Essay film
Films that think aloud: the filmmaker works through an idea, mixing footage, archive, text and voice the way a writer builds an essay.
Hans Richter coined the term in 1940, for a film free to step outside the rules of documentary. In France, Chris Marker, Agnès Varda and Alain Resnais made it a form of its own, and Harun Farocki carried it on in Germany.
An essay film rarely tells you what to conclude. It puts reenactment, found footage, intertitles and voiceover side by side and leaves the viewer to make the connections. Deborah Stratman's The Illinois Parables builds a history of belief this way, from eleven episodes in one American state.
Films to start with
In the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Still from The Illinois Parables to come. The Illinois Parables
Eleven episodes from Illinois history, among them the mound builders of Cahokia, a utopian commune and the path of a tornado. Each is told with reenactment, archive film or intertitles, and long, steady shots of the place where it happened.
Still from Last Things to come. Last Things
Evolution and extinction told from the point of view of stones, seen under the microscope and across whole landscapes. The geologist Marcia Bjørnerud speaks over it, with passages from J.-H. Rosny's early science fiction, and people slowly fall out of the picture.
Nearby
Movements, forms and techniques that share filmmakers or methods with this one.