Orlando Senna, Co-Director of Milestone Brazilian Feature ‘Iracema,’ Dies at 86

Senna also served over 1991-94 as head of Cuba’s San Antonio de los Baños International School of Film and TV, co-founded by Gabriel García Marquez

By John Hopewell

John Hopewell

Chief International Correspondent

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Orlando Senna, a high-energy, tireless and charming Brazilian filmmaker, playwright, writer and cultural activist, died June 9 from pneumonia in Rio de Janeiro. He was 86. 

Senna reached everlasting fame as director with Jorge Bodanzky of 1974’s “Iracema” (“Iracema: Uma Transa Amazonica”), a hard-hitting social realist feature sometimes ranked in lists of the best Brazilian films of all time, died June 9. It is sometimes cited as a high-profile title in Brazil’s Cinema Novo, though in reality by that time the movement had pretty much run its course and the film is lightyears away from the style of, say, Glauber Rocha.

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