Juliana Gonçalves - Portfolio 2025

JULIANA GONÇALVES

brazilian producer and cultural manager

PORTFOLIO 2025

updated on march 24, 2025

PRESENTATION

Juliana Gonçalves is dedicated to artistic projects that play a relevant socio-cultural role. As well as having studied History and completed her BA in Cultural Production, she also has a degree in Audiovisual Production and Executive Production for Film and TV. She has been working in the area since 2015 and is registered by the Rio de Janeiro Artists and Technicians Union as a Theatrical Production Director. Her family has roots in the northeast of Brazil, an arid region and home of many brazilian indigenous peoples, such as her own great-grandmother, from the Caeté people.

Since 2020, Juliana has been researching the history of brazilian theater from a decolonial perspective, reclaiming indigenous culture as a pillar of brazilian scenic construction. In 2024, her research was published by the Fluminense Federal University. In this research, Juliana seeks to identify which elements of contemporary theater still reproduce catechetical elements and to reflect on them. Her connection with her indigenous ancestry is not through self-declaration as indigenous, but through the realization of authorial projects of a decolonial nature that revisit history, listen to indigenous peoples, reject the dichotomy of “good” and “evil” and challenge the official narrative through art. In this way, Juliana unites her two passions: history and cultural production.

1 short film , as a producer

2 degree in audiovisual production

2 years working as a cultural producer in a large company

2 years working in a museum , in the cultural sector as a producer

EXPERIENCE SO FAR

10 years of artistic career

2 theater plays , as a producer 2021

2020

BA in Cultural Production at Fluminense Federal University in RJ

1 play-film , as a executive producer

1 collective art exhibitions

1 scenic experiments , as a producer

1 popular parade , as producer

2 short films , directing and writing one of them

3 theater plays , having conceived one of them

3 performances , as a producer

EXPANDED CINEMA

Mandinga de Gorila (2024)

(The Spell of Gorillas)

THEATER PLAYS

Karaíba: um musical originário (2024-2021)

(Karaíba: an indigenous musical)

Limbos (2024)

(In Limbo)

IMMERSIVE

PERFORMANCE

de pelos y cicatrices (2024)

(About hair and scars)

CARNIVAL FESTIVITIES

Folguedo da Vila Vintém (2024)

(Revelry in Vila Vintém)

PLAY-FILM

Império Nacionalista (2023-21)

(Nationalist Empire)

SHORT FILM

As plantas no meu quintal (2021)

(The plants in my backyard)

REMARKABLE WORKS

DESCRIPTION

click here to access | clipping

Short film directed and scripted by Luzé Gonçalves and Juliana Gonçalves. The film is produced and distributed by Duas Mariola Filmes. Synopsis: In Vila Vintém (RJ), there is an entity that is still very much present in the history of the former residents. The strips of plastic bag that make up its body are the same ones that lead us to find these hidden memories. The film evokes the manifest power of the Gorila de Saco in the lanes and alleys where it was marked by violence, through the enchantment of the new entity: the Gorila de Malha.

With the proposal of being an expanded cinema, instigated by the Lab Cinema Expandido (residency at MAM-RJ), the film was part of the exhibition “Rio de Janeiro: Ghosts, Masks and Territories”, open to the public between July 10 and September 1, 2024, at Futuros Arte e Tecnologia, in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to the film, Luzé and Juliana exhibited two works: the costumes of the Gorila de Saco and the Gorila de Malha, characters from the movie.

acess instagram @mandingadegorila

Karaíba, um musical originário

play, by Juliana Gonçalves

DESCRIPTION

click here to access | clipping | full theater play

A project conceived by Juliana Gonçalves, which was awarded a public tender in Rio de Janeiro in 2021. The result of Juliana's authorial research, which began in 2020, the play is an adaptation of the book “Karaíba: a pre-Brazilian story” by renowned Brazilian indigenous author Daniel Munduruku, who transferred the copyright directly to Juliana.. The play KARAÍBA, which had a technical staff made up mostly of indigenous artists, toured Brazil in 4 states (SP, RJ, MG and PR) and 16 municipalities, as well as taking part in various national and international theater festivals. Karaíba received 12 nominations for the CBTIJ 2024 award, winning in the categories of best adapted text, best costume design and best leading actress.

