An essay film is a film that is based on reflection. An essay film has no clearly defined genre; it may comprise of some archival images, a still frame, and scripted scenes. With their roots going back to the European essayism of Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon, the first essayists in the field of a moving image were also Europeans, but in recent decades, the genre, due to its democratic nature and ease of production, has spread across cinemas in different countries.

Since the emergence of this literary genre, essays have been characterised by an authorial presence, and the main thing in the narration is the reflection itself rather than any conclusions and the moral of this story. It was typical for the key essay films of the last century: one can hardly find any conclusions in the works of Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, and Harun Farocki. Moreover, you cannot fit their idea into a couple of sentences, because it transforms, becomes complicated and shirks due to such simplification. It is a gesture of doubt.

Recently, you can often find video essays on YouTube and other media platforms. These are explainer videos purporting to explain a phenomenon in accessible language. An image serves as a direct illustration of the words and a visual example. In such videos, it is difficult to define an author, although they are sitting right in front of the camera in most such videos. They are the screeners of information, editors who translate academic knowledge into popular science. However, we would like to draw your attention to another side of essayism, relating rather to art than to science. Paul Arthur, a researcher of the American avant-garde films, explained in the early noughties that the filmmaker's authorial presence is a quality shared by all essay films that is that constantly finds itself in such films. This quality has not been lost in modern times, and we have prepared a programme in support to this thesis. 

The film programme, prepared by Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture, comprising 8 screenings at two venues and consists, will introduce the viewer to the history of the genre of the essay film and its contemporary representatives, who show their own reflections and personal stories, building a bridge to the global issues especially on the political plane, and then to the viewer, inviting him or her to a dialogue, not finalising their idea, but showing its evolution. 

Let us start with main works by classic essayists Chris Marker (Letter from Siberia, Sans Soleil) and Harun Farocki (Nicht löschbares Feuer / Inextinguishable Fire , Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges / Images of the World and the Inscription of War, Interface, Der Ausdruck der Hände /The Expression of Hands), who offer complex musings on modernity comparable to postmodern philosophical works. And then, we will proceed to contemporary representatives of the genre. Forgetting Vietnam, a film of famous Vietnamese filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha — a travelogue-return to the homeland, shot at different times with two different cameras and exploring the mythology of the country, its attitude to modernisation and the paradoxes of society. A Night of Knowing Nothing is an epistolary film directed Payal Kapadia about love, cinema and politics in India, blurring the boundaries of fiction and truth. Orlando, My Political Biography, the first cinematographic work of Paul B. Preciado, a contemporary philosopher, — a free adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel with an infusion of interviews with trans people and an off-screen narration of Preciado. Another screening will comprise of several short experimental essay films directed by filmmakers from Sri Lanka, France, Belgium and the United States, who experiment with contemporary forms and tools in different ways. 

The programme is developed with the support of the Goethe Institut, which provided screening rights to Harun Farocki's films, Institut français, which provided screening rights to Chris Marker's films, the French Consulate in Kazakhstan, which sponsored the screening of Orlando, My Political Biography, and Spring CA Media, which provided the venue. Harun Farocki's films will be screened in German with English subtitles. The other films will be screened in the original languages with bilingual subtitles, both in Russian and Kazakh.