Lost Portuguese animation from 1931 to screen after fair find
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Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon will screen the 1931 Portuguese animated film “A Lenda de Miragaia” on October 27th, after a film enthusiast found its negative for sale at the Feira da Ladra flea market.
Raúl Faria da Fonseca and António Cunhal directed the film, which was previously considered lost. Duarte Veloso and his father discovered two cans containing the nitrate cellulose film at the market and donated it to the Cinemateca, hoping it would be restored and shown publicly.
The Cinemateca identified and restored the film using analog methods. The screening coincides with the end of a project funded by Portugal’s Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência, which allowed the institution to digitize over 1,000 Portuguese films originally shot on film. The animation used a darkroom and stop-motion technique, requiring 28,400 frames.
Cinemateca Portuguesa reconstructed the original intertitles and editing based on handwritten notes on the negative, historical sources, and a version of the legend found in the work of Almeida Garrett.
