IMS, Equipe. Clarice's Days in Washington. IMS Clarice Lispector, 2024. Disponível em: https://site.claricelispector.ims.com.br/en/2024/09/10/clarices-days-in-washington/. Acesso em: 20 May 2026.
Since 2015, the Literature team at the Moreira Salles Institute has been producing audiovisual material about the life and work of Clarice Lispector. The film Dias de Clarice em Washington [Clarice’s Days in Washington] (28:38) is part of this research and dissemination effort. In this latest work, you will find entirely unpublished images in film and photography.
Until then, we had only two filmed records of the author: the famous interview for TV Cultura (1977) and rare images of the writer at her apartment, in the Leme neighborhood, also during an interview, for the TVE program Os mágicos [The Magicians] (1976), the latter incorporated into Clarice Lispector – A descoberta do mundo [Clarice Lispector – The Discovery of the World] (2022), a film by the director Taciana Oliveira. Both recordings were aired on television and produced in similar periods (the author of The Hour of the Star died in December 1977).
Dias de Clarice em Washington captures a very different and decisive moment in the life and work of the writer, when she lived in the American capital with her family, between 1952 and 1959. In addition to a significant number of unpublished photographs – which record her domestic environment and interactions with friends – there are precious images filmed during a public event, in which the writer, her husband Maury Gurgel Valente, their son Paulo, in addition to friends of the couple appear. It concerns a brief color video (06:59) that was recorded on film (by an unknown author) and discovered in 2023 at the Center for Research and Documentation on Contemporary Brazilian History (CPDOC), which is part of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in Rio de Janeiro.
Dias de Clarice em Washington was directed by Eucanaã Ferraz, the Literature Consultant at the IMS. The editing was done by Laura Liuzzi and the research was conducted by Bruno Cosentino, who is part of the IMS Literature team.
See also
by Bruno Cosentino
The writer Ana Maria Machado had an unusual and emotional episode with Clarice Lispector. This happened in 1975. After having read an article by Ana Maria, published that very day in the Jornal do Brasil, about the birthday of the writer Roland Barthes, Clarice, who did not know her personally, insistently asked her for help to organize what in two years would be the book The Hour of the Star.
by Sônia Roncador
The frequent allusion to domestic servants in the urban environment of her chronicles demonstrates what is a reality for many middle-class families in the country: incorporated into the intimate environment of the home in the condition of a “domesticated outsider”, the domestic servant constitutes the most lasting and personal relationship that a member of the middle class allows themselves to establish with poverty.
by Elizama Almeida
Working on a manual printer, João Cabral invites Clarice to debut “The Seamless Book,” his small publisher.
by Rafael Juliao
“I wanted to announce the following: the person I love most in life is named Clarice Lispector.” This affirmation was made by Cazuza.
by Augusto Ferraz
I died. I found out when, one day, on the sidewalk of Praça Maciel Pinheiro, I lifted my head, opened my eyes, and saw myself dead, there on the plaza’s sidewalk, the two-story house on the other side of the street. My broken heart inside my chest, the two-story house on Rua do Aragão, 387, where, on the second floor, Clarice Lispector lived a happy childhood here in Recife, despite the pains of the world and experiencing and feeling, mainly, the pains of an implacable disease that would one day take Mania, her mother, away from her. I found out when, laid out on the sidewalk there under the scorching Sunday sun, I turned my head to the right and saw a man beside me, who was also looking at the house.
by Marina Colasanti
The day I met Clarice was not the same day she met me. I was all adoration, observing her. She had no reason to even lay eyes on me. Leaving the Jornal do Brasil newsroom together, the journalist Yllen Kerr, a great friend of mine, said he was going to visit Clarice and asked if I wanted to go. Did I ever!
