[Frameworks] essay film

[Morgan Hoyle-Combs]

Here are my thoughts, if I'm reading this correctly, is that the term "essay" is a loose excuse for someone cobbling together a bunch of moving images which might be a free flowing stream of consciousness that they are not quite aware of. I say this because I feel like I'm falling into this category. For the past few years I've been doing my own "documentary" or "essay" on a particular group of people and I feel like it's the only vague description I can feed anyone should they question my motives for filming. My intent is much more deeper and personal, but I'd rather reveal it when I feel the product is finished. 

But in terms of trying to make a "documentary" to cover a particular subjects with a specific rhetoric, setting itself out to covering something as 'real', 'truthful', 'problematic' and 'fixable' is indeed a theme that has been done plenty of times. Because of this, I think a lot of people in my age range in particular will fall back on the theme of "essay" or "diary-film" in hopes to avoid scoffs, eye rolls and ridicule. The group that I'm focusing on in particular has pushed out Documentary after Documentary after Documentary after Documentary. Honestly, there's that many. And everyone of them contain the same 101, introductary message "we're good people, please don't say mean things about us". 

Perhaps this is something I should keep in mind for myself. Although I am keeping a journal of my personal accounts with this group, good times, bad times, shits and giggles alike, I do feel like I've been shooting with a stream of consciousness. Everything is a bunch of scrabbled eggs. 

As a lost, semi-frustrated, caffeinated 31 year old, I ask photographers, journalists, and poets alike. What would you have me do? 

M
--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 5/22/19, Bernard Roddy <roddybp0 at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: [Frameworks] essay film
 To: frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com
 Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2019, 9:35 PM
 
 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_______________________________________________
 FrameWorks mailing list
 FrameWorks at jonasmekasfilms.com
 https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
 
 -----Inline Attachment Follows-----