Bárbara Bergamaschi Novaes (1989, Brasília) is an Italian-Brazilian researcher, filmmaker, and cultural critic working at the intersection of experimental cinema, visual arts, film philosophy, media studies, digital humanities, and comparative studies.

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After graduating in Social Communication from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and studying Cinema at the Univ. Paris VIII in France, she worked in the film and TV industries as AD and ADF, and as a broadcast television producer. She contributed to more than 10 television series, 5 feature films, and numerous promotional projects, PSAs and mini-series  broadcast on Canal Futura, Canal Curta!, SporTV, TED, Turner, Cartoon Network, Canal Brasil, and EBC.

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Her debut short film, In Deep Water (2012), received a national award at the 17th Brazilian University Film Festival (FBCU). Blue Creature (2021), for which she served as cinematographer, was nominated for the 2023 Grande Otelo Award by the Brazilian Film Academy.

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She then persued a M.A in Performing Arts from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a Ph.D. in Literature, Culture and Contemporaneity from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio, 2022), with a dissertation on the cinema of Peter Tscherkassky - funded by a CAPES merit-based scholarship. She was a Visiting Ph.D. Researcher at the School of Arts in the Portuguese Catholic University in OPorto, Portugal (CITAR, 2021).

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She is the sole-author of 16 peer-reviewed articles, including publications in Scopus- and Web of Science-indexed journals, as well as 6 book chapters, including a contribution to a Palgrave Macmillan/Springer volume on the films of Manoel de Oliveira. As a film critic affiliated with ABRACCINE and FIPRESCI, she has contributed to numerous outlets, including O Estado de São Paulo, Público, Revista Cinética, Instituto Moreira Salles and La Furia Umana.

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As a university professor, she held a tenured position at the Department of Performing Arts at the Federal University of São João del-Rei (DEACE-UFSJ, Brazil), where she lectured chairs in History of the Spectacular Arts, Theatre and Politics, and Special Topics in Popular Culture.

 

Most recently, in 2022, she served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Culture and Creative Economy of the Government of the Federal District (SECEC/DF) in Brasília, Brazil, gaining experience in cultural policy and public administration. In 2023, she moved to Lisbon, where she worked until 2025 as Science Communication Manager at ICNOVA – NOVA University of Lisbon and as a Guest Assistant Professor in the Science Communication Department at NOVA-FCSH.

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She is currently a collaborating researcher at NOVA-FCSH and a film programmer for the Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival, an Academy Award®-qualifying festival.  In 2026, she was awarded the MSCA Seal of Excellence under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship programme for her project R.E.E.L.