"Inventing Oneself for the camera" - Eduardo Coutinho

Casting From Real Life

; Eduardo Coutinho - Inventing Oneself for the camera
"I make films about the act of filming. It's always about that," says Eduardo Coutinho the accomplished Brazilian documentarian renowned for his minimalist style and remarkable interviews. Countinho's unadorned documentaries create striking portaits of ordinary people. His work has been an ongoing and deeping mediation on the act of listening and the act of filming, focusing on the unique moment, the word, that is born of the exchange between subject and filmmaker. Coutinho started his career in fiction (he was the screenwriter in Dona flor and Her Two Husband), worked many years as a journalist and dedicated himself to docuementary since the 1980s. He was the 2007 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gramado Film Festival.

"What is a character? A character is a person who invents himself before the camera. He talks about the past through memory. Memory is false and true, which is what interests me. I'm not fact-checking. I'm not asking him about historical facts, but about his life, his free to invent his life story. If he invents well it's good, if he invents badly.... There are good and bad exhibitionist. It depends"