- "AG" are the initials of each surname of Emanuel's mother and father, respectively.
Because "AG" is composed of the initials of two surnames, it should be spelled in any way other than as full capital letters.
Despite to abbreviate surnames to initials, "AG" can also be the short for Emanuel's maternal family name of "Agarez" he started to use in his early career and the surname he was known by his instructors at the Lisbon Film School.
The use of the compound "AG" in lieu of only "Agarez" also happened as homage to Emanuel's father, since it includes the initial of his father's family name. As well, to the women of the family, once the two surnames come from each grandmother.
The choice of its use ("AG") can also be seen as an ethically self-effacing path in a new century, where internet usage of domains stands in times of democratized content creation and distribution. - Usually credited as Emanuel Agarez while working as a director or Emanuel Agarez-Guedes also for distinct kind of work/projects and a variety of fields such as photographer, publisher or creator/producer crossing different arts and media sectors.
The second part of his birth name ("Emanuel") is the only baptismal name with no other source than the only one specifically chosen for him (by his mother) from its Hebrew origin romanized, which means "God is with us". Dropping the first part of his compound given name (in common with his father's forename) to start when credited throughout his film work. As well as from Portuguese tradition, his double surnames to embrace his matrilineal surname and seldom found instead, once promptly escalated to the international league then -- during the year of 1994 with The Stranglers: Live in Concert (Portugal) (1994). - He met and befriended the producer and his instructor Fernando Ghia as his postgraduate student in Rome during the Master in Audiovisual Management (EMAM) promoted locally by ANICA - Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive Multimediali and financed by the European Commission's MEDIA Program.
Fernando Ghia became one of the most inspirations of Emanuel AG for his career as a film producer. - Emanuel AG has the Portuguese editor José Manuel Alves Pereira as a key influence for the work and style of the editing of his cinema, along the oeuvre of Krzysztof Kieslowski (and his editor Jacques Witta in three of his last feature films) during a workshop when he personally made contact with the three men for the first time in the early days of his career as a filmmaker.
José Manuel Alves Pereira became his instructor and main mentor ahead at the Lisbon Film School aka National Theatre and Film School in Portugal, where he was colleague of his usual collaborator Bernie Rao and Paulo Lourenço (the three former classmates worked together on The Baldlands (2015)) among other Portuguese of same generation, e.g. Francisco Botelho, son of a previous student from one and the same film school, the Portuguese director João Botelho. - As a cineaste, it is reported to also be an avid cinephile and to have ridden once 500 miles (800 kilometers) in just a few hours only in order to not miss the 89 minute theatrical version of Vittorio De Sica's Terminal Station (1953) rather than to be restricted to both shorter David O. Selznick's versions available in anything other than home video by then.
Another one from his personal collection, Europa (1991) is also on the top of his playlist. Directed by the Danish Lars von Trier, Emanuel thoroughly studied when he got his degree in Film Directing. A decade earlier when the movie was released, still as law student in Coimbra (Portugal), Emanuel watched it for more than 10 times (Vanda Vaz his long-standing collaborator by then reported 13 times a year in a row) attending the late-night movie sessions during the weekends in Lisbon, 125 miles (200 kilometers) away, riding more than 250 miles only for another screening of the same piece of art he has considered one of the movies of his life. - Emanuel celebrated the silver 25th anniversary of his career as a film and TV producer, the year before, joining as a Co-Producer his father Armando Guedes da Costa as an Associate Producer and Executive Producer later on in Make-Believers (2021), finished and released a year later.
Make-Believers (2021) tells the story of the relationship of a son dedicated to a creative craft with his father struggling to accept a much distinct professional path. Lifelike as a son of a prominent lawyer and an independent filmmaker Emanuel AG has become. - The personal contact with Tonino Guerra as his master, left a strong influence on his postgraduate education. Also throughout his major influence and Emanuel's former business partner Fabrizio Mosca in One Hundred Steps (2000), former collaborator with Michelangelo Antonioni (another yardstick of both film producers) in To Make a Film Is to Be Alive (1995), his love for the Italian Cinema has had a crucial role on his filmography. Vittorio De Sica, the maestro Guerra worked with, is another one of his landmarks.
- He met José Álvaro Morais in the mid '90s and that had an impact on their further respective careers. They collaborated with each other and he worked as his publicist, having helped to recognize his filmography in the history of the Portuguese cinema and relaunch his filmmaking career throughout Emanuel's work as a film critic and a film curator/programmer. He was the first one to globally organize a retrospective of Morais' oeuvre when his name was yet to receive a nationwide acknowledgment in their own mother country. Morais became one of the most promising gems of the Portuguese cinema and a unique lookout of the European landscape, a future Manoel de Oliveira if not prematurely missed.
- He is also a former film curator/programmer and an award-winning film critic (e.g. 26th Figueira da Foz International Film Festival). Former board member of the Coimbra Academic Association's film society (Centro de Estudos Cinematográficos da Associação Académica de Coimbra), entity at the helm of the most prominent national film event dedicated to the Portuguese cinema, Caminhos Film Festival. Former board member of the department in charge of the cultural affairs of the same academic institution in the mid '90s. Refounder of the praiseworthy Coimbra Film Society while student in the town with established tradition including many local academic individualities as well University students, João Botelho for example, from common origin and alma mater.
- As an Associate Producer, Emanuel AG helped Zeresenay Mehari to succeed and be the fourth film director ever to shoot Difret (2014) on 35mm in Ethiopia, without local labs, assisting the feature film as a producer to organize the ultimate financing and raise the necessary finishing funds in order to comply the budget, followed up the shipment of the daily rushes (aka dailies in the U.S.) to India.
