Reading across cultures towards a comparative documentary film studies: Eduardo Coutinho's documentary Jogo de Cena (2007)

This article examines Eduardo Coutinho's Jogo de Cena (2007) in relation to documentary spectatorship across cultures. Coutinho s documentary contains numerous culturally specific and localised references amongst the stories told by a cast of women actors. These stories and the figures that relate them make available a number of layers of knowledge production constituting a filmic experience that is multivalent and complex. In considering these complexities and their spectatorship, this article utilises Paul Willemen s notion of comparative film studies as a springboard to begin a closer consideration of what is possible with a combination of Brazilian cultural knowledge and documentary film theory.