A Selected Bibliography of Resources on the Essay Film
The essay film form lies between fiction and documentary genres. With etymological roots in the French essai [to try], the genre might be most productively conceptualised, much like its literary counterpart, as an exploration of an intellectual question or problem, articulated from the perspective of a single authorial voice. It can be tangential and meandering, self-reflexive and self-referential, and often foregrounds the unreliability of the narrator. In this sense, the essayistic form is not a straightforward exercise in pedagogy. Correspondingly, essay films are preoccupied less with editorial perfection than with laying bare the process of thought, thereby giving the impression, as Laura Rascaroli writes, of ‘being let into the private monologue of the enunciator’ (Rascaroli, ‘The Essay Film’ in Essays on the Essay Film, 187).
The origins of the essay film genre have sometimes been identified in D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909), in Sergei Eisenstein’s unrealised desire to transform Karl Marx’s Capital (1867) into film, and in Eisenstein’s, Vsevolod Pudovkin’s, and Dziga Vertov’s various experiments with montage. Other significant precursors include the ‘city symphony’ films of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1927), and Jean Vigo’s À propos de Nice (1930): films that made creative use of editing techniques to convey life in the modern metropolis, and combined narrative features with experimental form. Using ‘essay’ to describe a particular type of film was first posited in 1940 by Hans Richter, who decried the tendency of documentary films to provide only ‘pretty views’, and argued that they should instead ‘lend form to intellectual substance’ and ‘attempt to make the invisible world of imagination, thoughts, and ideas visible’ (Richter, ‘The Film Essay’, 89; 90; 91). In 1958, André Bazin notably identified Chris Marker’s Letter from Siberia (1958) as a new genre of cinema, which he described as ‘an essay documented by film’. For Bazin, the term ‘essay’ should be understood ‘in the same sense that it has in literature—an essay at once historical and political, written by a poet as well’ (Bazin, ‘Bazin on Marker’, 103).
Prominent essay films include: Humphrey Jennings’s A Diary for Timothy (1945); Alain Resnais’s Toute la mémoire du monde (1956); Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black (1963); Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Letter to Jane (1972); Mike Dibb and John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972); Orson Welles’s F is for Fake (1974); Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983); Black Audio Collective’s Handsworth Songs (1986); Godard’s Histoire(s) de cinéma (1988–98); Harun Farocki’s Leben — BRD (1990); Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993); Patrick Keiller’s London (1994); Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000); Thom Anderson’s Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003); and Grant Gee’s Patience (After Sebald) (2011). In recent years, a renewed attention to the form has been encouraged in part by the rise of digital filmmaking, but also by recognition of its potential for new modes of filmic practice. This increasing importance has been highlighted by the BFI Southbank season The Art of the Essay Film (2013), curated by Kieron Corless, as well as a number of conferences at academic institutions, including World Cinema and the Essay Film at the University of Reading (2015); Essay Film and Narrative Techniques: Screenwriting Non-Fiction at the University of York (2017); City, Essay, Film at University College London (2019); and The Essay Film Form and Animation: Intersectionality in Motion, organised by the Derek Jarman Lab at Birkbeck, University of London, Arts University Bournemouth, and the Society for Animation Studies (2019). Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image has held the Essay Film Festival annually since 2015. And, following the success of Isaac Julian’s essayistic biography Derek (2008), the Derek Jarman Lab has produced The Seasons in Quincy (2016), a study of the form that experiments with four different approaches to it.
The following bibliography is not an exhaustive list of resources on the essay film, but it aims to provide a comprehensive starting point for researchers who are unfamiliar with the form and its intellectual contexts. The first section catalogues books and chapters in edited books on the essay film, while the second lists some important journal articles, many of which may be found in online repositories such as JSTOR and Project Muse. The third section provides a list of websites and digital resources. The fourth section, on fair dealing, lists articles on the subject as well as some useful resources for filmmakers seeking guidance on circumstances in which copyright works can be used without permission from, or payment to, the copyright owner. The last section comprises a short list of significant essay films.
Robyn Jakeman
Bibliography
Compiled by Robyn Jakeman, Lily Ford, and Bartek Dziadosz.
