essay film

Counterparts, no. 3, vol. 4October 7, 2019<October 7, 2019

Textures of Visibility: The City/Essay/Film Symposium

Anna Viola Sborgi

Anna Sborgi discusses the recent University College London symposium on the essay film and the urban, concentrating on the form's potential to depict socially marginal positions as well as capital's embedding in the city.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3November 1, 2018<November 1, 2018

Beyond the Museum of Present Pasts

Iván Villarmea Álvarez

Iván Villarmea Álvarez explores the politics of memory in the contemporary city essay film.

no. 4, RoundtablesOctober 31, 2018<October 31, 2018

(Im)Permeable History: Notebook on Cities and Clothes (pt. 2)

Thomas Elsaesser

Thomas Elsaesser traces Wim Wenders and Yohji Yamamoto's intertwined history through personal upheavals and national trauma to arrive, unexpectedly, at Weimar photography.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 30, 2018<October 30, 2018

Bad essays don’t think: reflections on a (still) heretic form of the cinematic city

Brenda Hollweg

Drawing on Adorno's account of the "bad essay", Brenda Hollweg defends the essay film's capacity for politico-aesthetic intervention.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 29, 2018<October 29, 2018

Re/framing the City of Cinema

Laura Rascaroli

Laura Rascaroli on how the essay film's metahistorical nature, combined with the characteristics of post-modern space/time, produce a distinct treatment of the city as palimpsest.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 28, 2018<October 28, 2018

Urban Palimpsests and the City Essay Film

Igor Krstić

Igor Krstić reflects on the first round of The Essay Film and the City" and opens the second by asking contributors to rethink the classic metaphor of the urban as palimpsest.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 20, 2018<October 20, 2018

The city as stage: proto-essayistic elements in Chronique d’un été

Roberto Cavallini

Roberto Cavallini mounts a case for Rouch and Morin's Chronique d'un été as an essay film

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 19, 2018<October 20, 2018

Notebook on Cities and Clothes: Wim Wenders Takes to the (Inner Ring) Road

Thomas Elsaesser

Thomas Elsaesser reconsiders some of Wim Wenders films through the lens of the city and the essay, discovering new dialogic and self-reflexive qualities within them.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 18, 2018<October 18, 2018

Streets & Screens

Iván Villarmea Álvarez

Iván Villarmea Álvarez explores the perspectives that local and outsider filmmakers bring to the essay film.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 17, 2018<October 17, 2018

The Fiction of Beirut: Reframing Labour Migration in Ziad Kalthoum’s Taste of Cement

Brenda Hollweg

Brenda Hollweg shows how Taste of Cement, part of the recent global growth of the essay film, explores Beirut through the perspective of its migrant workforce, unearthing the city's history and role in regional conflicts, as well as flows of labor.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 16, 2018<October 16, 2018

The Diachronic Flâneur

Laura Rascaroli

Is the critical gaze on the city always a wandering gaze? Laura Rascaroli works through questions of usage and explores how the essay film thinks through its practices.

no. 4, Roundtables, vol. 3October 15, 2018<October 15, 2018

Introduction: Essay Films and the City

Igor Krstić

[Ed. note: this post is part of a Roundtable discussion on “The Essay Film and The City.” For more background on the discussion …