The primacy of word and the refuge of memory: the cinema of Eduardo Coutinho

Author(s)

Laécio Ricardo de Aquino Rodrigues

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Artes
• Defense date: 2012-05-17

Examining board members

Francisco Elinaldo Teixeira; Marcius Freire; Antônio Fernando da Conceição Passos; André Brasil; Meize Regina de Lucena Lucas

• Advisor: Francisco Elinaldo Teixeira

Abstract

This research investigates how memory and orality, important categories in the social scienc-es and other areas, enrich the work of Eduardo Coutinho (constitute its most important source), from his most recurrent procedure - the interview. For this purpose, we defined as our object of study the following titles of his legacy: Cabra Marcado para Morrer (1984), O Fio da Memória (1991), Peões (2004), Boca de Lixo (1993), Santo Forte (1999), O Fim e o Prin-cípio (2005) e Jogo de Cena (2007). In some of these titles, we analyze the emergence of the pair individual/social memory in most of the experiences narrated; in these works, the stories told are often intertwined with a sense of belonging to a group or community, or guided by the existence of a common past shared by the interviewees. In other films, however, we note that the interviews become less limited to one main theme or a collective experience, culminating in open meetings, prone to the emergence of a memory that promotes unexpected narrative drifts. Other similar questions mobilize our interest around his work, an art that regularly chooses outcast groups as protagonists. We can enumerate a few ones. What kind of hearing is set by the director, capable of causing such delivery of the otherness during the encounter? How is the filmmaker able to seduce his interviewees without imposing fear? What work is this that favors the orality and, apparently, neglects the visual elements of an art that has always been essentially visual? And finally, what kinds of memory are recovered by the subjects of those movies related above? (AU)