Did you know...

...Portugal's first filmmaker was a florist in Porto?

est. reading time: 6 min

   In this post we unveil the story of how Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, a successful merchant and flower producer, decided to start his 'adventure' in the world of 'animated photography' back in 1896 here in Porto... and also how he failed to do business with the Lumiére brothers...!

A man of many talents: Aurelio da Paz dos Reis

A self-portrait, 1909  

  Born in Porto in 1862, the cunning merchant Aurélio da Paz do Reis devoted most of his life to the production and commerce of... flowers! He owned a shop called "Flora Portuense" in the most central square of Porto ("Praça da Liberdade") from which he would directly sell flowers and export top quality seeds, produced in his own mansion's garden.

The front of Aurélio's flower shop in Praça da Liberdade, Porto, nowadays a pastry shop, Confeitaria Ateneia.

 
Parallel to his firmly established flower business, he also did some work as an acreditted photojournalist -w/press card- selling the photos documenting his travels to a couple of local publications. His topics went from landscapes to local people's habits, Brasil and France's particularly, but he had a knack for theater people's portraits.

Photo of Jaap taken during a Sunrise running tour, in 2017

​ He would also regularly photograph his own family.  Favorite subject: his youngest daughter, Hilda. She used his photos as Christmas and New year's best wishes post cards.

His daughter postcards were usually photos taken by Aurélio dos Reis

In this photo: Hilda dos Reis, sending out a photo Christmas card, placing it in a postal box just out front his flower shop, in Praça da Liberdade, 1910. 

 In addition to all these activities and his travels, he would also find time to sell typewriters from the brand Yast, photographic film from Lumière & Jougla and even automobiles from the Belgium-based manufacturer Minerva...!

Minerva was an prominent car manufacturer based in Antwerp from 1902 to 1938.

1895: a year of changes for Porto and a very special event in Paris.

The Lumière brothers hosted the first ever paid public screening of a film on December 1895, at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This groundbreaking presentation featured 10 short films, the first being the Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory) shot outside their father's photographic film factory with their recently patented Cinematographe.  

 Meanwhile, a lot was changing for the Portuenses and also in the country: 1895 was the year that the new sea commercial port of Leixões began operating, the tramcar network was being electrified, a new outer ring road named Circunvalação had just been built, establishing new boundaries to the city - and tax collection opportunities... Also in 1895, the first petrol-engine car was custom-cleared in Lisbon. Modernity was slowly but unstoppably knocking at the Portuguese door :) 

Aurélio's failed attempt at doing business with the Lumière brothers

 As a tech-savvy photographer, and having heard of the Lumiéres' new innovative equipment that could not only record but also develop and project a sequence of images, he immediately decided he should meet Auguste and Louis Lumière. Him and Antonio Cunha, a business partner, packed their bags and traveled to Lyon to try and buy their new invention.

So, in 1896, he met the brothers for a short conversation where they informed him that the invention was not yet for sale: actually they had enough money and instructions from their father not to sell it to anyone that year...when asked, they would rather say "the cinema is an invention without any future"...

Aurélio, clearly disappointed, set his route to Paris and bought a mechanically similar device and some film from Dujardin & Schaeffer, a store in Condorcet street. He later renamed the device to  “Kinematógrafo Portuguez”.  He quickly returned to Porto and started filming common scenes of the Portuguese life and habits.

Aurelio's first films

All of his short films were in the shape of short documentaries and, in a way, he replicated part of what the Lumiére brothers and others were doing. For instance, his short film “Saída do Pessoal Operário da Fábrica Confiança” (47 seconds) mimics Lumiére's “La Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon” content and even its duration - 46 seconds. It was shot at the entrance a shirt factory, in Santa Catarina street, presently a Benetton's shop.

 Aurélio dos Reis filmed the workers leaving António da Cunha (his associate)'s shirt factory 'Confiança', in 1896

A still from Tom's bespoke running tour in 2018, in Santa Catarina street,
​where the first Portuguese film was shot 

Filmmaking was his shortest-lasting business 'adventure'

Excited for his success in Portugal during the first months, with sold out sessions in several theaters, he starts making plans to go to Brasil. He sails to Rio de Janeiro in 1897 where he hosts a few sessions with his short films depicting scenes of the Portuguese urban and rural life.

 Some serious malfunctions in his projection equipment dictated the cancelation of a session, just 5 days after his premiere. It was seen as a huge flop and Aurélio was forced to cancel all future sessions. He decided to come back to Porto as soon as possible. The financial loss from this overseas adventure prompted him to drop the filmmaking activity altogether.

Aurélio dos Reis devoted his next years to perfecting his photography skills, to his flower business and also to his political career as city councilor and as member of a few local institutions and associations.

A photo taken during the inauguration of Lello bookstore in 1906 is one of Aurélio's best known. 

A former prison is now the place to see Aurélio's work

His firm anti-Monarchy beliefs and Freemason militancy lead him to jail, after participating in the 1891 Republican rebellion, in Porto. It is utterly ironic that the place he was briefly forced to stay,  the former Appeal court house & prison,  is where Aurélio's life work is now kept and often publicly displayed. Presently it is named CPF - Centro Português de Fotografia - the museum and archive of the Portuguese photography's history - LEARN MORE

 A large group running in front of Porto's old Cadeia da Relação, now called CPF, where Aurelio's life work is safely kept.

The Portuguese Centre for Photography (CPF) has permanent and regular temporary exhibitions on old and contemporary photography and equipment.

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