In 2024, Juliana published a research for the Fluminense Federal University entitled “Cultural production as a decolonial tool: a case study of the play Karaíba in comparison with catechetical theater in Brazil”, seeking to identify which elements of Brazilian theater still reproduce catechetical elements and reflect on them, taking this play as a case study.

acess instagram: @espetaculokaraiba

DESCRIPTION

A theatrical play devised by the artists Marcus Liberato and Guian in 2024. The play was directed by Renata Tavares, winner of the 33rd Shell Theatre Award in the directing category and the 17th National APTR in the best actress category for her show “Nem todo filho vinga” (Not every child survives); and had the production direction of Juliana Gonçalves, producer nominated in the production direction category of the 8th CBTIJ Award.

Under the production direction of Juliana Gonçalves, the play received funding from the Rio de Janeiro State Secretariat for Culture and Creative Economy and ran a successful one-month season at the Ruth de Souza Theater in Rio de Janeiro. As the play deals with parental abandonment, the season was marked by partnerships aimed at democratizing access to culture, welcoming people with hearing disabilities and/or in situations of social vulnerability. These actions were coordinated by producer Juliana Gonçalves.

de pelos y cicatrices

immersive performance, production by Juliana Gonçalves

DESCRIPTION

click here to access | clipping | live performance

Exhibition of artwork at the first edition of the Ventana Sur Festival, organized by the Cuerpo Sur Foundation, in January 2024. The artists who took part in the Avanzada Sur residency during 2023 took part in this exhibition. Luzé Gonçalves, one of the artists taking part in the residency, has also been Juliana's partner in cultural work for 8 years, and took part in the Ventana Sur Festival with her work “de pelos y cicatrices”.

As her first international work, Juliana Gonçalves was responsible for producing the audiovisual and photographic materials for Luzé's performance “de pelos y cicatrices” in Brazil. Produced in 2023, the materials were exhibited in an installation performance held in Chiloé in December 2023 and in Santiago, the capital of Chile, in January 2024. Juliana Gonçalves took part in the Ventana Sur Festival, providing local assistance to Luzé in setting up and dismantling the exhibition, as well as during the live performances.

DESCRIPTION

click here to access | clipping | full performance

In the second half of 2023 and in January 2024, the project “Folguedo da VV” was carried out, the brainchild of Luzé Gonçalves and the production direction of Juliana Gonçalves, who also raised the funds to make this project possible through Fomento à Cultura Carioca, in 2022. The project took place in the Vila Vintém favela, in Rio de Janeiro, where the tradition of folia de Reis had been left behind for more than 20 years. With the idea of reviving the tradition and also appropriating it, Folguedo da Vila Vintém invited young artists from the Vila Vintém favela to create a decolonial version of this parade. It celebrated the entities of Afro-Brazilian religions and the young artists told the story of the community through slam, as well as singing popular Brazilian songs. They all wore clothes that referred to the tradition of the Gorilas de Saco, a figure from Rio's popular culture, a theme that also appears in the short film “Mandinga de Gorila”, directed by the duo Luzé and Juliana. The project was supported by the Unidos de Padre Miguel samba school.

Império Nacionalista

play-film, performance and dramaturgy by Luzé

DESCRIPTION

click here to access | clipping | full play-film

Another project from the 8-year partnership with the artist Luzé, Império Nacionalista had its premiere between November and December 2021. The play-film is the result of research that began in 2017. The dramaturgy and performance is by Luzé Gonçalves, produced by Juliana Gonçalves and directed by Ana Kfouri. The project, which began with this play-film had several developments with Luzé's authorial works, such as the publication of the dramaturgy, presentations in streets and museum. All the developments were produced by Juliana Gonçalves, reaffirming the duo's 8-year partnership. Império Nacionalista moves in an impetus to break with the vicious process of racialization that has kept us, since “1500”or even before - in an active colonization in progress. In this wandering autofiction, the mestizo myth is traversed in all its complexity and different facets. From within the mestiza, Luzé speaks in relation to Brazilian mythology. Autophagic, the artist eats the dead cells of her own body, rotten elements born of the colonial narrative, confronting the necropolitics that produces Brazil and its racist allegories.

As plantas no meu quintal short film conceived and produced by Juliana Gonçalves

DESCRIPTION

click here to access | clipping | full play-film

A short film made in 2021, during the pandemic, through Rio de Janeiro's emergency cultural support fund. Conceived and produced by Juliana Gonçalves, the film has a script by Adanilo, cinematography by Gabriel Grato, art direction by Tarso Gentil and directory assistance by Luzé Gonçalves. It is directed collectively by all the artists involved. The project also has a partnership with the village of Rio Pequeno, Paraty - Rio de Janeiro, a community of the Guarani Nhandeva people. The protagonists of the film are from this community and the story is part of Juliana Gonçalves' research project, which began in 2020. The short film is still being finalized and has not yet been released.