Eccentric structure

The structural exploration of Um Dia na Vida’s televisual re-appropriation

Abstract

Made through recording and re-editing more than 19 hours of material from Brazilian broadcast television, Um Dia na Vida (2010) is a work that stands out among Eduardo Coutinho's oeuvre. Either through the reuse and re-signification of television images or because it does not present the characteristic feature of the conversational cinema of the late documentarian, this film was first exhibited in 2010 and never released commercially due to copyright issues. It mobilizes multiple readings, including those remarked by the filmmaker himself, who preferred to understand Um Dia na Vida as a ‘thing’ or some ‘stuff’, not as a film. However, we do not intend to penetrate the ontological intricacies, so to speak, of the production in question, but rather to observe what it does and how it does it in terms of its materialities. For this, based on a bibliographic review, we will examine Um Dia na Vida in the light of the concept of structural film coined by P. Adams Sitney in 1969 and retaken and criticized by several authors since then. In this, our objective will not be to defend a potential integration of Um Dia na Vida into structural film’s canon, but rather to establish points of contact between this work and some of the main characteristics of that avant-garde movement in order to find new points of access to one of the most unique films made by Eduardo Coutinho.