Contents:
I. Books and Chapters in Edited Books
II. Journal Articles
III. Websites and Digital Resources
IV. Selected Bibliography on Fair Dealing
a. Articles
b. Guidelines and Resources
V. The Essay Film: A Selected Filmography
I. Books and Chapters in Edited Books
Adorno, Theodor W., ‘The Essay as Form’, in Notes to Literature, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, trans. by Shierry Weber Nicholson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), pp. 29–47
Alter, Nora M., Chris Marker (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006)
——, The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018)
——, ‘The Essay Film and its German Variants’, in Generic Histories of German Cinema: Genre and its Deviations, ed. by Jaimey Fisher (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013), pp. 49–70
——, ‘Hans Richter in Exile: Translating the Avant-Garde’, in Caught by Politics; Hitler Exiles and American Visual Culture, ed. by Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnik (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 223–43
Alter, Nora M., and Timothy Corrigan, eds., Essays on the Essay Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017)
Arthur, Paul, ‘The Resurgence of History and the Avant-Garde Essay Film’, in A Line of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), pp. 61–73
Astruc, Alexandre, ‘The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera Stylo’, in The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks, ed. by Peter Graham (London: British Film Institute, 2009), pp. 31–37
——, ‘The Future of Cinema’, in Essays on the Essay Film, ed. by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan, trans. by Sofia Rabaté (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), pp. 93–101
Bacqué, Bertrand, Cyril Neyrat, Clara Schulmann, and Véronique Terrier Hermann, eds., Jeux sérioux: Cinéma et art contemporains transforment l’essai (Geneva: HEAD, 2015)
Barthes, Roland, ‘The Third Meaning’, in Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 52–68
Bartos, Adam, and Colin MacCabe, Studio: Remembering Chris Marker (New York: OR Books, 2017)
Bazin, André, ‘Bazin on Marker’, in Essays on the Essay Film, ed. by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan, trans. by David Kehr (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), pp. 102–105
——, What is Cinema?, trans. by Hugh Gray, 2 vols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)
Biemann, Ursula, ed. Stuff It: The Video Essay in the Digital Age (Zurich: Voldemeer, 2003)
Bellour, Raymond, Between-the-Images (Zurich: JRP/Ringier, 2012)
Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. by J. A. Underwood (London: Penguin, 2008)
Conomos, John, ‘The Self-Portrait and the Film and Video Essay’, in Imaging Identity: Media, Memory, and Portraiture in the Digital Age, ed. by Melinda Hinkson (Canberra: ANU Press, 2016), pp. 85–100
Corless, Kieron, ‘Thought in Action: The Art of the Essay Film’, BFI Southbank Programme Booklet (August 2013)
Corrigan, Timothy, The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)
D’Agata, John, ed., The Lost Origins of the Essay (St. Paul, MN.: Graywolf Press, 2009)
Ehmann, Antje, and Kodowo Eshun, eds., Harun Farocki: Against What? Against Whom? (London: Raven Row, 2009)
Elsaesser, Thomas, ed., Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
Fusco, Coco, Young, British and Black: A Monograph on the Work of Sanfoka Film/Video Collective and Black Audio Film Collective (Buffalo, NY: Contemporary Arts Center, 1988)
Godard, Jean-Luc, Documents, ed. by Nicole Brenez, David Faroult, Michael Temple, James Williams, and Michael Witt (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2006)
——, Godard on Godard, trans. and ed. by Tom Milne (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972)
——, Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television, ed. and trans. by Timothy Barnard (Montreal: Caboose, 2014)
——, Son + Image, 1974–1991, ed. by Raymond Bellour (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1993)
Gorin, Jean-Pierre, ‘Proposal for a Tussle’, in Der Weg der Termiten: Beispiele eines Essayistischen Kinos, 1909–2004, ed. by Astrif Ofner (Vienna: Schüeren, 2007)
Graham, Peter, ed., The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (London: British Film Institute, 2009). See particularly: Alexandre Astruc, ‘The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo’, pp. 31–37; André Bazin, ‘The Evolution of Film Language {Qu’est-ce que le cinéma}’, pp. 65–89.
