Eduardo Coutinho: A Cinema of Listening
Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho鈥檚 lasting commitment, or one could say his politics, was to construct films from stories told to him by everyday people. His documentary practice was organized around two main axes: interviews with people belonging to a community constituted by place or trade鈥攆rom an apartment building in the city to the rural Sert茫o, from metal workers to garbage scavengers鈥攁nd interviews that eroded the line between documentary and theatrical modes. Throughout the years Coutinho fine-tuned the conversational practice that became his method and style: every one of his films is an experiment in seeing and hearing what emerges from a filmed, unstaged conversation. Above all, his films-as-conversations reveal his generosity as a listener. This was Coutinho鈥檚 鈥渟avage anthropology鈥濃�攑rofoundly nonscientific, and anti-ethnographic, yet invested in offering us the unknown stories of unknown people. This mode of approaching the real through uncertainty allowed him both a unique intimacy and ethical distance.
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Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho鈥檚 lasting commitment, or one could say his politics, was to construct films from stories told to him by everyday people. His documentary practice was organized around two main axes: interviews with people belonging to a community constituted by place or trade鈥攆rom an apartment building in the city to the rural Sert茫o, from metal workers to garbage scavengers鈥攁nd interviews that eroded the line between documentary and theatrical modes. Throughout the years Coutinho fine-tuned the conversational practice that became his method and style: every one of his films is an experiment in seeing and hearing what emerges from a filmed, unstaged conversation. Above all, his films-as-conversations reveal his generosity as a listener. This was Coutinho鈥檚 鈥渟avage anthropology鈥濃�攑rofoundly nonscientific, and anti-ethnographic, yet invested in offering us the unknown stories of unknown people. This mode of approaching the real through uncertainty allowed him both a unique intimacy and ethical distance.
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