Only then, the Academy Award-winning actress and producer Angelina Jolie joins the crew of Difret (2014) as an Executive Producer. - He started his career in the media as a Radio host, producer and author of several radio shows in the mid '80s as a teenager. He interviewed then many relevant names to the music scene such as the Portuguese Rui Reininho, Zé Pedro, Rui Veloso or yet later on, the globally acclaimed The Stranglers and Mike Scott (The Waterboys).
His radio career as a host/producer/author lasted for longer than a decade where throughout the radio production in partnership with his long-standing co-worker and old collaborator Vanda Vaz, their radio programming is dedicated to promote thousands of film soundtracks, either from contemporary cinema or from the history of the medium, as one of the leading lines for their further TV and film careers. - He joined AJ Young featured at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013 as "The future of film" when invited to join Team Oscar and present awards on stage to the winners, for his lovely cinematography work on Dearest Jane (2015) written and directed by the promising John Lerchen on his debut feature film produced by Emanuel AG.
- The New Yorker selected the Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014) co-written and directed by Josephine Decker he produced as Associate Producer and screened at the Berlinale 2014 (Berlin International Film Festival) as the second best film of the year, next to the US$25,000,000 budget (US$172,000,000 gross worldwide) Wes Anderson's Academy and BFTA award-winning The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).
- Margarida Gil who started her filmmaking career by the joint action of João César Monteiro (cineaste and former film critic Emanuel was used to share the National Film Archive screenings with, when film student in Lisbon) as her Assistant Director, she was the director of one of Emanuel AG's earliest gigs as a TV Producer, the year after his live concert video to The Stranglers, yet before Emanuel had pursued his international progress as a film producer.
- Gilles Deleuze's theories have produced a strong impact on his position on cinema and he studied thoroughly his contribution along his education at the Lisbon Film School. Rafael Godinho, Emanuel AG's Professor then, Deleuze's connoisseur widely renowned and his Portuguese translator, ranked Emanuel as a very loyal disciple of the rhizomatic model and one of his best former students ever (19 out of 20), as well as a devoted expert of the French philosopher's thinking.
- His uncle Fernando Guedes da Costa emigrated to Paris in the '60s of the 20th century to be film student at the Conservatoire libre du cinéma français (CLCF), film school endowed by Marcel Carné and a family influence altogether on his childhood.
Three movie theaters (Cine-Teatro Garrett, Póvoa Cine and Cine-Estúdio Santa Clara) in a Portuguese bustling holiday town (Póvoa de Varzim, also suburb of Porto/Oporto), where he was used to spend his summer vacations as a child, launched his cinephilia still very young in the late '70s and first half of the '80s of the 20th century. Um conto de duas cidades (2017) based on a photograph taken by Agnès Varda when visited the town in 1956 is the portrayal about such town in the decades before. A couple of years earlier in the same town when José Milhazes was born, a native and journalist/historian/Russian-Portuguese translator Emanuel met in a comparable Eastern Europe route.
Emanuel has lived in many different countries abroad oftentimes in Rome (Italy), Hamburg (Germany) and Eastern Europe in parallel with a few former ex-YU Republics (Podgorica/ex-Titograd, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade) and in-between Moscow (Russia) and Kiev (Ukraine), whilst the major grounds of his work and credits are based in both sides of the North Atlantic, Europe/UK and United States. - As his invitee, the filmmaker and guru of the Portuguese cinema and television Fernando Lopes met Emanuel AG in the mid '90s when he was one of the organizers of the Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival and coordinated the 20th anniversary celebration of the Carnation Revolution / 25 April 1974 military coup with the selection of a film retrospective from several filmmakers to tell the story of the cinema of that period (Manuel Costa e Silva who Emanuel went on to meet again as one of the Lisbon Film School's masters when attended the reputable place of graduation, was one of them) and a photography exhibition with work of Eduardo Gageiro, José Antunes and Alfredo Cunha. From then on, both men shared a reciprocal empathy to each other and over the same craft and love for the cinema. The director of Belarmino (1964), Uma Abelha na Chuva (1972) or O Fio do Horizonte (1993) (where he teamed up with Zbigniew Preisner and Jacques Witta) was who personally introduced Emanuel to Krzysztof Kieslowski.
The year after in 1995, Emanuel proposed to the TV programmer João Garção Borges a TV program dedicated to the short film length, who working in the department of film related acquisitions at the national public broadcasting state TV in Portugal (RTP) as Fernando Lopes' successor in-charge (same job title, same television network), launched the TV show in 1996 from Emanuel's model presented a year before.
"Onda Curta" lasted for 18 years (until this RTP Executive resigned from the Portuguese TV station) and actually was thought up under Emanuel's proposal and initiative from his experience along the Curtas Vila do Conde 2nd International Film Festival's organization, who their majority members didn't want to adhere to his opening gambit and made them all to miss the road map subsequently pursued by Garção Borges then, acting as a mix of surrogate father and/or stepfather of the project (from his privileged part to not let it drop once RTP insider). Emanuel walked away and such promising three-fold collaboration route came to an end. - He met Luis Proenca from the California-based LMU - Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles) in 1997-98, who served as his principal when he lectured at the Portuguese Catholic University's School of Arts (Sound and Image Department) in Porto/Oporto, Portugal.
- Emanuel AG shares his birthday (October 17) with IMDb when Col Needham posted his movie-listing software to a USENET film discussion group, founded in the same year Emanuel opted for his filmmaker calling rather than to be a lawyer as his father. Just a couple of years older than one of his closest childhood cater-cousins -- the Portuguese and Braga-based photographer Silvino Rodrigues, the founder of IMDb was born in the same day and month.
- It is used to be credited as "shot and cut by" for his arthouse body of work as auteur. He abbreviates his numerous roles in his film credits even before Robert Rodriguez had started the same practice.
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