Eduardo Coutinho

Documentary on poor people living in a slum in Rio de Janeiro, on the occasion of New Year's Eve of 1999.

In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro of the 1930s, João Francisco dos Santos is several things — son of slaves, ex-convict, thug, homosexual and adopted father for a number of pariahs. João expresses himself on the stage of a cabaret as Madame Satã.

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.

Continuing the exploration of the thin line between truth and performance, Eduardo Coutinho turns his attention to the drama generated during rehearsals for the Galpão Theater Company’s performance of Chekov’s The Three Sisters. As he shoots scenes from the play, Coutinho attempts to capture the very moment in which reality becomes fiction and vice versa—whether through the actors’ bodies and words or in backstage scenes of a performance that will exist only on film.

Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

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.

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?

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.

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.

This film shows people with constant psychological and social conflicts: the violence among outlaws, conflicts between man and woman, police and society.

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.

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.

The story of Rio de Janeiro’s movie theaters and the radical transformation they have endured since the invention of Cinema.

The daily lives and routine of 37 families living in a huge 12-story building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: their drama, aspirations, intimate revelations, loneliness, dreams...

A documentary on Cosme Alves Netto (1937-1996), former head of the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Arts at Rio de Janeiro.

A young female fugitive escapes from a juvenile institution (the Child Assistance Service) and joins a group of poor beggars with the intention of finding a potential partner to marry in order to avoid her return to that place.

The Method shows and reveals the knowledge and tools used by great documentary filmmakers on the challenge of representing the reality.

Documentary that addresses, through the testimony of directors and actors, the work of Dib Lutfi, considered one of the greatest photographers of Brazilian cinema.

An overview of Brazilian spirituality and religions.

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.

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".

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.

Upon discovering that he is marked for death due to a curse placed on his ancestors, Solano, with Estela's support, embarks on a journey of revelations about his origins.