The Way of the Termite: The Essay in Cinema

1/22/09 to 4/19/09

An expansive, opinionated selection of essay films, curated by Jean-Pierre Gorin.

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La rabbia di Pasolini, April 18

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Past Films

Routine Pleasures
- Sunday, April 19 2:00 pm
Jean-Pierre Gorin (U.S./U.K./France, 1986). Jean-Pierre Gorin in person.
La rabbia di Pasolini
- Saturday, April 18 8:15 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giuseppe Bertolucci (Italy, 2008). Lecture by Jean-Pierre Gorin.
From Today Until Tomorrow
- Tuesday, April 14 7:30 pm
Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub (Germany/France, 1997). Introduced by Erik Ulman.
The White Castle
- Wednesday, April 8 7:00 pm
Johan van der Keuken (The Netherlands, 1973)
Chronicle of a Summer
- Sunday, April 5 3:30 pm
Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin (France, 1960–61). With short Toute la mémoire du monde (Alain Resnais, France, 1956).
Les années déclic
- Tuesday, March 31 7:30 pm
Raymond Depardon (France, 1976/1985). With The Dream (Mohammad Malas, Syria, 1981).
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
- Thursday, March 12 8:35 pm
Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1966). With short We (Arthur Peleshian, U.S.S.R., 1969).
Secret Formula
- Wednesday, March 11 7:00 pm
Rubén Gámez (Mexico, 1965). With L'age d'or (Luis Buñuel, France, 1930).
Je tu il elle
- Tuesday, March 10 7:30 pm
Chantal Akerman (France, 1974)
Train of Shadows: The Specter of Le Thuit
- Sunday, March 8 2:00 pm
José Luis Guerín (Spain, 1997). With . . . A Valparaíso (Joris Ivens, France, 1963).
Gladio
- Tuesday, February 24 7:30 pm
Allan Francovich (U.K., 1998)
Trial
- Tuesday, February 17 7:30 pm
Moslem Mansouri (Iran/U.S., 2002). With short The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, Iran, 1963).
Perfumed Nightmare
- Tuesday, February 10 7:30 pm
Kidlat Tahimik (Philippines, 1977)
Chief!
- Thursday, February 5 8:15 pm
Jean-Marie Teno (Cameroon, 1999). With short Les maîtres fous (Jean Rouch, France, 1955).
A Diary for Timothy
- Tuesday, February 3 7:30 pm
Humphrey Jennings (U.K., 1945). With The Passerby (Donald McWilliams, Canada, 1995).
Letter to Jane: An Investigation of a Still
- Saturday, January 31 6:00 pm
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin (France, 1972). With short LBJ (Santiago Alvarez, Cuba, 1968).
Letter to Jane: An Investigation of a Still
- Friday, January 30 9:30 pm
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin (France, 1972)
One Man's War
- Friday, January 30 7:30 pm
Edgardo Cozarinsky (Argentina/France, 1981)
The Man with a Movie Camera
- Thursday, January 29 7:30 pm
Dziga Vertov (U.S.S.R., 1929). Judith Rosenberg on piano. With short À propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, France, 1930).
Tire dié
- Tuesday, January 27 7:30 pm
Fernando Birri (Argentina, 1958–60). With shorts: A Corner in Wheat (D. W. Griffith, U.S., 1909), Land Without Bread (Luis Buñuel, Spain, 1937), and Isle of Flowers (Jorge Furtado, Brazil, 1990).
Sans soleil
- Thursday, January 22 7:30 pm
Chris Marker (France, 1982)

The Way of the Termite: The Essay in Cinema

1/22/09 to 4/19/09

The film essay is a strange beast. To simply define it as a form that foregrounds a voice and sketches a persona falls short. At the core of all essays is an interest so intense that it precludes the possibility of naming it simply and efficiently, of filming it in a straight line, so to speak. The essay is rumination in Nietzsche's sense of the word, the meandering of an intelligence that tries to multiply the entries and the exits into the material it has elected (or has been elected by). It is surplus, drifts, ruptures, ellipses, and double-backs. It is, in a word, thought, but because it is film it is thought that turns to emotion and back to thought.

The strange thing is that the essay film flirts with genres (documentary, pamphlet, fiction, diary . . . you name them) but never attaches itself to one. It flirts with a range of aesthetics but attaches itself to none. It is, in both form and content, unruliness itself, “termite art” and not “white elephant art.” I am, of course, borrowing from Manny Farber. Farber might be writing about Laurel and Hardy, but the words stick even tighter to the film essayists: “The most inclusive description of [their] art is that, termite-like, it feels its way through walls of particularization, with no sign that the artist has any object in mind other than eating away the immediate boundaries of his art and turning these boundaries into conditions of the next achievement.”

The films in this series are lines of force that crisscross a field. From the push and pull that is curating emerged something as extensive, unruly, and contradictory as the essayistic energy it set out to explore. A proposal for a tussle.

—Jean-Pierre Gorin, Guest Curator

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The Essay in Cinema, curated by Jean-Pierre Gorin, was organized by The Austrian Film Museum and originally presented at the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival) in October 2007. At PFA, the series is coordinated by Kathy Geritz and presented with the support of the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley and of the French Ministry of Culture, with thanks to Delphine Selles, Christophe Musitelli, and Cecile Hokes. We extend our gratitude to Jean-Pierre Gorin, Alexander Horwath, Hans Hurch, Edith Kramer, Hellmut Goebl, and Regina Schlagnitweit.