Patrícia Mourão de Andrade offers an impassioned portrait of the actress and filmmaker Helena Ignez, a foundational figure in Brazilian filmmaking of the 1960s and 1970s. Long ignored by a national historiography blinded by its own patriarchal distortions, Ignez has only gained recognition in the last fifteen years for her contributions to Brazilian cinema. Moving behind the camera for the first time in 2005, Ignez has created a body of work that brings the anarchic spirit of the Cinema Marginal movement of the late 1960s to Brazilian cinema of the 2000s. This article offers a comprehensive survey and assessment of Ignez’s career, from her first film, O pátio (1959), directed by Glauber Rocha, who became her first husband, to her memorable performances of the 1960s, to her years of political exile, to her recent, late renaissance.

In this essay, Bruno Guaraná argues that Bacurau presents a cinematic intervention that is twofold: first, into global genre cinema, as it disrupts generic conventions of both the Western and the horror film and relocates the narrative to the margins; and second, into Brazilian cinema—in particular, regarding its depictions of the sertão , or hinterland. Guaraná calls attention to the role played by the film’s narrative and musical soundscape in engineering this audiovisual reeducation.

This conversation with directors Patricia Ferreira Pará Yxapy, André Novais Oliveira, Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Rolon, and Julia Katharine took place over email exchanges and recorded phone conversations in the weeks between late June and early late August of 2020. In lieu of a real conversation, in person or online, all of the interviewees were sent the same set of questions, upon which they were invited to reflect. The directors were chosen because of the independent production models they work with, and because their voices, here placed side by side, portrays the sense of heterogeneity and pluriversality that today makes up Brazilian cinema.