Brazilian filmmaker Orlando Senna dies aged 86

Brazilian filmmaker Orlando Senna, closely associated with the country’s Cinema Novo movement, has died aged 86, Brazil’s Ministry of Culture said Tuesday. He was best known for directing “Iracema: Uma Transa Amazonica,” a drama set against the backdrop of the military dictatorship’s occupation of the Amazon, alongside Jorge Bodanzky. Senna dedicated his career to “defending culture as an instrument of social transformation,” the ministry said in a statement on Instagram, praising “his work, his generosity, and his dedication to Brazilian culture.” Born in 1940 in Lencois, a town in Brazil’s eastern state of Bahia, Senna devoted more than five decades to film, television and cultural management.

He worked as a director, screenwriter, writer, journalist, playwright and cultural manager. Between 1991 and 1994, Senna headed the International School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Banos (EICTV) in Cuba — a key institution in the training of generations of Latin American filmmakers, founded by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri. He also pioneered the creation of the public broadcaster, TV Brasil.