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 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 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 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 Kiki Tianqi Yu in
Conversation with Lei Lei
Notes on Contributors
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, and Reader in Cinematic Art at Queen Mary University of London. She is the PI of AHRC funded project 'Daoism, Cinema and Wellbeing' (2025-28), and also working on Sinophone womens cinema, creative documentary and experimental nonfiction. She is the author of My Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China (EUP, 2019), co-editor of Chinas iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the 21 Century (Bloomsbury 2014), and her publications appear on Screen, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Studies in Documentary Film, etc. Her films include Memory of Home (2009), Chinas van Goghs (2016), and The Two Lives of Li Ermao (2019). Her curatorial projects include the film season Dancing with Water: Womens cinema from Contemporary China.
Lisainfo e-raamatute kohta