The first feature film by J. Leitão de Barros (1896-1967) is a truly remarkable work, fusing aesthetic influences and artistic traditions as diverse as European avant-garde cinema, journalistic reportage, and the vaudeville stage. Advertised at the time of its premiere not only as a “documentary,” but also as a “chronicle,” Lisbôa: Crónica Anedótica has a hybrid structure that confounded contemporary critics and pushed the film into the background of both Leitão de Barros’s career (his highly acclaimed Maria do Mar premiered that same year) and the history of Portuguese silent cinema (Douro, Faina Fluvial, by Manoel de Oliveira, was presented the following year).
Today the film can be seen as the reflection of a particularly fruitful moment in cinema history, bearing the imprints of the wide range of extra-cinematic influences that defined that cultural moment, and Leitão de Barros’s own career. The “documentary” film was in fact a new concept at the time; in fact, the newly coined term had one of its first uses in Portugal, in relation to this film. Lisbôa thus embodies the concept and practice of a new genre, plus the shifting interests and professional experience of the director, which encompassed cinema, journalism, and theatre.
If we see Lisbôa as the result of the intersection of these various disciplines, we can better appreciate its formal diversity (shifting between documentary and fiction, between capturing modernity and exalting tradition), as well as its episodic structure (theatre sketches alongside thematic photo-reportage) and its flexible configuration (morphing into different versions, tailored to specific audiences: Lisbonians, Portuguese, and foreigners) – all the things that make it a key work, offering a revealing insight into Portuguese culture at the end of the 1920s.
The only known film elements for Lisbôa: Crónica Anedótica are two nitrate 35mm black & white prints, acquired by the Cinemateca Portuguesa from a distributor in December 1949. The first (and longer) print matches the first release version, which premiered in Lisbon on 1 April 1930. The second print, half the length of the first, is inconsistently edited, which may be the result of the removal of sequences for use in other prints.
The first release version was preserved in 1958, and was screened that same year as part of the film season that marked the beginning of the Cinemateca’s regular screenings. The following year the film was shown on RTP, the Portuguese public television network, in a shortened version, and on other, later occasions only via excerpts. The 35mm print screened in Pordenone this year corresponds to the longer release version, preserved in 2001 in the Cinemateca’s photochemical restoration lab, using a more modern duplication technology (wet-gate optical printing).

Tiago Baptista