", "The Train", "The Serpentine Dance", "A Barber and Shoeshine Store in Washington".

Rousby then met Manuel Maria da Costa Veiga, a photographer with electrical and mechanical skills, who assisted him in preparing his sessions.

Robert W. Paul also sent his operator Henry Short to southern Europe, to record the animated views of landscapes for use by the English producing house.

Short passed through Portugal, registering several views that, although destined to be shown in London, would be integrated into Rousby's program at his Portuguese sessions in 1897.

However, when Rousby proceeded with his tour to the Teatro-Circo Príncipe Real, in Oporto, the animated photograph also gained a professional who would go on to found Portuguese cinema: Aurélio da Paz dos Reis.

In 1909, Portugália Film, made up of João Freire Correia and Manuel Cardoso, was established in Lisbon, financed by D. Nuno de Almada, and the "Empresa Cinematográfica Ideal," Júlio Costa.

He founded his production company five years later, for which he'd make several films, including Batalha de Flores ("Battle of Flowers") that garnered vast success.

Remodelled and appropriately refitted, the Salão Ideal presented a predecessor of the talkies, the "Animatógrafo Falado" (Spoken Animatograph), where a group of people read the script and produced sound in synch with the film's projection.

The group was made up of volunteer firefighters of Ajuda, of which not only Júlio Costa but also António Silva, the actor of the Portuguese Golden Age comedies, were members.

The shooting of O Homem dos Olhos Tortos ("The Man with the Twisted Eyes") began, the story based on a Reinaldo Ferreira police serial and directed by Leitão de Barros.

In 1918 they left for Paris, and brought back a technical team from the Pathé studios led by Georges Pallu, a director who would author virtually all the feature films of the Oporto producing house.

Though the financial disagreements and the unfulfilment of deadlines forced his removal from the company, Lupo still directed Os Lobos ("The Wolves"), another pearl of the Portuguese silent cinema.

Although the directors brought from French production houses were presented as recognised stars in their countries, in fact, they often built their careers without having the claimed background.

Frenchman Maurice Mariaud was the director chosen for the works Os Faroleiros ("The Lighthouse Men") and As Pupilas do Senhor Reitor ("The Wards of the Dean"), for the studio's only two productions.

Lion brought along his wife, actress Gil-Clary, Maxudian, and the cameramen Daniel Quintin and Marcel Bizot, and they shoot A Sereia de Pedra ("The Stone Mermaid") and Olhos da Alma ("Eyes of the Soul"), the latter shot in Nazaré, in what was its first screen register.

The installed powers understood these young people dominated the cinema press and influenced the masses with their perspectives and wisely viewed the industry as a privileged means of propaganda for their new regime.

Again in Nazaré, de Barros films Maria do Mar ("Mary of the Sea"), the second ethnofiction in cinema history, and a milestone for up until then bleak Portuguese cinematography aesthetics.

He also directed Lisboa, Crónica Anedótica ("Lisbon, an Anecdotal Chronicle") (1929), where in a series of multiple city scenes, he displays Chaby Pinheiro, repeat stars Adelina Abranches and Alves da Cunha, Nascimento Fernandes, and the unforgettable Vasco Santana and Beatriz Costa.

Inspired by Marcel l'Herbier, Jorge Brum do Canto opened with A Dança dos Paroxismos ("The Dance of the Paroxisms") in 1928, playing the main role with his own script.

But again it will be Leitão de Barros who leaves an imprint in movie history, with A Severa, based upon the work by Júlio Dantas, with the direction of the first Portuguese talkie.

It marked a milestone in Portuguese film not only because it differed from the tone most in vogue at the time, as it dealt with social issues, but also because it predated the first Italian neo-realism movies by a few years.

A subgenre of these nationalist films were those related to the culture of Fado and the rise to popularity of Amália Rodrigues, the great name of Portuguese song.

The Fifties were mainly years of stagnation with the continuity of the same movies made in the earlier decades, government censorship and glorification of the colonial empire – see Chaimite (1953); although the first signs of the winds to come were being given by films like Saltimbancos (1951) and Nazaré (1952), both directed by Manuel Guimarães and inspired by the Italian neo-realism.

In 1958 opens the Portuguese Cinematheque with a retrospective of American movies that inspired the French filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague, an event lauded by then new critics Alberto Seixas Santos e António Pedro Vasconcelos.

This movement gains particular relevance after the Carnation Revolution, pursuing certain experiences of the French New Wave, both in the field of visual anthropology and of political cinema.

The generation of the seventies, taking advantage of the new liberties, explores realism and legend, politics and ethnography, until the late eighties, in conjunction with some directors of the liberated colonies, such as Flora Gomes.

In 1994 Maria de Medeiros won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 51st Venice International Film Festival for her work in Três Irmãos, directed by Teresa Villaverde.