examples of film extended essays

• TTS Libguides
• Tanglin LibGuides
• Senior Library

IB Extended Essay (EE)

• Extended Essay Main Page
• Business & Management
• Computer Science
• Environmental Systems & Societies (ESS)
• Human Rights
• Information Technology in a Global Society (ITGS)
• Mathematics
• Peace and Conflict Studies
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Visual Arts
• World Religions
• World Studies

Find a password

Excellent extended essays - film, find example excellent essays, click on the subjects to browse the list of excellent extended essays..

• << Previous: Environmental Systems & Societies (ESS)
• Next: Geography >>
• Last Updated: Oct 18, 2022 9:00 AM
• URL: https://libguides.tts.edu.sg/EE

IB Extended Essay: Past Essays

• Research Questions
• Past Essays
• Notes & Outlines
• Works Cited Page
• In-Text Citations
• Assessment Criteria
• Reflections
• Supervisor Info
• Net Valley Library This link opens in a new window

Check these CAREFULLY to be sure your topic fits with IB expectations!

• Language & literature (language A)
• Language acquisition (language B)
• Mathematics
• Visual Arts
• World Studies

Business Management

English a & b ee examples.

• English A EE Example
• English A EE Example 1
• English A EE Example 2
• English A EE Example 3
• English B EE Example
• English B EE Example 1
• English B EE Example 2
• English B EE Example 3
• English B EE Example 4
• English B EE Example 5
• English B EE Example 6

Philosophy EE Examples

• Philosophy Example 1
• Philosophy Example 2
• Philosophy Example 3
• Philosophy Example 4

Economics EE Examples

• Econ Example 1
• Econ Example 2
• Econ Example 3
• Econ Example 4
• Econ Example 5
• Econ Example 6
• Econ Example 7
• Econ Example 8

Review Past Papers

• From the IB:  papers from other students and how they scored
• Renaissance Library Past Essays :  Links to all subject area examples

Music EE Examples

• Music EE Example 1
• Music EE Example 2
• Music EE Example 3
• Music EE Example 4

Psychology EE Examples

• Psych EE Example 1
• Psych EE Example 2
• Psych EE Example 3

Chinese EE Examples

• Chinese EE Example 1
• Chinese EE Example 2
• Chinese EE Example 3
• Chinese A EE Cat 1
• Chinese A EE Cat 2
• Chinese A EE Cat 3
• Chinese B EE Example 1
• Chinese B EE Example 2
• Chinese B Example 3
• Business EE Example 1
• Business EE Example 2
• Business EE Example 3

Visual Arts EE Examples

• Visual Arts EE Example 1
• Visual Arts EE Example 2
• Visual Arts EE Example 3
• Visual Arts EE Example 4

Film EE Examples

• Film Example 1
• Film Example 2

Chemistry EE Examples

• Chemistry EE Example

Biology EE Examples

• Biology EE Example
• Biology EE Example 1
• Biology EE Example 2
• Biology EE Example 3

Physics EE Examples

• Physics EE Example
• Physics EE Example 1
• Physics EE Example 2
• Physics EE Example 3
• Physics EE Example 4
• Physics EE Example 5

Math EE Examples

• Math EE Example 1
• Math EE Example 2
• Math EE Example 3
• Math EE Example 4
• Math EE Example 5
• Math EE Example 6

World Studies EE Examples

• World Studies Example 1
• World Studies Example 2
• World Studies Example 3
• World Studies Example 4
• World Studies Example 5
• World Studies Example 6
• World Studies Example 7
• World Studies Example 8
• World Studies Example 9
• World Studies Example 10
• World Studies Example 11
• World Studies Example 12
• World Studies Example 13
• World Studies Example 14
• World Studies Example 15
• World Studies Example 16
• World Studies Example 17
• World Studies Example 18
• << Previous: Research Questions
• Next: Notes & Outlines >>
• Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 9:39 AM
• URL: https://sis-cn.libguides.com/ExtendedEssay

• [email protected]
• Get 21% OFF . Use the code: FIRST21

Film Extended Essay Ideas

Welcome to the world of film studies and the extended essay! If you have a passion for movies and want to delve deeper into the world of cinema, then you have come to the right place. In this guide, we will introduce you to the extended essay and its significance in the film field.

