Introduction, by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan Part I. Foundations 1. "On the Nature and Form of the Essay," by Georg Lukacs 2. The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil 3. "On the Essay and Its Prose," by Max Bense 4. "The Essay as Form," by Theodor W. Adorno 5. "Preface to The Collected Essays of Aldous Huxley," by Aldous Huxley Part II. The Essay Film Through History 6. "The Film Essay: A New Type of Documentary Film," by Hans Richter 7. "The Future of Cinema," by Alexandre Astruc 8. "Bazin on Marker," by Andre Bazin Part III. Contemporary Positions 9. "In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film," by Phillip Lopate 10. "The Political Im/Perceptible in the Essay Film: Farocki's Images of the World and the Inscription of War," by Nora M. Alter 11. "Essay Questions," by Paul Arthur 12. "The Electronic Essay," by Michael Renov 13. "The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments," by Laura Rascaroli 14. "Of the History of the Essay Film: Vertov, to Varda," by Timothy Corrigan 15. "The Cinema and the Essay as a Way of Thinking," by Raymond Bellour 16. "The Essay Film: From Film Festival Favorite to Flexible Commodity Form?," by Thomas Elsaesser Part IV. Filmmakers on the Essayistic 17. "Performing Borders: Transnational Video," by Ursula Biemann 18. "Proposal for a Tussle," by Jean-Pierre Gorin 19. "The Essay as Conformism? Some Notes on Global Image Economies," by Hito Steyerl 20. "On Writing the Film Essay," by Lynne Sachs 21. "Tramp Steamer," by Ross McElwee 22. "The ABCs of the Film Essay," by Harun Farocki and Christa Blumlinger 23. "Riddles as Essay Film," by Laura Mulvey 24. "Certain Obliquenesses," by Renee Green 25. "Essay Documentary: The disembodied narrator and an unclaimed image that floats through space and time," by Rea Tajiri 26. "From Ten Thousand Waves to Lina Bo Bardi, via Kapital," by Isaac Julien Bibliography Contributors Permissions Index