Title: Beyond the essay film : subjectivity, textuality and technology /
Authors: Vassilieva, Julia,; Williams, Deane,
Year: 2020
Subjects: Experimental films History and criticism; Documentary films
Abstract: In the wake of the explosion in the production of essay films over the last twenty-five years and its subsequent theorization in scholarly literature, this volume seeks to historicize these intertwined developments within the 'long duree' of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. 'Beyond the Essay Film' seeks to not only acknowledge the influential predecessors of this - in the view of many critics - most interesting type of contemporary filmmaking - but also to speculate about its possible transformation as we move forward into the uncharted waters of the twenty-first - digital - century. Focusing on three specific axes that underpin and shape the articulation of the essay film as a specific cultural form - subjectivity, textuality and technology - this book explores how changes along and across these dimensions affect historical shifts within essay film practice and its relation to other types of cinema and neighbouring art forms.
Contents: Introduction --1. 35 Years On: Is the 'Text', Once Again, Unattainable? --2. To Attain the Text. But Which Text? --3. Compounding the Lyric Essay Film : Towards a Theory of Poetic Counter-Narrative --4. 'Every love story is a ghost story' : The Spectral Network of Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog (2015) --5. Lines of Interpretation in Fields of Perception and Remembrance : The Multiscreen Array as Essay --6. Deborah Stratman's The Illinois Parables (2016) : Intellectual Vagabond and Vagabond Matter -- 7. Rethinking the Human, Rethinking the Essay Film : The Ecocritical Work of The Pearl Button --8. Montage Reloaded: From Russian Avant-Garde to the Audiovisual Essay --9. 'All I have to offer is myself': The Film-Maker as Narrator --10. The Shudder of a Cinephiliac Idea? Videographic Film Studies Practice as Material Thinking --11. The Home Movie as Essay Film: On Making Memory Posthumously.