In this course-seminar, we will examine the cinematic essay, this "form that thinks" according to Jean-Luc Godard. An art of times of crisis, the essay confronts the most pressing contemporary questions: economic crises, wars, colonialism, fascism, space conquest, and migration. From literary and philosophical sources (Michel de Montaigne, Max Bense, Theodor Adorno) to installations (Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Harun Farocki), by way of the pioneers of the "genre" (David W. Griffith, Dziga Vertov, Hans Richter), we will study a series of key works by Jean Vigo, Chris Marker, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Artavazd Péléchian, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Arnaud Des Pallières, Hito Steyerl, Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas, Isabelle Ingold and Vivian Perelmuter.
An art of the fragment, which is not afraid of citations, which coordinates rather than subordinates, which moves from the singular to the universal, and which integrates in turn a critical, poetic, and political dimension without ever being totalizing, the cinematic essay is an "energy more than a genre" (according to Jean-Pierre Gorin) whose formal law is "heresy" (according to Theodor Adorno). In this course-seminar, we will draw on Jeux sérieux. Cinéma et art contemporains transforment l’essai (HEAD/Mamco, 2015), a publication that offers an unprecedented genealogy and cartography of this form unlike any other.