Augusto Macedo

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Augusto Macedo (* 1902 ; † January 17, 1997 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese taxi driver who lived in Lisbon and was considered the city ​​original . Probably the longest-serving taxi driver of all time was the protagonist of the film Taxi Lisboa .

Life

Augusto Macedo was born in 1902 and came to Lisbon from a village in the interior of Portugal when he was twelve to work in his uncle's bakery. He was a taxi driver all his professional life, from 1928 to 1996 and almost seventy years. His company car was an Oldsmobile F-28 Cabriolet , which he bought with borrowed money in 1928 after completing his military service. In the same year he received his taxi license. He never drove another taxi, covered more than 2.5 million kilometers with it and repaired it himself over the years. In the meantime, the motor vehicle tax was waived, but driving in the dark was forbidden because the car had no driving lights . In the 1990s he was still driving it through Lisbon and entertaining his passengers from a large pool of stories and anecdotes. Countless tourists drove with him - some for generations; internationally it also became a symbol for taxis and taxi drivers from another era. Auto Bild wrote in 1987 that Macedo was "known in the city like only football stars ", and in 2014 the German director Wolf Gaudlitz described him as a "synonym for this city".

Wolf Gaudlitz met Macedo in 1994 and shot the documentary film Táxi Lisboa with him in 1994/95 , which shows the life and everyday life of Macedo with bizarre passengers and scenes from Lisbon. The film was first shown on October 31, 1996. In the same year Augusto Macedo gave up driving a taxi for health reasons at the age of 93. Macedo received the award for best amateur actor for Táxi Lisboa at the Festival Mediterraneo della Laicità in Pescara . Since he was hospitalized for a heart attack, his grandson accepted the award for him. Macedo died in Lisbon on January 17, 1997, the day the film was shown in several Lisbon cinemas. Over a hundred taxis accompanied his funeral procession.

The film ran for years in German and Swiss art house cinemas , and the New York Museum of Modern Art bought it in 1997 as a work of art for its cinematheque. Taxi Lisboa was digitized in 2016 to “safeguard the cinematic heritage” with funds from the Filmförderungsanstalt .

Set in Lisbon district Carnide is the Rua Augusto Macedo a street named after him. His taxi was bought by the Lisbon Tourism Association in 1998 and is exhibited in different locations, including the Praça do Comércio . The car was one of six produced that year, three of which were shipped to Europe; Macedos is the only one preserved from them.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elizabeth Nash: Lisbon road movie that made a star aged 93. In: The Independent , February 1, 1997 (English).
  2. ↑ Old-timer taxi in Lisbon - these two old men are pretty sprightly. In: Auto Bild , April 12, 2011, first published in No. 27, 1987.
  3. ↑ The Lisbon by Wolf Gaudlitz. In: Lisboa Soulcity , August 19, 2014.
  4. ↑ Taxi Lisboa. In: Filmlexikon , two thousand and one .
  5. ^ Augusto Macedo, 94, Lisbon, Portugal's, oldest taxi driver… In: The Baltimore Sun , January 20, 1997 (English); Deaths: Augusto Macedo. In: The Washington Post , January 21, 1997 (English).
  6. ↑ “Taxi Lisboa” is back in the cinemas. In: Taxi-Heute.de , February 9, 2017.
  7. ^ Deaths: Augusto Macedo. In: The Washington Post , January 21, 1997 (English).
  8. ↑ See you again with Taxi Lisboa. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 24, 2017; Lisbon - the people and their city. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , March 13, 2008 (English).
  9. ↑ Taxi Lisboa: director introduces his film. In: Heimatzeitung.de , March 19, 2017.
  10. ^ Afonso Ferreira: Augusto eo Oldsmobile. In: Um homem na cidade. March 8, 2011 (Portuguese, private blog).
  11. ↑ Elizabeth Nash: Lisbon road movie that made a star aged 93. In: The Independent , February 1, 1997 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Macedo, Augusto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese taxi driver
DATE OF BIRTH 1902
DATE OF DEATH January 17, 1997
Place of death Lisbon