Green, Renée, Other Planes of There: Selected Writings (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)
Gunning, Tom, ‘A Corner in Wheat’, in The Griffith Project, ed. by Paolo Cherchi Usai, 12 vols (London: British Film Institute, 1999), iii, 130–41
Harrison, Thomas, Essayism: Conrad, Musil, and Pirandello (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)
Hollweg, Brenda, and Igor Krstić, eds., World Cinema and the Essay Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
Julien, Isaac, with Cynthia Rose, Isaac Julien: Riot (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2013)
Liandrat-Guigues, Suzanne, and Murielle Gagnebin, eds., L’Essai et le cinéma (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2004)
Lukàcs, Georg, ‘On the Nature and Form of the Essay’, in Soul and Form, ed. by John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis, trans. by Anna Bostock (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 16–34
Lupton, Catherine, Chris Marker: Memories of the Future (London: Reaktion, 2004)
Marker, Chris, Commentaires, 2 vols (Paris: Seuil, 1961; 1967)
Mekas, Jonas, ‘The Diary Film (A Lecture on Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania)’, in The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, ed. by P. Adams Sitney (New York: New York University Press, 1978), pp. 190–98
Minh-ha, Trin T., Framer Framed: Film Scripts and Interviews (New York: Routledge, 1992)
Montaigne, Michel de, The Essays of Michael Signeur de Montaigne, trans. by Charles Cotton (London: Alex Murray and Son, 1700)
Montero, David, Thinking Images: The Essay Film as Dialogic Form in European Cinema (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012)
Mulvey, Laura, Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (London: Reaktion, 2006)
Obaldia, Claire de, The Essayistic Spirit: Literature, Modern Criticism, and the Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
Pantenburg, Volker, Farocki/Godard:Film as Theory (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015). See particularly chapter three: ‘Deviation as Norm—Notes on the Essay Film’, pp. 135–52.
Papazian, Elizabeth, and Caroline Eades, eds., The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia (New York: Wallflower Press, 2016)
Rascaroli, Laura, How the Essay Film Thinks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
——, The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film (New York: Wallflower Press, 2009)
Richter, Hans, ‘The Film Essay: A New Type of Documentary Film’, in Essays on the Essay Film, ed. by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan, trans. by Maria P. Alter (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), pp. 89–92
——, The Struggle for Film, trans. by Ben Brewster (New York: Wildwood House, 1986)
Roscoe, Jane, and Craig Hight, Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001)
Rosenbaum, Jonathan, ‘Orson Welles’s Essay Films and Documentary Fictions: A Two-Part Speculation’, in Discovering Orson Welles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 129–45
Scherer, Christina, Ivens, Marker, Godard, Jarman — Erinnerung im Essayfilm (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2001)
Silverman, Kaja, and Harun Farocki, Speaking About Godard (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
Vertov, Dziga, Kimo-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. by Annette Michelson, trans. by Kevin O’Brien (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)
Warner, Rick, Godard and the Essay Film: A Form that Thinks (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2018)
Wees, William C., Recycled Images: The Art and Politics of Found Footage Films (New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1992)
Witt, Michael, Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013)
Wollen, Peter, Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-Strategies (London: Verso, 1982)
II. Journal Articles
Alter, Nora M., ‘Composing in Fragments: Music in the Essay Films of Resnais and Godard’, SubStance, Special Issue: Between the Essay Film and Social Cinema: The Left Bank Group in Context, vol. 41, no. 2 (2012), 24–39
——, ‘The Political Im/perceptible in the Essay Film: Farocki’s “Images of the World and the Inscription of War”, New German Critique, no. 68 (Spring–Summer 1996), 165–92