The extended essay is an independent research project that allows you to explore a specific topic in depth. It is a mandatory component of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, and it offers you the opportunity to demonstrate your research and writing skills, as well as your ability to think critically and analytically.

So, why is the extended essay important in the film field? Firstly, it provides you with an avenue to pursue your passion for film and develop your understanding of its various aspects. By conducting thorough research and analysis, you will gain a deeper appreciation for the artistry involved in filmmaking.

Furthermore, the extended essay allows you to showcase your knowledge and expertise in a specific area of film studies. Whether it is exploring the cinematography techniques used in a particular film or analyzing the cultural significance of a director’s body of work, the extended essay enables you to delve into the complexities of the film industry.

Besides its academic benefits, the extended essay can also have practical implications for your future career. If you aspire to work in the film industry or pursue film studies at the university level, the extended essay can serve as a valuable portfolio piece that showcases your research and analytical skills to potential employers or admissions committees.

In addition, the extended essay in film opens doors to further exploration and research. By igniting your curiosity and encouraging you to ask bold questions about cinematic practices and theories, it lays the foundation for a lifelong interest in film and the critical analysis of visual media.

Overall, the extended essay is an opportunity for you to immerse yourself in film studies and contribute to the ever-evolving field. It allows you to combine your passion for movies with academic rigor, propelling you towards a deeper understanding of the medium and fostering your intellectual growth.

Now that we have introduced you to the extended essay in film and its significance, it’s time to move on to the next step: choosing a relevant topic that sets the stage for your research journey. Remember, the journey of a thousand words begins with just one idea!

• An exploration of how the portrayal of female characters in Disney movies has changed over time, reflecting social attitudes towards gender roles.
• A study on how the musical choices in Nolan’s films contribute to the emotional engagement of the audience.
• Investigating how the city landscape and cultural background serve as more than just a setting in Allen’s movies.
• Analyzing how mental illness is portrayed in horror films and its impact on social stigma.
• A look at the elements of postmodernism in Pulp Fiction and how they contribute to the film’s unique storytelling techniques.
• Discussing how the depiction of friendships, family, and romance in Studio Ghibli films convey broader themes about Japanese culture.
• Tracing the impact of Italian Neorealistic techniques on the development of independent cinema in the United States.
• A focused study on how the film portrays the devastating effects of war through the perspective of its young protagonists.
• Investigating the use of montage and other techniques to create a persuasive political narrative.
• Examining whether the techniques and philosophies of the French New Wave hold significance in today’s digital filmmaking landscape.
• A detailed look at how location and set design contribute to the unique aesthetic and storytelling in Anderson’s films.
• Studying the use of horror tropes to comment on racism and social inequality in modern America.
• An analysis of how Kurosawa’s films serve as both entertainment and a reflection of traditional Japanese values.
• Investigating the techniques used by Alfred Hitchcock to create suspense and engage audiences.
• A look at the film’s use of mythological elements to enrich its narrative and themes.
• An analysis of how Bollywood blends realism and fantasy, and the cultural significance of this mixture.
• Investigating how the film uses visual elements to enhance its narrative and emotional impact.
• A study on how New Wave Queer Cinema has contributed to the visibility and portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in film.
• An examination of recurring themes of loneliness and social disconnection in Sofia Coppola’s body of work.
• Comparing how Scorsese approaches the theme of violence and its moral implications in two of his seminal works.

Get Help With Your Paper

Importance of choosing a relevant topic.

When embarking on your extended essay journey in film, one of the most crucial decisions you’ll make is choosing a strong and relevant topic. This choice can significantly impact the research process and ultimately dictate the success of your essay. So why is it so important to select an appropriate topic?

1. Motivation and Engagement:

Choosing a topic that aligns with your interests and passions will naturally motivate and engage you throughout the research and writing process. When you have a genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for the subject matter, it becomes easier to invest time and effort into producing a high-quality extended essay.

