Midterm lectures the essay film
Lecture 1
Essay is a very broad genre
- Essayists perform a combination of exactitude and evasion that seems to me what
writing ought to be (Brian Dillon)
- The essay is a form that would instruct, seduce, and mystify in equal measure
- The essay is the most widespread genre, takes so many shapes that it refuses so
successfully to resolve itself, finally, into its own shape (Harison)
- 3 approaches: history of writing as a technology, canonized inventors, essayists on the
essay
History as writing as a technology: cuneiform (spijkerschrift), 5000 years ago
someone wrote prescription on how to live, carved in clay is an early example of
essay writing
Canonized ‘inventors’: the pillow book by sei shonagon; wrote little dairy pieces,
allistical, notice small things and name them, zuihitsu: precious, little diary entries,
mono no aware: beauty is precious because its fleeting
Another example: Essais by Michel de Montaigne, first one that named his
writing essay, essai and exagium scale weiging, essaying between experience
and experimentation (self) reflection
Virginia Woolf: the common reader (1925); essay is an expression of personal
opinion, personality as style: unmissing element of essay: know how to write,
how to put your personality in writing
Essayists on the essay:
you think an essay should have a hypothesis, conclusion, argue points. You
bore me. – Carole Maso
Good essay should not conclude possibilities. Theodor adorno: the innermost
law of the essay is heresy (ketterij), have to go against society, good essay is
resistance.
There is nothing you cannot do with an essay (Dillard)
From literary to cinematic essay:
- Alexandre astrucs camera stylo: free expression of author in essay writing, film did
not have that freedom. Think about the camera like we think about the pen.
Combination of fact and fiction.
- Film as a form of expression:
skepticism, reflectiveness, and subjectivity, in-betweenness/hybridity: not one
genre, neither this nor that
Laura rascaroli: essay is the expression of a critical, personal reflection on a
problem or set of problems, need room for interpretation, not a documentary.
The I in the essay film strongly implicates a you. It is an embodied spectator. It
is called upon to participate and share the enunciators reflections. Essay films
annunciator does not tell you what to think or feel but invites you to reflect on
what it means and engage with the film. This structure accounts for the
openness of the essay film.
Early decades of cinema:
1
, - documentary experiments, ethnographic film
- thesis films/topical films, very specific topics
- cinema as instruction, patronizing
- a corner in wheat, Griffith, distinction between the exploited and the exploiters, very
simple, capitalism exploits people
Hans richter in 1940:
- Essay film is an attempt to make the invisible world of imagination, thoughts and
ideas visible, a lot of creative freedom
Timothy Corrigan:
- The interaction of a subjective perspective and the reality before it becomes a testing
or questioning of both, and the structure of the film, like the literary essay, follows the
undetermined movement of that dialogue
Viaggio in Italia (Rosselini, 1953):
- focus on details, personal representation of preferences, doesn’t get to a point, like a
home movie
- rather than narrartive: lateral, associative horizontal montage; an image doesn’t refer
to the one that preceded it or the one that will follow (Bazin)
Alain Resnais, night and fog:
- 10 years after holocaust: past is not done with us: film is a way to find an inner
intellectual process, not just give info
Micheal Renov:
- Video has retained an attachment to the performative and the corporeal that is
historical and is distinct from the cinema
Laura rascoli: “Although sitting at a crossroads, the essay film occupies its own place.”
Chris Marker
- Letter de siberie
- Sans soleil
A film in letters
Thoughts and images from over the world
Musical composition
Meditation
Reflection
Time, memory, images, perception, history
The cameraman wonders (as cameramen do, at least those you see in movies)
about the meaning of this representation of the world of which he is the
instrument, and about the role of the memory he helps create.
