Do Centro Popular de Cultura ao Globo Repórter: a centralidade do Nordeste na formação fílmica de Eduardo Coutinho (1962-1979)

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the centrality of the Northeast, particularly the Sertão region, in the film production of the filmmaker Eduardo de Oliveira Coutinho (1933– 2014), focusing on his work during his time with the Centro Popular de Cultura and Globo Repórter (1962–1979). First, I situate the filmmaker within the spaces of engaged art in the 1960s and his initial contact with the Northeast. In the second and third parts, I explore how the Northeastern Sertão became a central spatiality for his formation and representation of the Sertanejo other. Marking his movement through the region, I conceptually work with the categories of space and place from Yi-Fu Tuan (2013) and with a social conception of Sertão as formulated by Candice Vidal e Souza (2015). Methodologically, I analyze representations of the Sertão in the fictional feature film Faustão (1970), using the classical narrative and film segmentation approaches proposed by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (2005, 2013), as well as the narrator concept developed by Ismail Xavier (2019). In analyzing the documentary reports Seis Dias de Ouricuri (1976), O Pistoleiro de Serra Talhada (1977), Theodorico, o Imperador do Sertão (1978), and Exu, uma Tragédia Sertaneja (1979), I draw on the category of voice and the expository, observational, and participatory modes proposed by Bill Nichols (2005, 2016). Thus, the research highlights that Eduardo Coutinho's cinematic trajectory was primarily shaped by his social and cultural relationships with the Sertão and the Northeast, placing these regions at the core of his interests throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This movement connects him to and embeds him within a mode of thinking and seeing the region that is characteristic of Brazilian social thought.