Eduardo Coutinho, savage linguist of Brasilian documentary

Abstract

The lmmaker Eduardo Coutinho inquired tirelessly the way his characters talk, their “verbal inventions” and possibilities of fabulation, grasping in this movement the complexities and modulations of Portuguese language used by several segments of the Brazilian population, present in his documentaries lmed both at open-air and studio locations. This article reviews that fundamental dimension of Coutinho’s lmwork in the light of Últimas Conversas (2015), posthumously edited by Jordana Berg, and concluded by João Salles, working from the director’s un nished materials. Going further in his concerns about cinema, Coutinho utters in his last lm the desire for recording children, identifying in them an originary moment in which words and meanings are not yet fully crystallized.