In a statement released today by the Ministry of Culture, Dalila Rodrigues emphasized that “the quality and depth of knowledge” of Augusto M. Seabra “and his critical thinking about culture, understood in all its dimensions, are reflected in the texts he published in the press over the last decades.”
“A recognized specialist in music, film, and theater criticism, Augusto M. Seabra was a respected programmer. A jury member for various awards and mentor to a vast generation of critics and journalists, he also left his legacy as a founder and journalist of Jornal Público,” the minister recalled.
Augusto M. Seabra died early this morning in Lisbon at the age of 69, due to various prolonged health complications, according to a source close to the family.
Born on August 9, 1955, Augusto Manuel Seabra, trained in Sociology, dedicated himself to music criticism from 1977 and also in cinema, having worked in various periodicals as a columnist, in addition to programming.
He was an executive producer of the Musical Programs Department at RTP and collaborated in the conception of musical theater shows.
An arts critic with involvement in several other areas, Augusto M. Seabra “left an indelible mark on the space of arts criticism in Portugal over the last half-century, particularly in music and cinema,” according to a biographical note on the Portuguese Cinematheque website, where he was a collaborator and to which he left the cinema component of his personal collection.
In 2021, Augusto M. Seabra donated his personal collection, including books, records, DVDs, periodicals, and other documents, to seven public entities, including the Portuguese Cinematheque, the University of Porto, the Lisbon Library Network, the National Library of Portugal, and the library of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon.
The Lisbon School of Music, the School of Arts of the Catholic University of Portugal in Porto, and the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto were also beneficiaries of this donation from the programmer.
Augusto M. Seabra wrote regularly since the late 1970s for newspapers such as A Luta and the weekly Expresso, and also participated as a jury member in several international film festivals, including Cannes, San Sebastian, Turin, Thessaloniki, and Taipei.
He was a programmer for the DocLisboa festival and a consultant for the Script Fund of the former European Union Media program.
With José Nascimento, Augusto M. Seabra co-created the documentary “Manoel de Oliveira: 50 Years of Career,” a pioneering approach to the filmmaker’s work, dated 1981.
In recent years, Augusto M. Seabra was prosecuted in court and acquitted in 2007 for calling Rui Rio, then mayor of Porto, an “energúmeno” (lout) due to a controversy surrounding Casa da Música.
In 2016, then-Minister of Culture João Soares promised him “salutary slaps” – to Augusto M. Seabra and also to Vasco Pulido Valente – for opinion articles criticizing the political action line in culture. João Soares would resign from his position days after the controversy.
