Project Description
Joana Pimenta
Director, Film Study Center, FSC-Harvard Fellow 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20
Joana Pimenta is a filmmaker from Portugal, living and working in the Unites States and Brazil. Her latest film Dry Ground Burning, co-directed with Adirley Queirós, tells the story of the Gasolineiras de Kebradas – a group of women from the periphery of Sol Nascente who steal oil and resist Bolsonaro’s presidency – as it echoes through the walls of Colmeia, the women’s prison of Brasilia. Dry Ground Burning premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, screened at the New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, among many others, and received more than 30 awards around the world. Dry Ground Burning had theatrical releases in the United States, France, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, among other countries. Joana teaches in the department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University, where she is Director of Graduate Studies for Critical Media Practice and Director of the Film Study Center at Harvard.
FSC Works
An Aviation Field
Joana Pimenta, 14 min. (2016)
An aviation field in an unknown suburb.
The lake underneath the city burns the streets. The mountains throw rock into the gardens. In the crater of a volcano in Fogo, a model Brazilian city is lifted and dissolves.
Two people find each other in this landscape, 50 years apart.
The Figures Carved into the Knife by the Sap of the Banana Trees
Joana Pimenta, 14 min. (2014)
With its indelible images and an air of mystery, Joana Pimenta’s The Figures Carved into the Knife by the Sap of the Banana Trees mines an archive of correspondence between the island of Madeira and the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Because Pimenta’s source material is supplemented by fictive memories, imagination comes to fill in the lacunae of a long-suppressed history. Part postcard, part landscape film, part auto-fiction, The Figures Carved is both a sensual and sensory experience. (Harvard Art Museum)
Related Posts
FSC Filmmakers make Film Comment Magazine’s “Best Films of 2023”
Congratulations to FSC filmmakers Joana Pimenta, Adirley Queirós, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel, and Alain Gomis
“Dry Ground Burning” by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós reviewed in the New York Times and Begins Theatrical Run
"Dry Ground Burning" by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós was recently reviewed in the New York Times and begins its theatrical run at BAM.
Joana Pimenta named Interim Director of the Film Study Center
We are delighted to announce that, as of July 1, Joana Pimenta will be the Interim Director of the Film Study Center.