The film essay, understood not as a genre but as a methodology of working with film matter, assumes the use of audiovisual means in the research process. Viewed in this way, the essay is a search through practice, an experiment which reverses the logic of production, shifting the focus from the final effect to the process and its discoveries. The essay invites collective reflection, it is a challenge, but what makes the essayistic paradigm so valuable is the potential to go beyond the usual paths of thought and harness the medium to work towards the analysis and interpretation of our reality, which is increasingly manifested in audiovisual means. The film industry has been facing an image-creative crisis for a long
time. Analyzing Hollywood spectacles, science fiction cinema, or disaster movies, one cannot help but notice how limited the pool of images has become through which we speculate about our future. It is impossible to decide who is the author of these words, Slavoj Žižek or Fredric Jameson, but the quote has made waves: it is easier for cinema today to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. With the initiative to create the Film Essay Workshop, we wanted to propose one possible solution to this problem. Since it is so difficult for us to "invent" new variants of the future, perhaps we can produce new images through the practice of juxtaposition, going beyond the orthodoxy of our thought.
During the discussion, we will address issues related to audiovisual essay practices, including, but not limited to, issues of production, distribution, funding, and education.