Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 35 Years On: Is the ‘Text’, Once Again, Unattainable?
- 2 To Attain the Text. But Which Text?
- 3 Compounding the Lyric Essay Film : Towards a Theory of Poetic Counter-Narrative
- 4 ‘Every love story is a ghost story’ : The Spectral Network of Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog (2015)
- 5 Lines of Interpretation in Fields of Perception and Remembrance : The Multiscreen Array as Essay
- 6 Deborah Stratman’s The Illinois Parables (2016) : Intellectual Vagabond and Vagabond Matter
- 7 Rethinking the Human, Rethinking the Essay Film : The Ecocritical Work of The Pearl Button
- 8 Montage Reloaded: From Russian Avant-Garde to the Audiovisual Essay
- 9 ‘All I have to offer is myself’: The Film-Maker as Narrator
- 10 The Shudder of a Cinephiliac Idea? Videographic Film Studies Practice as Material Thinking
- 11 The Home Movie as Essay Film: On Making Memory Posthumously
- Index
8 - Montage Reloaded: From Russian Avant-Garde to the Audiovisual Essay
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 35 Years On: Is the ‘Text’, Once Again, Unattainable?
- 2 To Attain the Text. But Which Text?
- 3 Compounding the Lyric Essay Film : Towards a Theory of Poetic Counter-Narrative
- 4 ‘Every love story is a ghost story’ : The Spectral Network of Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog (2015)
- 5 Lines of Interpretation in Fields of Perception and Remembrance : The Multiscreen Array as Essay
- 6 Deborah Stratman’s The Illinois Parables (2016) : Intellectual Vagabond and Vagabond Matter
- 7 Rethinking the Human, Rethinking the Essay Film : The Ecocritical Work of The Pearl Button
- 8 Montage Reloaded: From Russian Avant-Garde to the Audiovisual Essay
- 9 ‘All I have to offer is myself’: The Film-Maker as Narrator
- 10 The Shudder of a Cinephiliac Idea? Videographic Film Studies Practice as Material Thinking
- 11 The Home Movie as Essay Film: On Making Memory Posthumously
- Index
Summary
Abstract
In this chapter, I explore the relevance of early Russian montage theory and practice to new issues raised by the shift from the essay film to the audiovisual essay. I investigate how, specifically, Sergei Eisenstein's vision of the new type of cinema of ideas formulated in his project for filming Marx's Das Kapital, Dziga Vertov's foregrounding of subjectivity and reflexivity in The Man with a Movie Camera, and Esphir Shub's practice of ‘compilation film’ contributed to the emergence of the essay film and continue to stimulate the theory and practice of the audiovisual essayism.
Keywords: Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Esphir Shub, montage, audiovisual essay, compilation film
One of the most promising ways of going ‘beyond the essay film’ that we have witnessed over the last decade is that of the audiovisual scholarly essay, or videographic film studies. Taking the field of audiovisual production as its sole, albeit complex and diverse, object of interest, the audiovisual essay uses the possibilities of the medium itself to conduct a range of analytical, critical, reflexive, or aesthetic procedures on this object, resulting in an impressive array of ‘works’. Its genealogical link to the essay film in all these respects is evident and has been widely acknowledged. Arguably, the audiovisual essay has emerged from the productive encounter between cinephilia and the analytical impulse to investigate those parameters of cinematic experience, that, in Paul Willemen's words, often ‘escape the existing networks of critical discourse and theoretical frameworks’. Capitalizing on the new technical possibilities afforded by the digital revolution, the burgeoning and varied field of audiovisual criticism operates at the intersection of film theory, pedagogy, and creative practice, producing hundreds of works, dedicated online platforms that curate and present such works, and an ever growing array of names carrying an impressive cache of audiographic auteurism.
However, theorizations of the audiovisual critical essay have been lagging behind its practical experiments. This chapter therefore aims to situate current discussion of the genre within a longer history of 20th-century film-making and scholarship and asks, specifically, how the legacy of the Russian montage school of cinema can inform an understanding of the audiovisual essay.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Beyond the Essay FilmSubjectivity, Textuality and Technology, pp. 165 - 188Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020