The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia
With its increasing presence in a continuously evolving media environment, the essay film as a visual form raises new questions about the construction of the subject, its relationship to the world, and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema. In this volume, authors specializing in various national cinemas (Cuban, French, German, Israeli, Italian, Lebanese, Polish, Russian, American) and critical approaches (historical, aesthetic, postcolonial, feminist, philosophical) explore the essay film and its consequences for the theory of cinema while building on and challenging existing theories. Taking as a guiding principle the essay form's dialogic, fluid nature, the volume examines the potential of the essayistic to question, investigate, and reflect on all forms of cinema—fiction film, popular cinema, and documentary, video installation, and digital essay.

A wide range of filmmakers are covered, from Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1928), Chris Marker (Description of a Struggle, 1960), Nicolás Guillén Landrián (Coffea Arábiga, 1968), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Notes for an African Oresteia, 1969), Chantal Akerman (News from Home, 1976) and Jean-Luc Godard (Notre musique, 2004) to Nanni Moretti (Palombella Rossa, 1989), Mohammed Soueid (Civil War, 2002), Claire Denis (L'Intrus, 2004) and Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, 2011), among others. The volume argues that the essayistic in film—as process, as experience, as experiment—opens the road to key issues faced by the individual in relation to the collective, but can also lead to its own subversion, as a form of dialectical thought that gravitates towards crisis.
1123739771
The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia
With its increasing presence in a continuously evolving media environment, the essay film as a visual form raises new questions about the construction of the subject, its relationship to the world, and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema. In this volume, authors specializing in various national cinemas (Cuban, French, German, Israeli, Italian, Lebanese, Polish, Russian, American) and critical approaches (historical, aesthetic, postcolonial, feminist, philosophical) explore the essay film and its consequences for the theory of cinema while building on and challenging existing theories. Taking as a guiding principle the essay form's dialogic, fluid nature, the volume examines the potential of the essayistic to question, investigate, and reflect on all forms of cinema—fiction film, popular cinema, and documentary, video installation, and digital essay.

A wide range of filmmakers are covered, from Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1928), Chris Marker (Description of a Struggle, 1960), Nicolás Guillén Landrián (Coffea Arábiga, 1968), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Notes for an African Oresteia, 1969), Chantal Akerman (News from Home, 1976) and Jean-Luc Godard (Notre musique, 2004) to Nanni Moretti (Palombella Rossa, 1989), Mohammed Soueid (Civil War, 2002), Claire Denis (L'Intrus, 2004) and Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, 2011), among others. The volume argues that the essayistic in film—as process, as experience, as experiment—opens the road to key issues faced by the individual in relation to the collective, but can also lead to its own subversion, as a form of dialectical thought that gravitates towards crisis.
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The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia

The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia

The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia

The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia

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Overview

With its increasing presence in a continuously evolving media environment, the essay film as a visual form raises new questions about the construction of the subject, its relationship to the world, and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema. In this volume, authors specializing in various national cinemas (Cuban, French, German, Israeli, Italian, Lebanese, Polish, Russian, American) and critical approaches (historical, aesthetic, postcolonial, feminist, philosophical) explore the essay film and its consequences for the theory of cinema while building on and challenging existing theories. Taking as a guiding principle the essay form's dialogic, fluid nature, the volume examines the potential of the essayistic to question, investigate, and reflect on all forms of cinema—fiction film, popular cinema, and documentary, video installation, and digital essay.

A wide range of filmmakers are covered, from Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1928), Chris Marker (Description of a Struggle, 1960), Nicolás Guillén Landrián (Coffea Arábiga, 1968), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Notes for an African Oresteia, 1969), Chantal Akerman (News from Home, 1976) and Jean-Luc Godard (Notre musique, 2004) to Nanni Moretti (Palombella Rossa, 1989), Mohammed Soueid (Civil War, 2002), Claire Denis (L'Intrus, 2004) and Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, 2011), among others. The volume argues that the essayistic in film—as process, as experience, as experiment—opens the road to key issues faced by the individual in relation to the collective, but can also lead to its own subversion, as a form of dialectical thought that gravitates towards crisis.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231176941
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 11/08/2016
Series: Nonfictions
Pages: 216
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth A. Papazian is associate professor of Russian and film studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Manufacturing Truth: The Documentary Moment in Early Soviet Culture (2009).

Caroline Eades is associate professor of French and film studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Le Cinéma post-colonial français (2006).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia, by Elizabeth A. Papazian and Caroline Eades
Part I: The Essay Film as Dialogue
1. Essayism and Contemporary Film Narrative, by Timothy Corrigan
2. Essaying the Forms of Popular Cinema: Godard, Farocki and the Principle of Shot/Countershot, by Rick Warner
3. The Practice of Strangeness: L'Intrus, from Jean-Luc Nancy (2000) to Claire Denis (2004), by Martine Beugnet
4. Cinéma-vérité and Kino-pravda: Rouch, Vertov, and the Essay Form, by Caroline Eades and Elizabeth A. Papazian
Part II: The Essay Film as Politics
5. Notes for a Revolution: Pasolini's Postcolonial Essay Films, by Luca Caminati
6. Chris Marker's Description of a Struggle and the Limits of the Essay Film, by Eric Zakim
7. A Woman with a Movie Camera: Chantal Akerman's Essay Films, by Anne Eakin Moss
8. 'What Does It Mean Today to Be a Communist?': Nanni Moretti's Palombella rossa and La cosa as Essay Films, by Mauro Resmini
Part III: The Essay Film as Utopia
9. Mohamed Soueid's Cinema of Immanence, by Laura U. Marks
10. Inside/Outside: Nicolasito Guillén Landrián's Subversive Strategy in Coffea Arábiga, by Ernesto Livon-Grosman
11. American Essays in How to Build a Home: Thoreau, Mekas, Proenneke, by Oliver Gaycken
12. 'to speak, to hold, to live by the image': Notes in the Margins of the New Videographic Tendency, by Luka Arsenjuk
Afterword: The Idea of Essay Film, by Laura Rascaroli
Index
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