essay films as genre

The term “essay film” has become increasingly used in film criticism to describe a self-reflective and self-referential documentary cinema that blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction. Scholars unanimously agree that the first published use of the term was by Richter in 1940.

Andrew Tracy explores the characteristics that have come to define this most elastic of forms, while eight more contributors highlight a dozen influential milestone essay films, from Jean Vigo to Chris Marker.

The term “essay film” was originally coined by German artist Hans Richter, who wrote in his 1940 paper, The Film Essay: “The film essay enables the filmmaker to make the ‘invisible’ world of thoughts and ideas visible on the screen...

Both “Essays on the Essay Film” and “The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia” illustrate that this mutable form should not be understood as a specific genre, but rather recognised for its profoundly reflective and reflexive capabilities. The essay film can even defy established formulas.

An essay film is a unique genre that combines elements of documentary and experimental film, often reflecting the filmmaker's personal perspective on a subject. This style emphasizes a more subjective approach to storytelling, allowing for exploration of ideas, themes, and emotions rather than strict adherence to traditional narrative structures.

Eschewing essentialist notions of genre and form, and bringing issues of practice and praxis to the fore, this book offers a novel understanding of the epistemological strategies that are mobilized by the essay film, and of where such strategies operate.

Born out of modern cinema, the essay film departed from the dominant forms of fiction and documentary cinema in order to explore an unknown territory defined by subjectivity, hybridization and reflection, evolving to become “a form that thinks,” as Jean-Luc Godard defined it.

The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments. The label "essay film" is encountered with ever-increasing frequency in both film reviews and scholarly writings on the cinema, owing to the recent proliferation of unorthodox, personal, reflexive "new" documentaries.

Unlike the documentary film, which presents facts and information, the essay film produces complex thought that at times is not grounded in reality but can be contradictory, irrational, and fantastic.

An essay film is a hybrid cinematic form that blends documentary and personal reflection, allowing filmmakers to express their ideas and experiences through a subjective lens. This type of film often incorporates elements of narration, visual imagery, and creative storytelling, creating a space for exploration of complex themes, ideas, and ...