Eduardo Coutinho

Coutinho’s career began in the field of fiction, making videos. Later on came TV productions, for a journalism programme focused on special reports, which gave him the opportunity to travel all over Brazil. For this TV programme, Coutinho was able to produce his first masterpiece: Teodorico – O Imperador do Sertão (1978), which expressed the main characteristics that would form his working style in all of his later pieces.

On the news team, Coutinho decided he would create a non-narrative report, consisting only of naturalistic interviews with direct sound. In one such interview, he gave a Colonel the airtime for a lengthy monologue, enabling him to build up his own portrait. As a newsman, Coutinho assumed a voyeuristic role. He thought that if there was something to be expressed it should be done by the main character. This style became clear once he also shot an interview with one of the Colonel’s employees; when the boss asked the poor fellow how his life on the farm had been, his answer was an uncomfortable and forceful “yes”.

Tired of the limits a TV station imposes, he quit his job and started an independent self-governing career. His biggest interest was, and still is, other people’s lives. He always tells the stories in a pure way. In the late nineties, his movies finally started to reach mainstream audiences and gain media attention, although using a locally less-known cinematic genre: documentary.

Santo Forte (1999) presents the religious syncretism of his country in one Rio de Janeiro favela. The low budget and raw image quality, part of his self-made style, interested the media, in particular the way the subject was treated. The singular honesty of its subjects shows how diverse people can live together in harmony, although they are having some kind of sacred battle.

One year later, he recorded Babilônia 2000 (2000) in a favela during the preparations for 2000’s New Year’s Eve. A symbolic scene defines what Coutinho was looking for: when he approaches a woman, she immediately asks for a minute to do her make-up. He replies that he prefers to show her the way she was; pure. She then shouts out: “I’ve got it, so what you want is poverty!” Yes, that’s what he wants. It was time poverty conquered the silver screen, and not only the news. It was time to give the favelas a voice.

Concerned to have more voices heard, the next Coutinho film had a different subject: highlighting the Brazilian lower middle class. To represent this social milieu, Coutinho and his crew went to a famous and traditional building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Edifício Master placed Coutinho onto the mainstream scene. All the newspapers wrote about it, although the feedback was not what he was hoping for. The press had treated his interviewees as characters, a label that he always refuses to adopt. He was dealing with real people, it was not fiction.

Coutinho has never structured a script for his movies. He likes spontaneity, and is keen to go into the countryside with his team looking for stories. He has no idea beforehand of what kind of story he’s looking for, but he knows he’ll get one. What and how it will happen is a surprise. He only stipulates four weeks to make it. The result? O Fim e o Princípio (2005) was a tale about how to get old; how simple it is to be old and live with it. Coutinho’s identity is there, a combination of naivety and richness.

The respect Coutinho achieved as a documentary-maker made him think up new concepts. This time, the stories would find him. Cameras on, he welcomed whoever wanted to share a story. The response was huge and he selected a few to be part of his new movie, Playing (2007). He is returning to his roots and playing with fiction, mixing real interviews and fake ones, acted out by famous Brazilian actresses. It was good to discover how real emotions sometimes can’t be staged, even if you are a professional. What does Coutinho’s lens have that lets people grow in this way? Maybe they’ve always been larger than life, but we just needed a big screen to taste it.

Arturo Mestanza