——, ‘Theses on Godard’s Allemagne 90 neuf zéro’, Iris, no. 29 (2000), 117–32
——, ‘Translating the Essay into Film and Installation’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 6, no. 1 (2007), 45–58
Arthur, Paul, ‘Essay Questions’, Film Comment, vol. 39, no. 1 (2003), 53–62
Astruc, Alexandre, ‘L’avenir du cinéma’, Trafic, no. 3 (1992), 151–58
Bazin, Andre, ‘Bazin on Marker’, trans. by Dave Kehr, Film/Comment, vol. 39, no. 4 (2003), 43–44
‘Chris Marker’, Special Issue: Images documentaires, no. 15 (1993)
‘Chris Marker’, Special Issue: Trafic, no. 84 (2012)
Corrigan, Timothy, ‘Of Diaries on Film, or Velocities of Non Place’, in Der Essayfilm: Ästhetik und Aktualität, ed. by Sven Kramer and Thomas Tode (Konstanz: UVK, 2011), pp. 125–44
Eisenstein, Sergei, ‘Notes for a Film of “Capital”’, trans. by Maciej Sliwowski, Jay Leyda, and Annette Michelson, October, no. 2 (1976), 3–26
Gorbman, Claudia, ‘Finding a Voice: Varda’s Early Travelogues’, SubStance, Special Issue: Between the Essay Film and Social Cinema: The Left Bank Group in Context, vol. 41, no. 2 (2012), 40–57
Grob, Veronika, and others, eds., ‘Essay’, Special Issue, Cinema, no. 50 (2005)
Lee, Kevin B., ‘Video Essay: The Essay Film — Some Thoughts of Discontent, in Sight and Sound, May 2017, <https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/video-essay-essay-film-some-thoughts> [accessed 7 November 2019]
Leslie, Esther, ‘Art, Documentary, and the Essay Film’, Radical Philosophy (July–August 2015), <https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/art-documentary-and-the-essay-film> [accessed 14 November 2019]
Lopate, Philip, ‘In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film’, The Threepenny Review, no. 48 (Winter 1992), 19–22
Rascaroli, Laura, ‘The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments’, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 49, no. 2 (Fall 2008), 24–47.
Harvey, David Oscar, ‘The Limits of Vococentrism: Chris Marker, Hans Richter and the Essay Film’, SubStance, Special Issue: Between the Essay Film and Social Cinema: The Left Bank Group in Context, vol. 41, no. 2 (2012), 6–23
Ritchey, Andrew, ‘Lines of Flight: Jean-Daniel Pollet, “Mediterranée”, and the “Tel Quel” Group’, SubStance, Special Issue: Between the Essay Film and Social Cinema: The Left Bank Group in Context, vol. 41, no. 2 (2012), 79–98
Renov, Michael, ‘History and/as Autobiography: The Essayistic in Film and Culture’, Framework, vol. 1 (1989), 6–13
Sandhu, Sukhdev, ‘Vagrancy and Drift: the Rise of the Roaming Essay Film’, The Guardian, 3 August 2013, <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/03/rise-essay-film-bfi-season> [accessed 13 November 2019]
Tracey, Andrew, ‘The Essay Film’, in Sight and Sound, August 2013, <https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/essay-film> [accessed 7 November 2019]
Ungar, Steven, ‘Introduction: Between The Essay Film and Social Cinema’, SubStance, Special Issue: Between the Essay Film and Social Cinema: The Left Bank Group in Context, vol. 41, no. 2 (2012), 3–5
Ungar, Steven, ‘Scenes in a Library: Alain Resnais and “Toute la mémoire du monde’, SubStance, Special Issue: Between the Essay Film and Social Cinema: The Left Bank Group in Context, vol. 41, no. 2 (2012), 58–78
III. Websites and Digital Resources
16:9, <http://www.16-9.dk/kategori/media/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
8hours, <https://www.8hours.com/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, <http://www.alphavillejournal.com/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
The Audiovisual Essay, <https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/> [accessed 7 november 2019]. Free Resource.
Audiovisualcy, <https://vimeo.com/groups/audiovisualcy> [accessed 1 October 2020].
BFI, ‘The Best Video Essays of 2017’, <https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/annual-round-ups/best-video-essays-2017> [accessed 1 October 2020].
BFI, ‘The Best Video Essays of 2018’, <https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/best-video-essays-2018> [accessed 1 October 2020].
BFI, ‘The Best Video Essays of 2019’, <https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/best-video-essays-2019> [accessed 1 October 2020].
BFI Player, <https://player.bfi.org.uk/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Paywall; some films free to access.
