DOKU.ARTS: Essaydox
DOKU.ARTS is one of those festivals that is different because it puts a focus on the essay film and adds a very attractive symposium to its film program. The symposium takes place October 7, the festival runs in Berlin from the 6th until the 23rd of October with interesting films like the neo-classic ”Black Sun” (photo) by Gary Tarn, ”Exile” by master Rithy Panh, ”Notes on Blindness” by Peter Middleton and James Spinney, and Gilad Baram’s work on Josef Koudelka, ”Shooting Holy Land”, a great film on a great photographer.
On the site of the festival there is a fine intro to the essay genre, here is a quote:
”The tenth edition of the International Festival for Films on Art DOKU.ARTS opens with an essay film on blindness, ”Notes on Blindness”. Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (‘sunless’) ranks as one of the most influential essay films of all time. The theme of seeing and the inability to see, the introspective approach and a philosophy of the moving image provide engaging impulses for this year’s anniversary programme.
Essay films have evolved over the course of the 21st century into an independent art form. Moreover, for the last 15 years or so, they have been experiencing a boom in museums and galleries; deserving a larger audience via cinema and television, the art form has found its niche.
The history, evolution and tradition of essayistic cinema and television can be traced back to directors such as Esther Schub, Dziga Vertov, Hans Richter and Chris Marker. Major European documentarians like Agnès Varda, Hartmut Bitomsky, Alexander Sokurov, Alexander Kluge and Wim Wenders shaped the essayistic cinematic form in the 20th century.
With its ESSAYDOX programme, the tenth edition of DOKU.ARTS introduces this vibrant cinematic form through new films and presents its relevance, ingenuity, poetry and political relevance in the 21st century. Cinematic essays have always been of central importance in DOKU.ARTS festival history.
