In preparation for the inaugural Essay Film Festival (24-29 March 2105, Birkbeck College London), we presented a session that featured several examples of “notebook” films:

 

Location notes in Palestine for the film Il vangelo secondo Matteo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1965, 55mn

 

Scenario for Sauve qui peut (la vie), Jean-Luc Godard, 1979, 20mn

 

Letter from a Filmmaker (about Thérèse), Alain Cavalier, 1982, 13mn

 

Les Années quatre-vingt, Chantal Akerman, 1983 [extracts]

 

The notebook film is a preparatory essay for another film to come, as well as a kind of foretaste to convince producers to finance the future film. It might typically feature the casting of actors, rehearsals with actors or technicians, exploration of locations, the testing out of ideas and possible narratives, or more general reflections from the director or other members of the team. In short, the film becomes an audiovisual “notebook” in which a future work is sketched out, and in that perspective these films exemplify one of the key features of the essay film, which is to show us the creative process of film-making.

 

Filmography 

 

Event sponsored by the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image

For more information about BIMI, click here.