The film “Painéis de São Vicente de Fora, Visão Poética” is Manoel de Oliveira’s personal reflection on the Panels of São Vicente de Fora, a sixteenth century work attributed to the painter Nuno Gonçalves. It is one of the most famous and mysterious paintings in Portuguese art history. Its authorship and meaning have been the subjects of endless debate. However, this work is unanimously acknowledged as one of the most important representations of Portuguese society at the moment it prepared for the oceanic voyages that led to the birth of a new knowledge of the planet and its peoples. The short feature dedicated by Manoel de Oliveira to the Panels of São Vicente de Fora was filmed at Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. Manoel de Oliveira builds a live picture, gathering together the actors representing the figures portrayed in the Panels in the Museum room where the painting is on display. Amongst other actors, the film features Ricardo Trêpa and Diogo Dória in the roles of São Vicente and Prince Henry The Navigator, respectively. São Vicente and the Prince join in a poignant appeal to justice, fraternity and peace between peoples regardless of race or religion. At the end of the film a dance of great antiquity is interpreted by the group Pauliteiros de Miranda do Douro, a renowned traditional dance group from the northeast of Portugal. In a brief text written about the film Manoel de Oliveira states: “With Painéis de São Vicente de Fora what was filmed was not a documentary. What was filmed was a fiction where a new interpretation is given to the configuration of the Panels – a fiction among others – that finds inspiration in the current crisis and growing dehumanizing that spreads across our country and, even more so, in other places across Europe and the world. The film is a call for peace and a return to global peacefulness as envisioned in the wake of the Discoveries – initiated by Portugal and finalized by Spain – that took place only after the polyptych was painted and produced a complete knowledge of the universe at a time when the House or the habitat of humanity was still unknown.”