July 20, 2009
Americas Society
Photos by Ana Bernstein
Presented in partnership with Americas Society.
Presented as part of Premiere Brazil! 09 organized by the Museum of Modern Art and the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival.
Special thanks to Mariela Hardy and Gabriela Rangel (Americas Society),
Jytte Jensen (The Museum of Modern Art), and Ilda Santiago (Rio Film Festival).
Eduardo Coutinho is one of Brazil's greatest documentary filmmakers who is highly regarded for his formally distinguished and innovative style. His influential works highlight the storytelling abilities of ordinary people in films of rare beauty and impact. Coutinho's favorite theme throughout his filmography has been the investigation of the fine line between fiction and reality. He has received numerous awards for his documentaries, which include Twenty Years Later - Man Labeled to Die, (1964/1984), filmed over a period of two decades, Master, a Building in Copacabana (2002), Babilônia 2000 (2000), Metalworkers (2004), The End and the Beginning (2005) and Playing (2006). His screenwriting credits include Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976). Premiere Brazil includes a retrospective of eight seminal works by Coutinho including the world premiere of his most recent film Moscou (2009).
Bruno Barreto has been making feature-length films since he was seventeen years old and remains one of Brazil's most accomplished and popular directors. Son of producers Luiz Carlos and Lucy Barreto he made his directing debut with Tati, Brazil's official entry at the 1973 Moscow Film Festival and was 22 when he scored an international hit with Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands (1977), a comedy based on the Jorge Amado novel starring Sonia Braga. Barreto's English-language directorial debut, the political thriller A Show of Force (1990), was followed by Carried Away (1996), starring Amy Irving and Dennis Hopper. In 1997 Barreto made Four Days in September, a film about the 1969 kidnapping of the US Ambassador to Brazil, Charles Elbrick (Alan Arkin) which was nominated for an Academy Award Best Foreign Film. In Brazil his romantic comedy Bossa Nova (2000), also starring Irving, was followed by The Marriage of Romeo and Juliet (2005) and Caixa Dois (2007). Premiere Brazil is presenting the New York premiere of his most recent film Last Stop 174 (2008) based on the real life tragedy of the 2000 hijacking of bus 174 in Rio de Janeiro.
