Helena Ignez | WatchedThis
Helena Ignez
Acting
Biography
Helena Ignez (Salvador, May 23, 1939) is a Brazilian actress and filmmaker. Helena was born in Salvador, Bahia and was attending her second year of law school when she fell in love with theater and decided to study the Dramatic Arts at the Federal University of Bahia. At the time, the Bahian theater scene was breaking with traditional Brazilian theater and experiencing strong influence from the young vanguard. She first appeared on the screen in Glauber Rocha's short film "Pátio". Helena acted in a few films associated with the Cinema Novo movement, such as "A Grande Feira" (1961), "Assalto ao Trem Pagador" (1962), and "O Padre e a Moça" (1966) before playing Janete Jane in O Bandido da Luz Vermelha by Rogério Sganzerla. After this film, she would perform in some most significant films in the Cinema Marginal movement, which directly opposed the critically acclaimed Cinema Novo -- the most remarkable being her role as Ângela Carne e "Osso in A Mulher de Todos" (1969). She also was a financial partner of Rogério Sganzerla and fellow Cinema Marginal filmmaker Júlio Bressane in the short-lived, although prolific, Belair production company. Between 1968 and 1970, Sganzerla and Ignez made almost a dozen films together and were also married and had two children -- one of which would become actress Djin Sganzerla. As a filmmaker, Ignez has directed 7 films, the most notable being "Luz das Trevas" (2010), a sequel to Sganzerla's debut feature "O Bandido da Luz Vermelha" (1968).
Filmography Movies
Acting
Luz-Lux-Lúcia
A documentary short on Glauber Rocha's mother Lúcia.
Joy Is the Acid Test
A film about love, also a memoir, about the trip made in the 1970s to Morocco by Jarda Ícone, an artist, sexologist, and octogenarian rocker, as she defines herself, and Lírio Terron, a human rights activist. In fact, a journey that is not over in their lives. Jarda Icon teaches classes on how women can obtain their own orgasm. With her group of disciples and friends Ana Brasil, Sheyla Fernanda, Caroline Sylvie and Lakshmi she develops self-sustainable feminist and artistic projects. The film is political, but not at all politicized in the traditional sense. It is an ode to the underground and counterculture movements, it is a hymn to freedom, and its title is also a tribute to Oswald d Andrade, one of the main names in Brazilian modernism.
The Good Cinema
An authentically marginal cinema created in Catholic university in Brazil. One of the most intriguing and imaginative moments in modern cinema in the voice of some of its select conspirators—with Carlos Reichenbach at the lead—, and through the most razing flow of images that can possibly be conceived.
Embodiment of Evil
Released from the Mental Health Wing of São Paulo State Penitentiary after forty years, the sadistic undertaker Zé do Caixão is back on the streets, haunted by ghostly visions and spirits of past victims but still set upon the goal that sent him to prison in the first place: finding a woman who can give him the perfect child.
Celebração - 100 Anos do Cinema Nacional
"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."
The Mother
A street vendor who lives in the outskirts of São Paulo returns home at night and does not find her teenager son. After a nonstop search, she finds out the boy was killed by the police and his body is missing. This is the beginning of this woman’s vertiginous fight for the right to bury her son, a fight that will not only unveil the excessive violence of one of most lethal police forces of the world, but also how structural is racism in Brazilian society.
O Pátio
A man and a woman are laying on a chess-like patio. Both are trying to reach each other in the best way they can. However, for some odd reason they don't get on their feet, they don't talk to each other, and the only sounds heard are voices coming from a radio and strange sounds that seem to indicate something's about to happen.
O Mel é Mais Doce Que o Sangue
The Priest and the Girl
In a small town in Minas Gerais, the arrival of a young priest causes a commotion in the conservative atmosphere of the place, aggravated by the sudden attraction this priest feels for a beautiful girl. This forbidden love affair soon turns into an unbridled passion.
The Hullabaloo Family
A dysfunctional family, composed of a prostitute and two gay men, one strong and the other fragile and stupid, lives a routine life in Rio de Janeiro. When the slut threatens the other two to stop supporting them, they decide to find an odalisque as an alternative to keep their easy life.
Production
Light in Darkness: The Return of Red Light Bandit
Jorge, bastard child of the infamous Red Light Bandit, decides himself to pursuit a life of crime after meeting with his father, who has been incarcerated for the last 30 years.
Canção de Baal
A marginal version of Brecht’s piece, “Baal”.
Ugly, Me?
Ugly, Me? is a film manifesto made from a workshop for actors called Characters in Search of a Movie, in 'La pa', 'Rio De Janeiro', extended to Paris and 'Kerala' (India). Multifaceted like a kaleidoscope, the characters appear in multi-screens scenes and sequences. The images were captured with different kinds of cameras and Ugly, Me? uses this sign of the variety imposed by independent production as language experimentation. Transposing the boundaries of style, Ugly, Me? navigates in a sea of metaphors, philosophical and musical politics, from Prince Harry to Heraclitus, going through a series of authors like Rimbaud, Brecht, Nietzsche, Bispo do Rosario and Eduardo Viveiros DE Castro, capturing a contradictory and original country.
O Pátio
A man and a woman are laying on a chess-like patio. Both are trying to reach each other in the best way they can. However, for some odd reason they don't get on their feet, they don't talk to each other, and the only sounds heard are voices coming from a radio and strange sounds that seem to indicate something's about to happen.
Poder dos Afetos
A study that unwraps a paradisiac scenery, reaching the subjects of Brazility and its force in the change of habits, breaking taboos and bringing out a magical and original reality throught its characters.
Ralé: The Lower Depths
Young directors are filming “The Exhibitionist” in the middle of a farm in a paradise-like region. The film poetically investigates the Brazilian soul, with the Amazon as the center of the world, reflecting on existential issues, the right to sexual freedom and individuality.
A Miss e o Dinossauro
A short documentary on Belair, an independent Brazilian film company that lasted for only five months in 1970.
Joy Is the Acid Test
A film about love, also a memoir, about the trip made in the 1970s to Morocco by Jarda Ícone, an artist, sexologist, and octogenarian rocker, as she defines herself, and Lírio Terron, a human rights activist. In fact, a journey that is not over in their lives. Jarda Icon teaches classes on how women can obtain their own orgasm. With her group of disciples and friends Ana Brasil, Sheyla Fernanda, Caroline Sylvie and Lakshmi she develops self-sustainable feminist and artistic projects. The film is political, but not at all politicized in the traditional sense. It is an ode to the underground and counterculture movements, it is a hymn to freedom, and its title is also a tribute to Oswald d Andrade, one of the main names in Brazilian modernism.
Joy Is the Acid Test
A film about love, also a memoir, about the trip made in the 1970s to Morocco by Jarda Ícone, an artist, sexologist, and octogenarian rocker, as she defines herself, and Lírio Terron, a human rights activist. In fact, a journey that is not over in their lives. Jarda Icon teaches classes on how women can obtain their own orgasm. With her group of disciples and friends Ana Brasil, Sheyla Fernanda, Caroline Sylvie and Lakshmi she develops self-sustainable feminist and artistic projects. The film is political, but not at all politicized in the traditional sense. It is an ode to the underground and counterculture movements, it is a hymn to freedom, and its title is also a tribute to Oswald d Andrade, one of the main names in Brazilian modernism.
Gallery
