Eduardo Coutinho

Eduardo Coutinho

Born: May 11, 1933
Died: February 2, 2014
in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Eduardo Coutinho (1933-2014) enjoyed an extraordinary career in the Brazilian film industry, mainly as a documentarist. He was born in São Paulo, Brazil. He is a contemporary of many Cinema Novo filmmakers, friend and colleague of several of them, but he only became a director at the beginning of the 1980s, almost at the age of fifty, in a context entirely different from that of Brazil in the 1960s. He also studied law, theatre and journalism, in which he worked for many years. He is the author of articles on the Brazilian film industry published in newspapers and magazines. His first contact with the film world was at a seminar in 1954, but from then until 1957 he was the editor of Visão magazine and later decided to take up film studies at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies (IDHEC) in Paris. He worked on the script or in the production of major films directed by Leon Hirzsman (A Falecida, Garota de Ipanema), Eduardo Escorel (Lição de Amor), Bruno Barreto (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) and Zelito Viana (Os Condenados). In 1975, Coutinho joined the Globo Repórter team, where he remained for nine years, and, according to its director, it was an important learning curve that convinced him to move into documentary films. In spite of censorship, the team (made up of Paulo Gil Soares, João Batista de Andrade, Jorge Bodansky, and Oswaldo Caldeira, among others) managed to go in-depth into a number of topics. Coutinho’s documentaries from this period include Seis Dias em Ouricuri (on the drought and the hard labour in the outback), O Pistoleiro de Serra Talhada (on banditry in the north-east), O Imperador do Sertão (on Colonel Teodorico Bezerra) and O Menino de Brodósqui (on the painter, Cândido Portinari).

Movies for Eduardo Coutinho...

