Eduardo Serra. João Mário Grilo remembers "a very talented artist"

And Duardo Serra, the most international of Portuguese cinematographers, died on Tuesday at the age of 81, the Portuguese Cinema Academy announced.

The passing of Eduardo Serra "is a great sadness", reacted João Mário Grilo, contacted by the Lusa news agency, applauding the initiative of the Cinemateca Portuguesa, in Lisbon, for having dedicated a retrospective to him in July.

"It's impossible not to mourn the loss of an artist. He wasn't just a technician, he was a very talented artist who, unfortunately, worked on very few Portuguese films," said the filmmaker about Eduardo Serra, born in Lisbon in 1943.

He became the most international of Portuguese cinematographers, twice nominated for an Oscar, for the films 'The Wings of Love', by Iain Softley, and 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', by Peter Webber, which earned him the BAFTA award from the British Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

João Mário Grilo worked with Eduardo Serra only once, in the film 'The King's Trial' (1989), inspired by the process that led to the deposition of the Portuguese king Afonso VI, initiated by his wife, Maria de Saboia.

"I mortgaged almost nine years of work because of the research for this film. Therefore, it was a truly decisive alliance [with Eduardo Serra] because the image and photography had an importance equivalent to that of the word," the director recalled to Lusa.

"My collaboration with Eduardo Serra was to visually construct the Portuguese 17th century, a very complex task because the Lisbon of that time disappeared with the 1755 earthquake. There was a lot of archaeology and connection between various areas of the country. His intelligence and sensitivity were essential to building this atmosphere, giving the impression that the entire film took place in a now-defunct Paço da Ribeira," he recalled.

The filmmaker also mentioned the "exhaustive work" they both did on painting in this film: "For us, painting was a way of understanding the film's central theme, the king's majesty. We've had a Republic for many years, and today we don't understand the concept of majesty. It was this concept that guided the destinies of Europe for many centuries, and the only way to understand it is through painting."

"There was a whole work of complicity and construction of the film's architecture, which included lighting and framing. He was a great companion in the preparation of the film, with a very difficult and long shoot, as it was a period piece," said the director, who regretted not having worked with Eduardo Serra again on the film 'Os Olhos da Ásia' (1996), "due to a desire with the production."

"He was the only director of photography I worked with who was able to explain the reason for the light he was using in each shot. He was very aware that light isn't just what you put there, but what you think about mentally," João Mário Grilo added.

Eduardo Serra also worked on films by other Portuguese directors, namely José Fonseca e Costa, in 'The Neighbor's Woman' (1988), Luís Filipe Rocha, in 'Love and Toes' (1991), and Fernando Lopes, in 'The Dolphin' (2001).

Abroad, he directed photography for French filmmakers Claude Chabrol and Patrice Leconte, on more than a dozen films, but also with British filmmakers Michael Winterbottom and Iain Softley and North Americans M. Night Shyamalan and Edward Zwick.

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