2. Research Direction:

A relevant topic will provide clarity and direction to your research. It will guide you in identifying the key areas to explore, the specific films to analyze, and the appropriate research methods to employ. Conversely, a vague or unfocused topic can lead to aimless research and may result in a lackluster essay with inconsistent arguments.

3. Rich Content and Deeper Understanding:

A well-selected topic ensures that you delve into rich content and develop a deep understanding of the specific aspects you are exploring. By focusing on a narrow aspect of film, such as a particular genre or director’s body of work, you can analyze and interpret the films in-depth, contributing unique insights and perspectives to your essay.

4. Contributing to the Field:

An excellent extended essay not only demonstrates your understanding of film but also adds value to the field of study. By selecting a relevant and under-researched topic, you have the opportunity to present original ideas and contribute new knowledge. This can make your essay stand out and have a lasting impact on the broader film community.

5. Appeals to the Assessor:

Remember, your extended essay will be assessed by an examiner who may have limited knowledge of your chosen topic. By selecting a relevant topic, you ensure that your essay appeals to the assessor and demonstrates your expertise in film studies. A compelling topic can capture the attention of readers and provoke their interest, leading to a favorable evaluation.

To make a strong start on your extended essay in film, take the time to brainstorm and explore different topics that genuinely intrigue you. Consider your personal interests, emerging trends in the film industry, or concepts that challenge established ideas. And remember, a relevant topic can unleash your creativity and passion for film, leading to an insightful and impactful extended essay.

Creating an Engaging Research Question

Formulating a focused and compelling research question is crucial when embarking on an extended essay in film. The research question is the foundation upon which your entire essay rests, so it needs to both capture readers’ interest and provide a clear direction for your investigation. Here are some tips to help you create an engaging research question:

• Choose a topic that genuinely intrigues you: Selecting a topic that sparks your curiosity and passion will naturally make the research process more enjoyable and productive. Think about genres, directors, or films that have captivated your attention, and brainstorm ideas around them.
• Narrow down your focus: Be specific when framing your research question. A broad question may result in scattered research and a lack of depth. Consider narrowing your topic by focusing on a particular aspect of film, such as the use of visual effects in sci-fi films or the portrayal of gender roles in romantic comedies.
• Ensure feasibility: While it’s essential to pursue a unique research question, make sure it is feasible within the parameters of your extended essay. Take into account the available resources, time constraints, and access to relevant literature and films.
• Consider the significance and relevance: Evaluate the importance of your research question in relation to the broader field of film. Is it a question that has not been thoroughly explored? Does it address a current cinematic trend or challenge existing theories? Showing the significance and relevance of your research question can increase its appeal.
• Formulate it as a question: Instead of making a statement, frame your research question as an open-ended query. This allows for a deeper exploration and analysis of different perspectives and interpretations. For example, rather than stating, “The impact of film festivals on emerging filmmakers,” pose the question, “How do film festivals contribute to the visibility and career advancement of emerging filmmakers?”

Your research question should be concise, precise, and strategic. It should generate interest and highlight the unique contribution your essay will make to the field of film studies. Remember, your research question is not set in stone, and it may evolve and refine as you delve deeper into your research. Stay open to adjustments that arise during your investigation.

By creating an engaging research question, you lay the groundwork for a captivating extended essay in film. A well-crafted research question keeps your focus sharp and entices readers to explore your research findings. It is the first step in embarking on a fascinating journey through the world of film.

Choosing Suitable Films for Analysis

When it comes to selecting films for your extended essay in film, you have a variety of options that can lead to engaging and insightful analysis. Here are some different types of films that you can consider exploring:

• Specific Genre: You can choose to focus on a specific genre and analyze its characteristics, themes, and impact on the film industry. For example, you could explore the evolution of horror in cinema or examine how comedy films reflect social and cultural attitudes.
• Director’s Body of Work: Another option is to delve into the filmography of a particular director and study their artistic style, recurring themes, or directorial techniques. This approach allows you to explore the individual creative vision and impact of a specific filmmaker, such as analyzing the films of Alfred Hitchcock or Quentin Tarantino.
• Cultural Significance: Films often provide a lens through which we can view and understand cultures and societies. You can choose a film that holds significant cultural importance and delve into its representation of a specific culture, historical event, or social issue. For instance, you could examine the portrayal of gender roles and societal norms in a foreign film or analyze the depiction of a specific historical event in a biographical drama.

