Tania Cypriano

Tania Cypriano has been working between the United States and her native Brazil for more than twenty-five years. Her work has been shown around the world in places such as the MoMA, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival, and the Berlin Int'l Film Festival. She has been honored with a retrospective at the Robert Flaherty Seminar, and is a grant recipient of the NY State Council on the Arts, the NY Foundation for the Arts, the Soros Documentary Fund, the Jerome Foundation, Experimental Television, and many others. Strong themes in her documentaries have been health and the body in the context of individuals and communities. Her first documentary “Viva Eu!,” which won five international awards, including Best Documentary at Joseph Papp’s Festival Latino in New York, is about the first man diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in Brazil. “Odô Yá! Life with AIDS”, which won seven awards including a special jury prize at FESPACO in Burkina Faso, explores how Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion, became a source of strength and power for a group of AIDS sufferers.

Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (1995)

A biography of the Portuguese-Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti-frutti hat. From her arrival in the US as the "Brazilian Bombshell" to her Broadway career and Hollywood stardom in the 1940s.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Helena Solberg
CAST:  Carmen Miranda  •  Aurora Miranda  •  Cesar Romero  •  Rita Moreno

A biography of the Portuguese-Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti-frutti hat. From her arrival in the US as the "Brazilian Bombshell" to her Broadway career and Hollywood stardom in the 1940s.  (more)

DIRECTION:  Helena Solberg
CAST:  Carmen Miranda  •  Aurora Miranda  •  Cesar Romero  •  Rita Moreno

Born to Be (2019)

Soon after New York state passed a 2015 law that health insurance should cover transgender-related care and services, director Tania Cypriano and producer Michelle Hayashi began bringing their cameras behind the scenes at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where this ...  (more)

DIRECTION:  Tania Cypriano
CAST:  Leiomy Maldonado  •  Garnet Rubio  •  Mahogany Phillips  •  Jess Ting

Soon after New York state passed a 2015 law that health insurance should cover transgender-related care and services, director Tania Cypriano and producer Michelle Hayashi began bringing their cameras behind the scenes at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where this ...  (more)

DIRECTION:  Tania Cypriano
CAST:  Leiomy Maldonado  •  Garnet Rubio  •  Mahogany Phillips  •  Jess Ting

Viva Eu! (2002)

A documentary that celebrates the life of Brazilian artist Wilton Braga, one of the first persons in Brazil to be diagnosed with AIDS. We witness the flesh and soul of a man with remarkable strength and resolve in the face of a life-threatening illness; to find ...  (more)

DIRECTION:  Tania Cypriano
CAST: 

A documentary that celebrates the life of Brazilian artist Wilton Braga, one of the first persons in Brazil to be diagnosed with AIDS. We witness the flesh and soul of a man with remarkable strength and resolve in the face of a life-threatening illness; to find ...  (more)

DIRECTION:  Tania Cypriano
CAST: