In the 2013, BFI Sight and Sound magazine article, titled The Essay Film, Andrew Tracy refers to the film critic and theorist André Bazin to define the essay film as an ‘intervention’, that ‘moves blithely between the realms of fiction and non-fiction, while complicating both realms, through a ‘reflective voice’ that makes room for ‘…negotiation between active choice and passive possession’ ‘…on the recognition that even the keenest insight pales in the face of an ultimate unknowability.’[1]
In 2016, while looking for a method of mirroring a disjunction that I was facing in my practice, in which, I was pushing the process of building sculptural forms until they reached the point of collapse, I was fortunate to discover Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film, Persona.
Though this was not the first film I had encountered montage being used as a cinematic strategy to juxtapose and intertwine a collision of thoughts and feelings, it was my first encounter where the materiality of the medium had been used as a method to interrupt the narrative content and draw attention to filmmaking that tries to hide its construction.
To witness Persona is to observe a form of technological reflexivity, where the film appears to develop a sense of self-awareness, with the capacity to exercise influence over the narrative, the characters and its viewers, by reminding its subjects they are at the mercy of the film, as a medium.
Since witnessing Bergman’s method of using the materiality of film as a reflective voice, I went on to present my practice-based research in the form of an essay film. Taking still and moving scenes from Persona, overlaid with connected viewpoints taken from the field of psychology, philosophy, film theory and the materiality of film as a medium, the essay film gave me the means to think through matters, as matter.
https://youtu.be/kVe9E1c9UWI?si=wb7NyCfOUhdvad6Y
The script, that accompanies this presentation, is available to download here.
[1] Tracy, A et all. ‘The Essay Film’. Online Source: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/essay-film. Aug 2013. Source Cited: Dec 2016