It is important to select a film that genuinely interests you and aligns with your research question. Your passion for the subject matter will drive your motivation throughout the research and writing process, resulting in a more engaging and compelling extended essay. Additionally, consider the availability of resources and materials related to the chosen film. Ensure that there are sufficient scholarly articles, books, and interviews that can support your analysis.

Remember, the aim of choosing a suitable film for analysis is to find a balance between accessibility and depth of investigation. The selected films should allow you to explore various film techniques, elements, and critical perspectives relevant to your research question.

Once you have identified potential films for analysis, it is recommended to narrow down your options by critically evaluating their relevance and their potential to contribute to your research. Consider seeking input from your supervisor or mentor to ensure that your film choices align with the parameters of an extended essay in film.

In the next section, we will discuss the importance of conducting thorough research, using various credible sources to gather information for your extended essay in film.

Conducting Thorough Research

When embarking on your film extended essay, conducting thorough research is crucial to ensure that your essay is well-informed and supported by credible sources. Here are some guidelines to help you navigate the research process:

• Utilize diverse sources: In order to gather a comprehensive range of information, it is important to explore various credible sources. These include scholarly articles, books written by film experts, interviews with filmmakers or critics, and online databases dedicated to film studies. By consulting these different sources, you will gain multiple perspectives and enrich your understanding of the topic.
• Start with scholarly articles: Scholarly journals are excellent resources for in-depth analysis and critical perspectives on films. They provide rigorous academic research and interpretations that can enhance your own analysis. When searching for articles, consider using databases like JSTOR or Film Quarterly that focus specifically on film studies.
• Immerse yourself in film literature: Books written by film scholars and theorists offer valuable insights into various aspects of cinema. From major film studies classics to recent publications, you have access to a wealth of knowledge. Pay attention to the reputation of the author and the relevance of the book to your chosen topic. Take notes and keep track of key arguments and theories that you can incorporate into your essay.
• Interview industry professionals: Conducting interviews with filmmakers, actors, or critics can provide unique perspectives and insider knowledge. Read up on interviews conducted by reputable film journalists; they often reveal behind-the-scenes information and shed light on the intentions behind certain creative choices.
• Explore online databases: With the advent of the internet, a vast amount of film-related information is now readily available online. Websites like the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the Criterion Collection, or academic platforms like Project MUSE can offer valuable resources for research. Remember to evaluate the credibility of the sources before using them in your essay.

As you research, take detailed notes and document your sources carefully. This will help you avoid plagiarism and facilitate proper citation later on. Cross-reference your findings from different sources to gather a comprehensive understanding of your chosen film topic.

Remember, conducting thorough research is not a one-time activity but an ongoing process throughout your extended essay. As you delve deeper into your research, new questions may arise, leading you to new sources and perspectives. Embrace the journey of exploration and use the research phase as a foundation for an insightful and well-supported essay on film.

Analyzing Film Techniques and Elements: Unlocking the Secrets of the Silver Screen

Lights, camera, action! When it comes to crafting a compelling extended essay in film, analyzing the intricate techniques and elements employed by filmmakers is a key ingredient for success. In this section, we will delve into the fascinating world of analyzing film techniques, including cinematography, editing, sound, and mise-en-scène, and explore how it can enrich your research and contribute to a rock-solid essay.

Capturing the Visual Poetry: Cinematography

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then cinematography is the language of the silver screen. It is through the lens of the camera that filmmakers evoke emotion, heighten tension, and create visual masterpieces. By analyzing various aspects of cinematography, such as framing, camera angles, and lighting choices, you can uncover hidden meanings, thematic motifs, and artistic intent lurking within the frames of your chosen films.

