Essays

Carmen Santos

Pessoa, Ana

For many poor women in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the early 20th century, the only work available was in factory sweatshops or big city department stores. A young Portuguese immigrant, Maria do Carmo managed to escape this fate when she responded to an advertisement in a magazine and was cast as the lead actress in a film produced and directed by American William Jansen titled Urutau (1919). She would become the motion picture star Carmen Santos. In a fascinating interview in 1929 with the fan magazine Cinearte, Santos admitted that Urutau, the very film in which she starred, was the first film that she had ever seen in the theatre

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Academic Units
Film
Libraries
Series
Women Film Pioneers Project
Published Here
October 15, 2019