Box of Broadcasts, <https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Paywall; available through institutions.
Catherine Grant, Vimeo, <https://vimeo.com/filmstudiesff> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
The Cine-Files: A Scholarly Journal of Film Studies, <https://www.thecine-files.com/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Correspondencias, <http://correspondenciascine.com/ensayos-audiovisuales/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Cousins, Mark, ‘The Essay Film — A Manifesto by Mark Cousins’, Notes on Cinematograph (29 August 2013) <http://notesoncinematograph.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/essayfilm.html> [accessed 13 November 2019].
Desistfilm, <https://desistfilm.com/category/videoessays/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Every Frame a Painting, YouTube, <https://www.youtube.com/user/everyframeapainting> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
The Essay Film Festival, <http://www.essayfilmfestival.com/> [accessed 7 November 2019].
Filmscalpel, <https://www.filmscalpel.com/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Film Studies for Free, <https://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
Filmidee, <http://www.filmidee.it/category/video-essay/?fbclid=IwAR3WsAiTKCaJfHiA0YtSzPfoCEnmic2dD-39m0qUmKqvhmbfOE88WlxVm84> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Filmkrant, <https://filmkrant.nl/video/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Frames Cinema Journal, <https://framescinemajournal.com/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
[in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, Media Commons, <http://mediacommons.org/intransition/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
In Media Res, Media Commons, <http://mediacommons.org/imr/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
Kanopy, <https://www.kanopy.com/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Paywall; available through institutions.
Keathley, Christian, Jason Mittell, and Catherine Grant, The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy <http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/index> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Lisorti, Leandro, ‘Working with Found Footage’, Vimeo. <https://vimeo.com/454501777> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Little White Lies, <https://lwlies.com/tags/video/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Lola,<http://www.lolajournal.com/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, <https://maifeminism.com/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Mediarxiv, <https://mediarxiv.org/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism, <https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/movie/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
MUBI Notebook, Video Essays, <https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tag/Video%20Essays> [accessed 1 October 2020].
NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, <https://necsus-ejms.org/journal/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Open Library of Humanities, <https://www.openlibhums.org/> [accessed 7 November 2019]. Free Resource.
Sight and Sound, Video Essays, <https://www2.bfi.org.uk/sight-sound-magazine/videos> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays, <https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/en/journal/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Van den Berg, Thomas, and Miklós Kiss, Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video, University of Groningen (July 2016). <https://scalar.usc.edu/works/film-studies-in-motion/index> [accessed 1 October 2020].
The Video Essay Podcast, <https://thevideoessay.com/>, including the Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist <https://thevideoessay.com/blacklivesmatter> [accessed 1 October 2020].
Zoom Out, <https://zoom-out.ca/> [accessed 1 October 2020].
IV. Selected Bibliography on Fair Dealing
a. Articles
Bellido, Jose, (2014) ‘Looking Right: The Art of Visual Literacy in English Copyright Litigation’, Law, Culture, and the Humanities, vol. 10, no. 1 (2014), 66–87
Deazley, Ronan, and Bartolomeo Meletti, ‘Copying, Creativity, and Copyright’, CREATe Working Paper (February 2016), <www.create.ac.uk/publications/copying-creativity-and-copyright/> [accessed 14 November 2019]
Grischka, Petri, ‘The Public Domain vs. the Museum: The Limits of Copyright and Reproduction of Two-Dimensional Works of Art’, Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, vol. 12, no. 1 (2014), Art. 8. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jcms.1021217
Macmillan, Fiona, ‘Is Copyright Blind to the Visual?’, Visual Communication, vol. 7, no. 1 (2008), 97–118, <https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/864/1/Fmacmillan864.pdf> [accessed 14 November 2019]
b. Guidelines and Resources
The UK Intellectual Property Office, <https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright>, has e-leaflets explaining every exception to copyright with reference to the 2014 amendments to the copyright act, for both creators and users.
