In Search of the Centaur: The Essay Film (1992)

 

 

In this work, Phillip Lopate starts analysing the essay as a literary genre so he can understand the way filmmakers use similar principles in the attempt to create essay films. As a different and vague kind of essay, Lopate tries to define basic aspects a true essay film should have. According to him, an essay film should fundamentally have words. Words that can be spoken or appear in form of subtitles or intertitled. The texts should correspond to one voice only, grouped in a single perspective. So the essayist should let it show one single personal and strong point of view, sustained by a reasoned discourse line around one problem. And the text should be developed in an eloquent and interesting way. For him, some directors - like Alain Resnais and Ralph Arlyck - are true essay-film makers, contrary to some other filmmakers that only bring essayism to other cinema genres, like Woody Allen to his fiction films and Michael Moore to his documentaries.!