[Frameworks] essay film

[Bernard Roddy]

Friends and colleagues, the essay is not really a suitable expression,
form, or metaphor for what can be done in the medium of the moving image.
The whole idea belongs to an undergraduate class that has to make the case
to someone who is in college. The closer the works look and feel like
essays, the worse they are.

To a certain extent, we can hear the request: one wants to assign something
to someone, one wants to make progress with a new generation of scholars
and students, one wants to be legitimized, authorized, admitted into the
syllabi and a table of contents. There will then be an easy passage from
one kind of reading to another, between the page and screen.

I couldn't really distinguish between accompanying someone and seeing such
a work. I couldn't really say I cared until I found myself a witness. To be
a witness to something, and to approach what it might have been like if the
artist had witnessed it without the means of recording it, that is what
makes or breaks an essay film.

Bernie
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