Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Openings: Thinking Cinema

1. Medium: Liquid Image, Fluid Cinema
2. Montage: Essayistic Thinking at the Juncture of Images
3. Genre: The Speck of Irony and the Ethnolandscape in Ruins
4. Temporality: The Palimpsestic Road and Diachronic Thinking
5. Sound: The Politics of the Sonic Interstice and the Dissonance of the Neutral
6. Narration: Epistolarity and Lyricism as Argumentation
7. Framing: Looking for an Object, or The Essay Film as Theoretical Practice

Conclusion: Reframing
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Laura Rascaroli is Professor of Film and Screen Media at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the author and editor of several volumes, including The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film (2009), Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie (2006), co-written with Ewa Mazierska, and Antonioni: Centenary Essays (2011), co-edited with John David Rhodes. She is the General Editor of
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media.

Reviews

"Whether considering Aleksandr Sokurov's Elegy of a Voyage (2001) or the experimental films of Harun Farocki, Rascaroli delivers detailed, sharply observant insights. With its international focus, this book offers perhaps the best overview to date on the subject." --G. A. Foster, CHOICE
"Laura Rascaroli confirms her position as a leading scholar on the history and critical expression of the essay film. The originality of her argument and the insights provided by case studies also mirror the energy and elegance of the essayistic approach. The 'antisystematic resistance' exemplified by the essay film bring forth the political and engaging function of a thinking image."-- Malin Wahlberg, Stockholm University