Helena Solberg

Helena Solberg (born June 17, 1938, in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian-born documentarist who, since 1971, has made her career in the United States. She is recognized as the only woman to participate in "Cinema Novo" movement in Brazil.

In 1983, Solberg received an Emmy Award for From the Ashes: Nicaragua Today, documentary on a new society that born of political turmoil in Central America and the role that the U.S. plays in determining its future.

Helena Solberg was born in Rio de Janeiro, daughter of a Norwegian father and Brazilian mother, lived for a long time in New York City, and established herself as a producer and director of documentaries in Brazil and the United States. She began her career from contact with big names of the new movies, as Carlos Diegues and Arnaldo Jabor, a time when she lived with them during the studies at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. Solberg began in adolescence working as a reporter at the Metropolitano newspaper and by mastering English and French interviewed important names like the writer Clarice Lispector and also the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre.

Her debut as a filmmaker occurred in 1966 with the short film A Entrevista. In 1969 directed Meio-dia, a fiction about the revolt of students in the classroom, with the context the period of military dictatorship in Brazil, Caetano Veloso's music, É proibido proibir (It is forbidden to forbid).

In the 70s, she took up residence in the United St…