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The Essay Film

Understanding Documentary

1. When is an essay not an essay?

It is important to distinguish between an academic essay - such as the ones you write as students - and the personal or literary essay.

1. When is an essay not an essay?

Theodor Adorno, author of The Essay as Form

Personal or literary essays are not objective, scientific pieces of writing, coldly presenting an argument. Rather, they exist somewhere on the boundary between expression and interpretation

2. What is an Essay Film?

2. What is an Essay Film?

Expository Documentary

Reflexive Documentary

The Essay film: "is the expression of a personal, critical reflection on a problem or set of problems. Such reflection does not propose itself as anonymous or collective, but as originating from a single authorial voice" (Rascaroli, 2009: 183)

"To be reflexive is to structure a product in

such a way that the audience assumes that the

producer, the process of making, and the

product are a coherent whole. Not only is an

audience made aware of these relationships

but they are made to realize the necessity of that knowledge" (Ruby, 1977)

"The impression of objectivity"

3. Finding the dividing line

3. Finding the dividing line

What distinguishes an essay film is often a matter of opinion and argumentation.

For instance, Richter (1940) argues that Robert Flaherty was a pioneer of the essay film, because he "provided intellectual substance, not just pretty views" (89).

But if intellectual substance is all that's needed, then how do we differentiate between the essay film and the expository documentary?

4. Experimentation and art

If subjectivity one of the qualities that differentiates the essay film from the expository documentary, then another might be a willingness to experiment with form and content.

Alter and Corrigan (2017: 3) argue that the essay film is typified by : "the blending of fact and fiction, the mixing of art and documentary film styles".

4. Experimentation and art

Luis Buñuel

Jean Luc Godard

Orson Welles

Soviet Essays?

"The “proclamation” that I’m going to make a movie of Marx’s Das Kapital is not a publicity stunt. I believe that the films of the future will be found going in this direction" - Sergei Eisenstein, 1929

5. Soviet Essays?

5. Listening to Britain

Humphrey Jennings

6. Listening to Britain

Jennings was one of the foremost members of the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit, established by John Grierson. The GPO Film Unit is central to the British Documentary Film Movement.

Humphreys, who had studied poetry, and had an interest in film, is credited with moving the films of the GPO Unit into a more essayistic direction, creating "versions of the essay film as complex and particularly literary reflections on the public crisis of England during World War II" (Alter and Corrigan, 2017: 3)

A Diary for Timothy (Jennings, 1945)

6. Caméra-stylo

During the 1950s and 1960s, many film-makers take a greater interest in the limits and possibilities of cinema as a medium.

7. Caméra-stylo

Alexandre Astruc talks of the "Caméra-stylo" - the "cinematic pen".

His ideas inform the emergence of Auteurism - profoundly influencing both European and American cinema from the 1970s onwards

How does the Caméra-stylo write?

While the essay film shares some features with the literary essay, it is also a distinct form.

"Since film operates simultaneously on multiple discursive levels - image, speech, titles music - the literary essay's single determining voice is dispersed into cinema's multi-channel stew" (Arthur, 2003: 163)

Direct address is often an important part of the essay film, but the author's voice is also manifested in the arrangement of other filmic elements.

7. Chris Marker

8. Chris Marker

Perhaps the most significant figure in the history of the Essay Film is the French film-maker Chris Marker. The critic André Bazin describes his 1958 film Letter from Siberia as "a new form of cinema" (Alter and Corrigan, 2017: 3)

Letter from Siberia (Marker, 1958)

https://vimeo.com/108774143

Sans Soleil (Marker, 1982)

Sans Soleil is Marker's best known work, and regarded a classic of the genre. A female voice reads from letters, purportedly written by Sandor Krasna, the cameraman.

The film is made up of footage shot in various parts of the world, but also extensive third party material

Sans Soleil (Marker, 1982)

8. Contemporary Essay films

From the 1980s onwards an increasing number of film-makers have tended to work in a more reflexive style. Many have made, or borrowed elements from, essay films.

Thom Andersen

Adam Curtis

John Akomfrah

9. Contemporary Essay films

Los Angeles Plays Itself (Trailer)

(Andersen, 2003)

Oh Dear (Curtis, 2014)

https://vimeo.com/86095079

Bibliography

10. Bibliography

Adorno, T. W. (2005) The Essay as Form in The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture. London: Routledge.

Alter, N.M and Corrigan, T. (2017) Introduction. In Essays on the Essay Film. New York: Columbia University Press

Arthur, P. (2003). Essay questions. Film Comment, 39(1), 58-62.

Rascaroli, L. (2008). The essay film: Problems, definitions, textual commitments. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 49(2), 24-47.

Ruby, J. (1977). The image mirrored: Reflexivity and the documentary film. Journal of the University Film Association, 29(4), 3-11.

Richter, H. (2017). The film essay. A new type of documentary film in Essays on the Essay Film. New York: Columbia University Press

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