The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction

The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction locates the genre's origins in early silent cinema and follows its transformation with the advent of sound, its legitimation in the postwar period, and its multifaceted development at the turn of the millennium.
Nora M. Alter reveals the essay film to be a hybrid genre that fuses the categories of feature, art, and documentary film. Like its literary predecessor, the essay film draws on a variety of forms and approaches; in the process, it fundamentally alters the shape of cinema. The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction locates the genre’s origins in early silent cinema and follows its transformation with the advent of sound, its legitimation in the postwar period, and its multifaceted development at the turn of the millennium. In addition to exploring the broader history of the essay film, Alter addresses the innovative ways contemporary artists such as Martha Rosler, Isaac Julien, Harun Farocki, John Akomfrah, and Hito Steyerl have taken up the essay film in their work.
Nora M. Alter is professor of comparative film and media studies in the School of Theater, Film, and Media Arts at Temple University. She is author of Vietnam Protest Theatre: The Television War on Stage (1996); Projecting History: German Nonfiction Cinema, 1967–2000 (2002); and Chris Marker (2006). She is also coeditor with Timothy Corrigan of Essays on the Essay Film (Columbia, 2017).