Film and Social Reality: The Essay Film

Catalog description

In this course we analyze the category of films referred to as essay films. Described as resisting classification, interrogating boundaries between fact and fiction, and transgressing dominant ways of seeing and thinking, essay films draw on a range of established practices including documentary, narrative, and avant-garde cinema forms. We emphasize the films’ relation to the archive and traditional research methods; history; political intervention and reflection; and critical engagement with visual representation and image making.