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The unknown archives of the Brazilian lesbian film and video maker Norma Bahia Pontes (1941–2010), including essays, photographs, documents, films and videos, are scattered across the closets and personal collections of ex-girlfriends, friends and also institutions in Brazil, France and the United States. Although fragmented, these traces – when combined with interviews – outline the filmmaker’s journey, her experiences as an immigrant, the aesthetic and media influences that shaped her work, and her involvement in activism: across 1960s Cinema Novo (Brazilian New Cinema) as a film critic and filmmaker and creating a dozen documentary shorts on videotapes on lesbian issues amidst 1970s Women’s Liberation Movement in New York City. Despite being a valuable audio-visual archive for feminists and queer studies, Bahia Pontes’s works are fragile, incomplete and unknown. This article illuminates these archives and reflects upon her singular and neglected trajectory in audio-visual history.