The essay—with its emphasis on the provisional and explorative rather than on definitive statements—has evolved from its literary beginnings and is now found in all mediums, including film. Today, the essay film is, arguably, one of the most widely acclaimed and critically discussed forms of filmmaking around the world, with practitioners such as Chris Marker, Hito Steyerl, Errol Morris, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Rithy Panh. Characteristics of the essay film include the blending of fact and fiction, the mixing of art- and documentary-film styles, the foregrounding of subjective points of view, a concentration on public life, a tension between acoustic and visual discourses, and a dialogic encounter with audiences.
This anthology of fundamental statements on the essay film offers a range of crucial historical and philosophical perspectives. It provides early critical articulations of the essay film as it evolved through the 1950s and 1960s, key contemporary scholarly essays, and a selection of writings by essay filmmakers. It features texts on the foundations of the essay film by writers such as Hans Richter and André Bazin; contemporary positions by, among others, Phillip Lopate and Michael Renov; and original essays by filmmakers themselves, including Laura Mulvey and Isaac Julien.
- Table of Contents
- Introduction, by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan
- Part I. Foundations
- 1. “On the Nature and Form of the Essay,” by Georg Lukács
- 2. The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil
- 3. “On the Essay and Its Prose,” by Max Bense
- 4. “The Essay as Form,” by Theodor W. Adorno
- 5. “Preface to The Collected Essays of Aldous Huxley,” by Aldous Huxley
- Part II. The Essay Film Through History
- 6. “The Film Essay: A New Type of Documentary Film,” by Hans Richter
- 7. “The Future of Cinema,” by Alexandre Astruc
- 8. “Bazin on Marker,” by André Bazin
- Part III. Contemporary Positions
- 9. “In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film,” by Phillip Lopate
- 10. “The Political Im/Perceptible in the Essay Film: Farocki’s Images of the World and the Inscription of War,” by Nora M. Alter
- 11. “Essay Questions,” by Paul Arthur
- 12. “The Electronic Essay,” by Michael Renov
- 13. “The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments,” by Laura Rascaroli
- 14. “Of the History of the Essay Film: Vertov, to Varda,” by Timothy Corrigan
- 15. “The Cinema and the Essay as a Way of Thinking,” by Raymond Bellour
- 16. “The Essay Film: From Film Festival Favorite to Flexible Commodity Form?,” by Thomas Elsaesser
- Part IV. Filmmakers on the Essayistic
- 17. “Performing Borders: Transnational Video,” by Ursula Biemann
- 18. “Proposal for a Tussle,” by Jean-Pierre Gorin
- 19. “The Essay as Conformism? Some Notes on Global Image Economies,” by Hito Steyerl
- 20. “On Writing the Film Essay,” by Lynne Sachs
- 21. “Tramp Steamer,” by Ross McElwee
- 22. “The ABCs of the Film Essay,” by Harun Farocki and Christa Blümlinger
- 23. “Riddles as Essay Film,” by Laura Mulvey
- 24. “Certain Obliquenesses,” by Renée Green
- 25. “Essay Documentary: The disembodied narrator and an unclaimed image that floats through space and time,” by Rea Tajiri
- 26. “From Ten Thousand Waves to Lina Bo Bardi, via Kapital,” by Isaac Julien
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Permissions
- Index
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