Order Description

Quote 1 When the video camera is on, I always feel that it is a kind of ‘moment of truth. Working

with film never gives you this feeling of intimacy. There are too many machines involved and too

many other people. You are alone with your video camera. It’s like a pencil. You can say things

that you could never say with film. Robert Frank
Quote 2 The filmic diary is twice in the present: it offers both the ‘now’ of the recorded images

(because images are always in the present tense), and the ‘now’ of the reflection and commentary on

them. Laura Rascaroli, 129.
Quote 3 The past events examined in these films are not offered as complete, totalizable,

apprehensible. They are fragments, pieces of the past invoked by memory. Like a palimpsest, the

past emerges as ‘the sum total of its rewritings through time.’ The event remembered is never

whole, never fully represented, never isolated in the past alone but only accessible through a

memory which resides ‘in the reverberations between events. Linda Williams, 15.
Quote 4 I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see

film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of

telling your self lies. If you are a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and

if you are a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie.
Jean Rouch

Select one of the quotes transcribed above. In the context of a close reading of one or more films,

discuss the implications and pertinence of the quote for a broader understanding of the Essay film.

Your response must do the following:

1. Indicate a comprehensive and sophisticated grasp of both the quote and the film(s) being

discussed.

2. Indicate that you have used the quote to formulate a relevant and ‘doable’ research question

that has been explicitly identified in the essay and answered through a close and precise reading

of specific filmic scenes

3. Indicate that you have read and understood the weekly readings and undertaken independent

research. (Minimum of 10 references)

NB. While you can refer to films screened in class, they cannot serve as the sole foundation of

your analysis. films used in class:

(cannot use, but reccomend using films from same directors)

Letter From Siberia, dir. Chris Marker, 1958,
62 mins.
La Pyramide Humaine, dir. Jean Rouch