The Art of Seamless Storytelling: Editing

The magic of film lies not only in what is captured on camera but also in the way those captured moments are stitched together. Editing plays a vital role in shaping narrative structure, pacing, and meaning. By dissecting the editing choices made by filmmakers, including shot transitions, continuity, and emphasis, you can unearth fresh perspectives on storytelling devices and explore how they contribute to the overall impact and reception of the film.

A Symphony of Sound: Audio Elements

Sound, often an underestimated aspect of filmmaking, has a profound impact on our emotional response and interpretation of a movie. By examining the sound design, dialogue, music, and other auditory components, you can unravel a rich tapestry of subtext, character development, and atmosphere. This analysis can deepen your understanding of how sound contributes to the overall audiovisual experience and the storytelling prowess of the filmmakers.

Peeling Back Layers: Mise-en-scène

Mise-en-scène encompasses all the visual elements within a frame, including set design, costumes, props, and actor positioning. Analyzing these factors can reveal subliminal messages and artistic choices made by the filmmakers. By dissecting mise-en-scène, you can explore themes of identity, symbolism, and social commentary, shining a light on hidden meanings in the visual tapestry presented on screen.

A comprehensive analysis of film techniques and elements not only showcases your critical thinking skills but also helps unlock the hidden depth and complexities within movies. Whether you are exploring a classic example of Auteur cinema or dissecting the technical prowess of modern blockbusters, delving into the world of cinematography, editing, sound, and mise-en-scène will undoubtedly add layers of richness to your extended essay in film.

Evaluating the Historical and Cultural Context

When delving into the world of film analysis, it is crucial to consider the historical and cultural context in which films were created. The historical setting and the prevailing cultural influences have a significant impact on the themes, messages, and visual elements depicted in movies. Understanding these contextual factors brings a deeper understanding of the films and enhances the interpretation and analysis of their content.

Historical Context:

Examining the historical context helps to situate films within specific time periods, societal changes, and events that shape their narratives and production. Films serve as reflections of the era in which they were made, portraying the political, social, and artistic climate. For example, a film set during World War II will provide insights into the impact of war on individuals and societies, showcasing struggles, resilience, and changing cultural values.

A critical analysis of a film’s historical context can unveil powerful representations of historical events, shedding light on their impact and long-term effects on people’s lives. By offering a perspective informed by the socio-political climate of the past, students can analyze how filmmakers present historical moments, ideologies, or controversies.

Cultural Context:

The cultural context plays an equally integral role in film analysis. Cultural aspects encompass a broad range of influences, including societal norms, customs, belief systems, and artistic movements. It is essential to explore the films within the framework of the cultures they portray, as well as the cultural background of the filmmakers themselves.

By evaluating the cultural context, students gain insights into why certain topics, symbols, or narratives resonate with audiences. Different societies may respond differently to the same film due to variations in cultural practices and perspectives. Moreover, considering cultural implications helps discover hidden meanings and subtexts, deepening the understanding of a film’s intentions and challenges to established societal norms.

Overall, evaluating the historical and cultural context allows for a comprehensive analysis of films. By situating movies within their relevant time periods and cultural landscapes, students can critically examine their socio-political commentary, artistic choices, and thematic explorations. This contextual approach enriches the theoretical analysis of films, motivating thought-provoking interpretations and inspiring new perspectives on their meaning.

Examining Film Theory and Critical Perspectives

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the films being analyzed in your extended essay, it is essential to explore prominent film theories and critical perspectives. These theoretical frameworks allow you to delve into various aspects of films, uncover hidden meanings, and provide a solid foundation for your analysis.

Feminist film theory: Feminist film theory examines how gender roles and representations are portrayed within films. It explores how women are depicted, their agency in storytelling, and the marginalization or empowerment of female characters. By applying this theory, you can analyze how gender biases manifest themselves, challenge societal norms, and highlight the stories and experiences of women within the film medium.

Psychoanalytical approaches: Psychoanalytical approaches focus on the psychological elements present within a film. This perspective considers the unconscious desires, motivations, and fears depicted by the characters and how they reflect societal realities. By analyzing the use of symbolism, dreams, and underlying psychological conflicts, you can gain insight into the created world of the film and its impact on viewers.

