Having read Phillip Lopate’s essay In Search of the Centaur: The Essay Film, I have some thoughts, and ideas, based on what I have come to discern –
Firstly it seems difficult to precisely pin point what can be classified as an ‘essay-film’, and yet something that seems to be evident is that they relate to the director/ writer in a personal context. The subject often is something the creator feels passionate about, and they seem to apply references to the self through the work, just as a typical essayist might show their opinions through their written work. It seems essential to present both sides of an argument, somewhere within an essay of any kind.
From having read essays such as In Search of the Centaur: The Essay Film, by Phillip Lopate, there were various aspects of the, potential, Essay Film that appealed to me – both as an artist, and as a person who generally loves, but struggles, in the city I live in.
I feel I muse on London a great deal – and regularly question whether continuing to live here is the right decision (mostly, financially).
Something that seems quite unavoidable to me, is the linguistic inaccessibility of most academic essays. They strike me as wordy, and not necessarily as identifiable-with as they could potentially otherwise be – if the wording was parred down slightly; at least for my brain. This seems something that can be easier argued as a point in an essay film I produce as me voicing my own perspective on things – being (mostly) from London myself, and aiming to offer myself up as the ‘everyday civilian’ I identify as.
I think there is a clear need for me to articulate my points of view concisely, and yet I believe there are multiple ways to do this that can, hopefully, appeal to a wider selection of people. Within this context – so far I have felt largely as though I’m talking to people without a knowledge of me, or of London, whether they live here or not, but more so I sense I am talking to people who don’t understand why I love London. What I’m effectively saying is –
“I’m not sure why, but I really do love London; let’s see if we can understand it, together!”
According to Phillip Lopate’s essay,
- An essay-film must have words.
- The text must represent a single voice.
- The text must represent an attempt to work out some reasoned line of discourse on a problem.
- The text must impart more than information; it must have a strong, personal point of view.
- Finally, the text’s language should be as eloquent, well written and interesting as possible.
I have considered various ways in which I could collect opinions, or experiences within London, such as the questionnaire I produced, and truthfully found very difficult to gather results using. People don’t always want to remember aspects of London, they might feel they’re too busy to fill out a questionnaire, or simply feel they don’t have much to say. Nevertheless; I have a lot to say about London, and this is driving a lot of the contextual aspects of my FMP so far – I wish to advocate for London.
Lopate then goes on to suggest ways in which essay-films can be made –
- To write or borrow text and go out and find images for it.
- The filmmaker can shoot, or compile previously shot, footage and then write a text that meditates on the assembled images.
- The filmmaker can write a little, shoot a little, write a bit more, and so on – the one process interacting with the other throughout.
All of these options appeal to me as I begin to consider ways to create my first essay-film.
The above photographed pages are my own notes inspired by Phillip Lopate’s insight in ‘In Search of the Centaur: The Essay Film‘.