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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.
List of contents
Introduction, by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan
Part I. Foundations1. "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 History6. "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 Positions9. "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 Essayistic17. "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
About the author
Edited by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan
Summary
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.
