Leila Diniz

Leila Diniz

Born: March 25, 1945
Died: June 14, 1972
in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Leila Roque Diniz (25 March 1945 – 14 June 1972) was a Brazilian television, movie and theatre actress, whose liberal ideas and attitudes about sex had raised the discontent of both the feminists and the Brazilian military government of the 1960s.

Born in a middle-class family and the daughter of a communist activist, Leila worked as a kindergarten teacher at age 15. At age 17, she met movie director Domingos de Oliveira, with whom she lived until age 21. Between 1962 and 1964 she had minor roles on stage. In 1965, Diniz started working in television, where she made several telenovelas and various commercials. In 1967, she also started to make movies.

She died on 14 June 1972, aged 27, at the peak of fame, coming back from a movie festival in Australia, where she won a Best Actress award for the movie Mãos Vazias ("Empty Hands"), in the Japan Airlines Flight 471 crash in India.

Movies for Leila Diniz...

Já que Ninguém me Tira Para Dançar
Title: Já que Ninguém me Tira Para Dançar
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: October 28, 2021
Type: Movie
Conducted from interviews with personalities who lived with Leila Diniz (1945-1972), the documentary is a record of an era and, above all, it rescues the participation in Brazilian culture of the actress who opened the way for the sexual revolution during the dark years of the dictatorship.
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Domingos
Title: Domingos
Character: (archive footage)
Released: January 1, 2009
Type: Movie
A look into the life and mind of Brazilian playwright and filmmaker Domingos Oliveira through his daily activities and artistic deeds.
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Celebração - 100 Anos do Cinema Nacional
Title: Celebração - 100 Anos do Cinema Nacional
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1997
Type: Movie
"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."
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Mulheres de Cinema
Title: Mulheres de Cinema
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: June 6, 1978
Type: Movie
Documentary on famous Brazilian actresses, female directors and the role of women in Brazilian film history.
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Leila Para Sempre Diniz
Title: Leila Para Sempre Diniz
Character: Self
Released: July 23, 1976
Type: Movie
A documentary that presents home movies and several excerpts of known films of famous actress Leila Diniz. Friends of the late actress, tragic killed on a plane crash in 1972, discuss about her life, her work and her legacy in Brazilian culture.
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Love, Carnival and Dreams
Title: Love, Carnival and Dreams
Character: Pirata
Released: February 11, 1972
Type: Movie
On Carnival's eve, girl dreams of a man to stay with her during these four days. She meets a photographer, with whom she has an affair.
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O Donzelo
Title: O Donzelo
Character: Leila
Released: February 1, 1971
Type: Movie
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Mãos Vazias
Title: Mãos Vazias
Character: Ida
Released: January 1, 1971
Type: Movie
In a small town in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a woman rebels against local morality after her child dies, with tragic results.
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The Alienist
Title: The Alienist
Character: Eudóxia
Released: September 21, 1970
Type: Movie
Father Simão Bacamarte arrives in the small town of Serafim to investigate a certain phenomenon of madness.
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Corisco, o Diabo Loiro
Title: Corisco, o Diabo Loiro
Character: Dadá
Released: September 29, 1969
Type: Movie
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Os Paqueras
Title: Os Paqueras
Character: Ela mesma
Released: January 1, 1969
Type: Movie
Two ladykillers living in Rio de Janeiro know no limits when courting a beautiful woman. A problem arises when one of them starts coming on to a girl, not knowing she's his buddy's daughter.
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Hunger for Love
Title: Hunger for Love
Character: Ulla
Released: October 15, 1968
Type: Movie
An extended research tour of US university film programs introduced dos Santos to the American avant-garde filmmakers, among them Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, who would directly inspire his formally radical adaptation of an allegorical short story about adultery and colonialism by Guilherme de Figueiredo. Filmed in both Manhattan and Brazil and set against the background of the Vietnam War and its protests, Hunger for Love uses a rigorously abstract soundtrack and narrative structure to evoke the acute paranoia of the period building up to the December 1968 military coup that tipped Brazil perilously close to a conservative dictatorship. With its harsh critique of the decadent tendencies of the Sixties counterculture, Hunger for Love offers a key expression of the self-consciously “ideological” phase of Cinema Novo. -Harvard Film Archive
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A Madona de Cedro
Title: A Madona de Cedro
Character: Marta
Released: May 21, 1968
Type: Movie
Delfino, a quiet man who lives in Congonhas do Campo, a small historical town in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, is urged by his friend to steal the image of the Madona de Cedro (the Cedar Madonna), sculpted by Aleijadinho in the 18th century, from the town sanctuary.
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O Homem Nu
Title: O Homem Nu
Character: Mariana
Released: March 4, 1968
Type: Movie
A man gets locked naked outside of his apartment.
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Edu, Coração de Ouro
Title: Edu, Coração de Ouro
Character: Tatiana
Released: January 22, 1968
Type: Movie
A volatile young man, Edu is a typical Rio de Janeiro middle-class kind, who flirts with multiple women at the same time. None of them, however, had managed to make him fall in love, until he met with mysterious Tatiana.
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Dangerous Game
Title: Dangerous Game
Character: Servant (segment "Divertimento")
Released: July 20, 1967
Type: Movie
Two dark-comedy stories involving blackmail, murder and love triangles in Rio de Janeiro
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Title: Anastácia, a Mulher sem Destino
Character: Anastácia/Henriette/ Rose
Released: June 28, 1967
Type: TV
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Mineirinho, Vivo ou Morto
Title: Mineirinho, Vivo ou Morto
Released: May 26, 1967
Type: Movie
Based on real-life Brazilian bandit "Mineirinho", the film follows the story of Zezé, a man falsely accused by sensasionalist press of being a high-caliber criminal who suddenly becomes one of the most wanted men of Rio de Janeiro.
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O Mundo Alegre de Helô
Title: O Mundo Alegre de Helô
Released: February 5, 1967
Type: Movie
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Improvised and Purposeful: Cinema Novo
Title: Improvised and Purposeful: Cinema Novo
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: January 1, 1967
Type: Movie
Originally produced for German TV, Improvised and Purposeful is a firsthand look at the "Cinema Novo" movement (otherwise known as the 'Brazilian New Wave'). Director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade focuses on six Cinema Novo filmmakers working in Rio in 1967.
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A Public Opinion
Title: A Public Opinion
Released: January 1, 1967
Type: Movie
Documentary about middle-class people in Rio de Janeiro, in the 1960s, when Brazil was going through a hard period in its history, with the military coup and the following dictatorship. Interviews with people in the street disclose their fears, aspirations and political alienation.
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All the Women in the World
Title: All the Women in the World
Character: Maria Alice
Released: February 2, 1966
Type: Movie
When womanizer Paulo meets a friend’s fiancée, she changes the way he looks at the opposite sex. He falls in love, and believes she is in fact all women in one. Because of that, he has to face an important decision: to go on with his old life, or embrace this special relationship and become a monogamous man.
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Title: Paixão de Outono
Character: Maria Luísa
Released: September 14, 1965
Type: TV
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Title: Ilusões Perdidas
Released: April 26, 1965
Type: TV