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Essays on the Essay Film
Edited by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan
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Book Presentation:
The essay—with its emphasis on the provisional and explorative rather than on definitive statements—has evolved from its literary beginnings and is now found in all mediums, including film. Today, the essay film is, arguably, one of the most widely acclaimed and critically discussed forms of filmmaking around the world, with practitioners such as Chris Marker, Hito Steyerl, Errol Morris, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Rithy Panh. Characteristics of the essay film include the blending of fact and fiction, the mixing of art- and documentary-film styles, the foregrounding of subjective points of view, a concentration on public life, a tension between acoustic and visual discourses, and a dialogic encounter with audiences.
This anthology of fundamental statements on the essay film offers a range of crucial historical and philosophical perspectives. It provides early critical articulations of the essay film as it evolved through the 1950s and 1960s, key contemporary scholarly essays, and a selection of writings by essay filmmakers. It features texts on the foundations of the essay film by writers such as Hans Richter and André Bazin; contemporary positions by, among others, Phillip Lopate and Michael Renov; and original essays by filmmakers themselves, including Laura Mulvey and Isaac Julien.
About the authors:
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).
Press Reviews:
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
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
> From the same authors:
The Film Experience (2020)
An Introduction
by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White
Subject: Film Analysis
The Global Road Movie (2018)
Alternative Journeys around the World
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The Films of Werner Herzog (2016)
Between Mirage and History
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American Cinema of the 2000s (2012)
Themes and Variations
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Subject: On Films > Per period
Film and Literature (2011)
An Introduction and Reader
Dir. Timothy Corrigan
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Projecting History (2002)
German Nonfiction Cinema 1967-2000
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