Candango: Memoirs from a Festival
Title: Candango: Memoirs from a Festival
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: October 22, 2020
Type: Movie
In 1965, a year after the military coup in Brazil, an oasis of freedom opened in the country's capital. The Brasília Film Festival: a landmark of cultural and political resistance. Its story is that of Brazilian cinema itself.
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The Method
Title: The Method
Character: Self
Released: July 10, 2019
Type: Movie
The Method shows and reveals the knowledge and tools used by great documentary filmmakers on the challenge of representing the reality.
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A Treat of Coutinho
Title: A Treat of Coutinho
Character: Self
Released: June 5, 2019
Type: Movie
Would have one of the masters of Brazilian cinema always made the same film? From an encounter with documentarian Eduardo Coutinho recorded in 2012 and a vast amount of archive footage, this film offers a general look at Coutinho's work and testifies how the filmmaker’s thinking still stand the test of time to this day and age.
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Memórias do Grupo Opinião
Title: Memórias do Grupo Opinião
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: May 15, 2019
Type: Movie
Follows the story of Opinião, a theatre group created in 1964 during the early Brazilian dictatorship period to oppose the government through artistic performances. Considered the first left-wing response to the dictatorship, the group gathered now famous Brazilian artists such as Nara Leão, Maria Bethânia, João do Vale and Millôr Fernandes.
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Tudo Por Amor ao Cinema
Title: Tudo Por Amor ao Cinema
Character: Self
Released: June 30, 2015
Type: Movie
A documentary on Cosme Alves Netto (1937-1996), former head of the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Arts at Rio de Janeiro.
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Sete Visitas
Title: Sete Visitas
Character: Self
Released: April 11, 2015
Type: Movie
How much theatricality is there in an interview-based documentary? On one side, someone answers. On the other side, someone asks questions – usually away from the camera eyes. But what would happen if also filmed the interviewers? And if the respondent also had the right to ask? And if the parties never met? What if instead of a glimpse into someone’s life, we had several? ‘Seven visits’ is a film about questions. And about the act of being interested in the other.
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Last Conversations
Title: Last Conversations
Character: Self
Released: April 10, 2015
Type: Movie
Made from interviews with young Brazilian students by filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho before his death (in February 2014), the film seeks to understand how teenagers think, live and dream nowadays. The footage was edited by Coutinho’s longtime partner, film editor Jordana Berg, and the final cut is signed by João Moreira Salles.
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Eduardo Coutinho, 7 de outubro
Title: Eduardo Coutinho, 7 de outubro
Character: Himself
Released: December 5, 2013
Type: Movie
A conversation with Brazilian documentary filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho about his work and methods.
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Uma Visita Para Elizabeth Teixeira
Title: Uma Visita Para Elizabeth Teixeira
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 2011
Type: Movie
Short documentary about a woman known from a film by Eduardo Coutinho.
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Title: Destiny River
Character: Dr. Ricardo
Released: September 27, 2010
Type: TV
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Coutinho.doc - Apartamento 608
Title: Coutinho.doc - Apartamento 608
Released: January 1, 2009
Type: Movie
The audience follows the creative process of the filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho in the documentary, from the research phase until the end of the filming of "Master, a Building in Copacabana".
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Capturing Reality
Title: Capturing Reality
Character: Self
Released: November 1, 2008
Type: Movie
From cinema-verite; pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick movie makers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre. Capturing Reality explores the complex creative process that goes into making non-fiction films. Deftly charting the documentarian's journey, it poses the question: can film capture reality?
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Crítico
Title: Crítico
Character: Self
Released: January 22, 2008
Type: Movie
Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.
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1964: 40 Years After
Title: 1964: 40 Years After
Released: January 1, 2004
Type: Movie
Documentary that shows the events that culminated in the deposition of President João Goulart, on March 31, 1964, and the implementation of the military dictatorship in Brazil. Around 40 characters reveal behind the scenes and comment in detail on this important moment in Brazilian political history.
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Madame Satã
Title: Madame Satã
Character: Juiz
Released: October 3, 2002
Type: Movie
A story inspired by the life of one of the most remarkable figures in Brazilian popular culture, João Francisco dos Santos (1900-1976). In turn, bandit, transvestite, street fighter, brothel cook, convict and father to seven adopted children, dos Santos – better known as Madame Satã – was also a notorious gay performer who pushed social boundaries in a volatile time.
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Babilônia 2000
Title: Babilônia 2000
Character: Self
Released: November 22, 2001
Type: Movie
Documentary on poor people living in a slum in Rio de Janeiro, on the occasion of New Year's Eve of 1999.
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The Mighty Spirit
Title: The Mighty Spirit
Character: Self (Interviewer)
Released: August 9, 1999
Type: Movie
An overview of brazilian spirituality and religions.
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Dib
Title: Dib
Character: Self
Released: January 2, 1997
Type: Movie
Documentary that addresses, through the testimony of directors and actors, the work of Dib Lutfi, considered one of the greatest photographers of Brazilian cinema.
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The Memory Thread
Title: The Memory Thread
Character: Himself (Voice)
Released: December 31, 1991
Type: Movie
A panorama of the Brazilian black experience, starting with the figure of the semi-illiterate popular artist and employee of a salt mine Gabriel Joaquim dos Santos.
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Twenty Years Later
Title: Twenty Years Later
Character: Himself
Released: December 3, 1984
Type: Movie
Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.
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Câncer
Title: Câncer
Released: January 1, 1972
Type: Movie
This film shows people with constant psychological and social conflicts: the violence among outlaws, conflicts between man and woman, police and society.
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The Girl from Ipanema
Title: The Girl from Ipanema
Released: May 26, 1967
Type: Movie
Chronicles the life of a 17 year-old girl living in the upper-class Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood of Ipanema. Márcia lives a life of parties and spend her days among bohemians, musicians and intellectuals. While seeming happy in the outside, she's extremely anguished inside. Based on the famous song by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes.
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Os Mendigos
Title: Os Mendigos
Released: December 21, 1963
Type: Movie