Essays on the Essay Film

Creatively and capaciously, this rich volume gets at the essay film not only by including key critics and practitioners of the form but, importantly, by going beyond the genre itself to broader contributions to essay theorization from philosophy and belles lettres. An exciting, inventive volume with great delights at every turn. -- Dana Polan, New York University Alter and Corrigan's masterful new volume on the essay film is rigorous, comprehensive, and refreshingly surprising. Their invaluable collection probes theoretical reflections on the essay as a mode of expression and a way of thinking in light of the creative and political investments of filmmakers around the globe; it also chronicles the essay film's changing countenances, from its prehistory and early signs of life to novel permutations in the present. Featuring a very distinguished cast of players, this collection is a production of the highest order. -- Eric Rentschler, Harvard University Nora Alter and Tim Corrigan bring their seasoned literary experience to herd but never tame the unruly essay film. Its prestige soaring, this mode is tethered to a long history of experimental writing that will keep it from disappearing into the bog of blogs and YouTube mashups whose best examples it is already inspiring. The proof is in the Table of Contents: a brilliant litany of sensitive, reliable writers, who dare to take on the most daring forms of image-thought the cinema has produced. -- Dudley Andrew, Yale University Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in interest in the history, concept and diverse manifestations of the essay film. In this essential collection, Nora Alter and Timothy Corrigan have brought together a superb selection of foundational texts with a range of key recent writings by leading scholars and essay filmmakers. The result is an enormously rich resource for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of this most vital of audiovisual forms. -- Michael Witt, University of Roehampton

Nora M. Alter is professor of film and media studies in the School of Theater, Film and Media Arts at Temple University. She is author of Vietnam Protest Theatre: The Television War on Stage (1996), Projecting History: German Nonfiction Cinema, 1967-2000 (2002), and Chris Marker (2006), and co-editor (with Lutz Koepnick) of Sound Matters: Essays on the Acoustics of Modern German Culture (2004). Timothy Corrigan is professor of cinema studies, English, and history of art in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam (1991), New German Film: The Displaced Image (1994), The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker (2011), and (with Patricia White) The Film Experience: An Introduction (2004).

Introduction, by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan Part I. Foundations 1. "On the Nature and Form of the Essay," by Georg Lukacs 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 Andre 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 Blumlinger 23. "Riddles as Essay Film," by Laura Mulvey 24. "Certain Obliquenesses," by Renee 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