Helena Franco, FCLC '26

Major: Film and Television

Bio: Helena Franco is a graduating senior at Fordham University. She is proficient in both analog and digital filmmaking and photography, and has directed fictional and documentary projects, as well as theater. Her work aims to create a dream-like immersiveness that simultaneously articulates social justice and society's gray areas. She hopes to pursue a film career that draws on her holistic education, with the understanding that all areas of knowledge inform collaborative art-making.

Title of Research: Ubachuva

Mentor: Zeljka Blaksic, Visual Arts

Abstract: Ubachuva is a short documentary that explores how identities are affected and defined by generational and personal memories of landscape. There is an inevitable interdependency between how we understand history, ourselves, and what's natural versus man-made. Edward O. Wilson remarks in his book Biophilia that our natural affinity for life is the essence of our humanity, binding us to all other living species. When we experience a drift from this foundational concept of life to a more artificial and self-centered perspective, we are experiencing a disconnect with our own identities and the empathy that makes us humans in the first place. Ubatuba, a coastal town in the southeast of Brazil - a refuge from the metropolitan Sao Paulo- seems to embody this struggle. Characterized by its historical past and a present state of growing tourism and pollution: On one hand, a threat to its biodiversity and infrastructure, and on the other, the fuel for the short-term income of the local population. The film acts as a research into immaterial pieces of memories in relation to nature, socioeconomic structures, and the current environmental crisis in the region. Utilizing both digital and analog methods, interviews with different local community members, and abstract compositions, this reflexive documentary is a love letter to Ubatuba and its culture, portraying the affectionate memory embedded in landscapes. Simultaneously, it is a recollection of the different realities coexisting.