The Zone of Hayao Yamaneko:
- Manipulated images drawn from historical and imaginary sources
1. documentary images of past events
2. video game images
3. signs that function in memory
4. manipulated images of kamikaze pilots 5: key images from Sans Soleil
2
, Lecture 2, the diary film
The diary film:
- first person filmmaking
3
Lecture 1
Essay is a very broad genre
- Essayists perform a combination of exactitude and evasion that seems to me what
writing ought to be (Brian Dillon)
- The essay is a form that would instruct, seduce, and mystify in equal measure
- The essay is the most widespread genre, takes so many shapes that it refuses so
successfully to resolve itself, finally, into its own shape (Harison)
- 3 approaches: history of writing as a technology, canonized inventors, essayists on the
essay
History as writing as a technology: cuneiform (spijkerschrift), 5000 years ago
someone wrote prescription on how to live, carved in clay is an early example of
essay writing
Canonized ‘inventors’: the pillow book by sei shonagon; wrote little dairy pieces,
allistical, notice small things and name them, zuihitsu: precious, little diary entries,
mono no aware: beauty is precious because its fleeting
Another example: Essais by Michel de Montaigne, first one that named his
writing essay, essai and exagium scale weiging, essaying between experience
and experimentation (self) reflection
Virginia Woolf: the common reader (1925); essay is an expression of personal
opinion, personality as style: unmissing element of essay: know how to write,
how to put your personality in writing
Essayists on the essay:
you think an essay should have a hypothesis, conclusion, argue points. You
bore me. – Carole Maso
Good essay should not conclude possibilities. Theodor adorno: the innermost
law of the essay is heresy (ketterij), have to go against society, good essay is
resistance.
There is nothing you cannot do with an essay (Dillard)
From literary to cinematic essay:
- Alexandre astrucs camera stylo: free expression of author in essay writing, film did
not have that freedom. Think about the camera like we think about the pen.
Combination of fact and fiction.
- Film as a form of expression:
skepticism, reflectiveness, and subjectivity, in-betweenness/hybridity: not one
genre, neither this nor that
Laura rascaroli: essay is the expression of a critical, personal reflection on a
problem or set of problems, need room for interpretation, not a documentary.
The I in the essay film strongly implicates a you. It is an embodied spectator. It
is called upon to participate and share the enunciators reflections. Essay films
annunciator does not tell you what to think or feel but invites you to reflect on
what it means and engage with the film. This structure accounts for the
openness of the essay film.
Early decades of cinema:
1
, - documentary experiments, ethnographic film
- thesis films/topical films, very specific topics
- cinema as instruction, patronizing
- a corner in wheat, Griffith, distinction between the exploited and the exploiters, very
simple, capitalism exploits people
Hans richter in 1940:
- Essay film is an attempt to make the invisible world of imagination, thoughts and
ideas visible, a lot of creative freedom
Timothy Corrigan:
- The interaction of a subjective perspective and the reality before it becomes a testing
or questioning of both, and the structure of the film, like the literary essay, follows the
undetermined movement of that dialogue
Viaggio in Italia (Rosselini, 1953):
- focus on details, personal representation of preferences, doesn’t get to a point, like a
home movie
- rather than narrartive: lateral, associative horizontal montage; an image doesn’t refer
to the one that preceded it or the one that will follow (Bazin)
Alain Resnais, night and fog:
- 10 years after holocaust: past is not done with us: film is a way to find an inner
intellectual process, not just give info
Micheal Renov:
- Video has retained an attachment to the performative and the corporeal that is
historical and is distinct from the cinema
Laura rascoli: “Although sitting at a crossroads, the essay film occupies its own place.”
Chris Marker
- Letter de siberie
- Sans soleil
A film in letters
Thoughts and images from over the world
Musical composition
Meditation
Reflection
Time, memory, images, perception, history
The cameraman wonders (as cameramen do, at least those you see in movies)
about the meaning of this representation of the world of which he is the
instrument, and about the role of the memory he helps create.
The Zone of Hayao Yamaneko:
- Manipulated images drawn from historical and imaginary sources
1. documentary images of past events
2. video game images
3. signs that function in memory
4. manipulated images of kamikaze pilots 5: key images from Sans Soleil
2
, Lecture 2, the diary film
The diary film:
- first person filmmaking
3