Copyrightuser.org addresses public mis/understandings of copyright and provides many resources for explaining in simple language both the UK law and the exceptions to it. It is set up by CREATe and is the platform for Ronan Deazley and Bartolomeo Meletti’s webseries ‘The Game is On!’, <https://www.copyrightuser.org/> [accessed 14 November 2019]
DACS, the UK artists collecting society, has a factsheet explaining exceptions to copyright as they pertain to artists’ work: <https://www.dacs.org.uk/knowledge-base/factsheets/exceptions-and-limitations> [accessed 14 November 2019]
Tate has an extensive guide to copyright and its exceptions available online: <www.tate.org.uk/file/guide-copyright> [accessed 14 November 2019]
Learning on Screen’s Audiovisual Citation Guidelines are useful for correct attribution when quoting audiovisual material. Download the guidelines here: <http://bufvc.ac.uk/projects-research/avcitation> [accessed 14 November 2019]
Channel 4’s producers’ handbook on fair dealing for programme makers is worth checking if you are working on audiovisual outputs: <www.channel4.com/producers-handbook/c4-guidelines/fair-dealing-guidelines> [accessed 14 November 2019]
The College Art Association of the United States published a code of best practice for fair use in the visual arts in 2015: <www.collegeart.org/programs/caa-fair-use> [accessed 14 November 2019]. While this pertains to US fair use protocols, which differ from the UK’s principle of fair dealing (and copyright law is territorial), it is still an excellent resource.
V. The Essay Film: A Selected Filmography
Akbari, Mania, A Moon for My Father (2019)
Akomfrah, John, Handsworth Songs (1986). A short Tate interview with Akomfrah, on film and the philosophy of montage, is available here.
Akerman, Chantal, News from Home (1977)
Anderson, Thom, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003). A trailer is available here.
Buñuel, Luis, Land Without Bread (1933). The film is available on YouTube.
Cozarinsky, Edgar, La Guerre d’un seul homme (1982)
The Derek Jarman Lab, The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger (2016).
Dibb, Mike, and John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972). Episodes one, two, three, and four are available on YouTube.
Erice, Víctor, La Morte Rouge (2006)
Farocki, Harun, Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1989)
——, Leben — BRD (1990)
Farrokhzad, Forough, The House is Black (1963)
Gee, Grant, Patience (After Sebald) (2011)
Godard, Jean-Luc, Histoire(s) de cinéma (1988–98)
——, Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)
Godard, Jean-Luc, and Jean-Pierre Gorin, Letter to Jane (1972).
Guzman, Patrizio, Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
Jarman, Derek, Blue (1993). The film is available on YouTube.
Jennings, Humphrey A Diary for Timothy (1945). The film is available on YouTube.
Julian, Isaac, Derek (2008)
Keiller, Patrick, London (1994)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Close Up (1990)
Kluge, Alexander, News from Ideological Antiquity (2008)
Marker, Chris, Le Fond de l’air est rouge (1977)
——, Letter from Siberia (1958)
——, Sans Soleil (1983)
Mekas, Jonas, Lost, Lost, Lost (1976)
Minh-ha, Trinh T., Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989)
Morin, Edgar, and Jean Rouch, Chronicle of a Summer (1961)
Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Notes Towards An African Orestes (1970)
Reggio, Godfrey, Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
Resnais, Alain, Night and Fog (1956). You can watch this film on YouTube. An interview with Resnais on the film is available here.
——, Toute la mémoire du monde (1956). You can watch this film here.
Resnais, Alain, Chris Marker, and Ghislain Cloquet, Statues Also Die (1953). You can view this film on YouTube.
Rivers, Ben, Two Years at Sea (2011)
Ruttmann, Walter, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927). You can view this film on YouTube.
Varda, Agnès, Diary of a Pregnant Woman (1958)
——, The Gleaners and I (2000)
——, Ô Saisons, ô chateaux (1958)
Vertov, Dziga, Man with a Movie Camera (1927)
Vigo, Jean, À propos de Nice (1930)
Welles, Orson, F for Fake (1974). You can view the film on YouTube. Welles’ original 9-minute ‘trailer’ for the film, which contains material not in the film, is available here. A video essay on the structure of F for Fake, by Every Frame a Painting, is available here; a short interview with Peter Bogdanovich on the film is available here.