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

This article examines Eduardo Coutinho's Jago de Cenci (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.