The long-awaited news flash foregrounded by The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia is that cinema studies has at last parted ways with moldy, genre-based epistemologies. The idea of film-thinking as a philosophia sui generis that opposes formalistic classifications has been there from the get-go-in the hearts and minds of groundbreaking film-heretics. Here we are finally offered a thoroughly researched and ... Read morecarefully thought-out contemplation of the primordial desires and wishful prospects of the art of filmmaking, a distinct form of human expression. This book heralds an advanced phase of maturation for cinema studies. Its straightforward willingness to destabilize its own epistemic, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions, generating authentic terms-of-being, perfectly matches the true spiritual and intellectual scope of the essay film as we know it-and, more critically, as we can never truly know its inherently unknowable stratum. The clarity of this book's statement provides a firm foundation for future revelations the essay film holds in store.
Dan Geva, Haifa University, and documentary filmmaker This exciting collection promises to be an important milestone for ongoing debates and discussions about the emergent medium of interactive and nonlinear documentary.
Matt Soar, Concordia University Show Less