Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Beginnings
2. Speaking Essays or Interruptions
3. The Essay Film as Archive and Repository of Memories
4. The Essay Film as the Fourth Estate
5. The Artist Essay: Expanding the Field and the Turn to Video
6. New Migrations: Third Cinema and the Essay Film
7. Beyond the Cinematic Screen: Installations and the Internet
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Nora M. Alter reveals the essay film to be a hybrid genre that fuses the categories of feature, art, and documentary film. Like its literary predecessor, the essay film draws on a variety of forms and approaches; in the process, it fundamentally alters the shape of cinema. The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction locates the genre's origins in early silent cinema and follows its transformation with the advent of sound, its legitimation in the postwar period, and its multifaceted development at the turn of the millennium. In addition to exploring the broader history of the essay film, Alter addresses the innovative ways contemporary artists such as Martha Rosler, Isaac Julien, Harun Farocki, John Akomfrah, and Hito Steyerl have taken up the essay film in their work.