Edgar Pêra

Short Biography

Edgar Henrique Clemente Pêra (born 19 November 1960) is a Portuguese filmmaker. He writes occasionally fiction and essays and is also a graphic comics artist. Edgar Pêra studied Psychology, but switched to Film at the Portuguese National Conservatory, presently Lisbon Theatre and Film School (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema). Aka Mr. Ego, Man-Kamera (image), Artur Cyanetto (sound). Edgar Pêra has auto-financed and produced many his own movies, or directed "auteur films" for cultural institutions. " If there has been in Portugal a filmmaker who has continuously filmed (apart from the well-known case, in the opposite direction, of Manoel de Oliveira), he is Edgar Pêra, as a consequence of his availability and insistence on doing so regardless of the perennial problems of juries and public subsidies. But it is also a consequence of his adaptation to light technologies, he and his camera, constituting symbiotically an "Ego" that is really making its own film-diaries". (Augusto M. Seabra) Pêra started as a screenwriter but in 1985 bought a camera, inspired by Dziga Vertov, and never stopped shooting on a dially basis. "Pêra has a penchant for odd, eccentric, obscure and sometimes twisted humor. His unique touches include an arthouse, avant-garde approach somehow combining retro and avant-garde modernities.” (Zev Toledano)