It can be said that in terms of form, Eduardo Coutinho's work is extremely economical with resources. For decades, the director went about shedding many of the tools available in documentary filmmaking. Narration, soundtrack, screenplay, inserts, landscape, camera movement – all gone. This Master Class will explore the reasons for this growing suppression of media, a movement that began in 1976 with Seis dias em Ouricuri, the first television program Coutinho directed in its entirety, and ends with Últimas conversas, his most recent film from 2015. In the course of the nearly forty years between the two films, the filmmaker became ever more concerned over one question: What to do (or not do) with the character on film? From the answers found by Coutinho comes the most moving and original documentary work Brazil has ever produced.
João Moreira Salles