Bringing together filmmakers and scholars, this volume unpacks the evolving language of screenwriting in documentary and experimental cinema.
Uniting filmmakers and practice-led researchers, Essay Film and Narrative Techniques: Screen-writing Non-fiction explores the evolving language of essay film through various methods of narration, including production diaries, self-critiques, interviews, and theoretical analyses. Including canonical works and unconventional approaches, this collection emphasizes how essay films blur the lines between personal expression and collective storytelling.
In this volume, renowned scholars and practitioners unpack the conceptual and contextual dimensions of screenwriting for essay film, considering its role as both a cinematic and research tool. Whether reflecting on the personal camera or hybrid creative methodologies, the essays provide invaluable insights into how essay films are written and realized.
With its interdisciplinary scope and innovative approach, this work is a beneficial resource for academics, filmmakers, and students of documentary and experimental cinema, offering a nuanced understanding of how screenwriting shapes nonfiction storytelling.
List of Figures
Preface
Laura Rascaroli
Introduction: Essay Filmmaking as Creative Research: Behind the Scenes of
On-screen Thinking, Narrative Techniques and Processes of Knowing
Kiki Tianqi Yu and Romana Turina
Part One: Journeys and Nature of Thinking
1. Chaos or Process? Some Remarks on the Work Process of an Essay Film
Jouko Aaltonen
2. The Collector/Sampler/Editor: A Feminist Perspective on the Screenwriting
Process
Judith Rifeser
3. The Future of Thinking: Notes on Animation and the Essay Film
Richard Wright
Part Two: Dialogic Practices
4. Father-land: Narratives of Memory in a Place of Conflict
Kayla Parker
5. Heliographies of Change: Marianna Christofides Days In Between (2015)
Brenda Hollweg with Marianna Christofides
6. Personal monument: remembering an awkward love Personal monument:
remembering an awkward love
Louis Hothothot
Part Three: Work-in-Progress: From Still to Moving Images
7. Three Sisters in a Sketchbook: Photography as Prosthesis in the Essay Film
Form
Romana Turina
8. Into the Frameless Distance and The City of (No) Memory: Itinerant
Research for Photo/Filmic Practices
Patti Gaal-Holmes
Part Four: Nature of the essay film and Cinema as Knowledge Production
9. Black Essay-filmmaking and Essay-filmmaking as Black
William Brown
10. Filmmakers as magicians and cinema can be dangerous Filmmakers as
Magicians and Cinema Can Be Dangerous
Kiki Tianqi Yu in Conversation with Lei Lei
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Romana Turina is Associate Professor at Arts University Bournemouth. She is a writer, filmmaker and historian. While leading research in the Essay Film for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS), Romana engages in the creative processes. Her work includes the essay filmsLunch with Family(2016) andSan Sabba (2016), shortlisted at the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2018 and awarded at the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards 2018. In 2024, she completed the essay film Three Sisters in a Sketchbook(2024), selected at the LA Independent Women Film Awards 2024, and the Hollywood Independent Filmmaker Awards and Festivals 2024. Romana received her Ph.D. in Theatre, Film and Television from the University of York, UK. She taught creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Indianapolis, the University of York, and the University of Greenwich.
Kiki Tianqi Yu is a writer, filmmaker, curator, andsenior lecturer in film at the Queen Mary University of London. Her research, in theory and practice, explores cinema in relation to decoloniality, personal expressions, and eastern philosophies, with a focus on creative documentary and nonfiction, womens cinema, and Chinese cinemas. She is currently working on Daoism and Cinema and Sinophone womens cinema. She is the author ofMy Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China(EUP, 2019),co-editor ofChinas iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the 21st Century(Bloomsbury 2014). Her films includeMemory of Home(2009),Chinas van Goghs(2016),andThe Two Lives of Li Ermao(2019). Kiki also curates film screening series including Dancing with Water: Womens Cinema from Contemporary China across various venues in London (FebruaryApril 2024).
