Born and raised in Lodz, Poland, Elzbieta Szoka spent her childhood "breathing the magic air" of the Lodz Film School, which produced Roman Polanski, Andrej Wadja, and Krzysztof Kieslowski among others.
As an adolescent, Elzbieta fell in love with film and Brazilian culture after seeing several movies from the Cinema Novo movement (Glauber Rocha, Nelson Perriera dos Santos). Her passion led her to Warsaw where she studied Latin American Literatures and Cultures, and later to Brazil where she completed her Master's Thesis on Umbanda, an Afro-Brazilian syncretic religion.
Her Master's completed, Elzbieta returned home to Poland to find it held under the strict marshal law of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Unable to pursue her film career because of the total isolation of Poland in the 1980's, Elzbieta traveled to Portugal and later the United States, where she continued her education, receiving her PhD in Brazilian Studies from the University of Texas.
Her accomplishments include editor, publisher, and professor at Columbia University - where she developed the Portuguese Program. Her published book is the anthology Fourteen Female Voices from Brazil, containing works and interviews by contemporary Brazilian women writers. Elzbieta is the co-executive producer, along with her husband Joe Bratcher, on Screen Door Jesus.
Indican Pictures