Structuralism and semiotics: Structuralism examines the structure and underlying systems in a film. Semiotics analyzes how meaning is conveyed through signs and symbols. Both theoretical frameworks enable you to understand the relationships between different elements within a film, such as shot composition, color schemes, and editing techniques. By decoding these visual and auditory cues, you can unravel the intended meanings and messages embedded within the film.

Postcolonial theory: Postcolonial theory explores the impacts of colonialism, imperialism, and the legacy of colonial powers within the film industry. It delves into issues of representation, cultural appropriation, and the subversion or perpetuation of stereotypes relating to colonized peoples or cultures. Through this critical perspective, you can analyze how films reflect or challenge power dynamics and highlight the voices and experiences of marginalized communities.

When applying these film theories and critical perspectives to your extended essay, it is crucial to consider the strengths and limitations of each theory within the specific context of your chosen films. Moreover, it is essential to engage with different scholarly viewpoints and use them as tools to enhance your analysis.

By incorporating film theory and critical perspectives, you deepen your understanding of the films under investigation and establish a robust foundation for your essay. This allows you to explore broader themes and concepts within the film medium and unravel the unique insights that come with a critical exploration of different theoretical lenses.

Structuring the Extended Essay

When it comes to writing an extended essay in film, having a clear and organized structure is crucial for presenting your research effectively. This section will outline a recommended structure that you can follow to ensure a coherent and well-structured essay.

1. Introduction: Begin your essay with a strong introduction that provides an overview of the topic and presents your research question. This section should also outline the significance and relevance of your chosen topic in the realm of film studies.

2. Body Paragraphs: The main body of your essay should consist of several paragraphs that delve deep into your research. Each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect or argument related to your topic. Make sure to provide evidence and examples to support your points, whether it’s through film analysis, critical perspectives, or academic theories.

• Paragraph 1: Start by introducing your first main point and provide supporting evidence from your research.
• Paragraph 2: Move on to your second main point and link it back to your overall research question. Again, provide evidence to back up your claims.
• Paragraph 3: Continue with additional main points, expanding on each one and making sure each paragraph flows logically from the previous one.

3. Conclusion: Conclude your essay by summarizing your main arguments and findings. Reflect on the significance of your research question and discuss any implications or unanswered questions that may arise from your study. This section should leave the reader with a sense of closure and reinforce the main points of your essay.

4. Additional Sections: Depending on your research topic and the scope of your study, you may need to include additional sections within your essay. For example, if you conducted interviews or surveys for primary research, you may have a section dedicated to presenting and analyzing your findings. Be sure to consider what additional sections are necessary to present your research effectively.

By following this recommended structure, you will provide a clear roadmap for your readers to navigate through your extended essay. Remember to use appropriate headings and subheadings to assist in organizing your content, making it easier for readers to locate specific information. Additionally, use topic sentences at the start of each paragraph to clearly outline the main point that will be discussed. This helps to maintain a cohesive flow of ideas throughout your essay.

A well-structured extended essay not only showcases your understanding of the topic but also enhances the overall readability and coherence of your work. By investing time in planning and organizing your essay effectively, you can ensure that your arguments are presented logically and coherently while providing a solid foundation for your research findings.

(Note: Potential resource links can support the section further).

Research Methodology and Data Collection

In order to conduct a comprehensive extended essay in film, it is crucial to employ appropriate research methodologies and methods of data collection. These methodologies and methods will vary depending on the scope and nature of the research question and the type of data needed to support the arguments.

One common research method in film studies is textual analysis. This involves closely examining the content of films, including dialogues, actions, visual elements, and underlying themes. By analyzing specific scenes or sequences from a film, one can gain insights into the director’s artistic choices and how they contribute to the overall impact of the film. To effectively analyze films through textual analysis, it is important to develop strong observation and interpretation skills.

Another research method is conducting interviews. This can involve interviewing filmmakers, scholars, experts, or audience members who have insights or opinions related to the chosen topic. Interviews provide firsthand accounts and personal perspectives, allowing for a deeper understanding of the films being studied. When conducting interviews, it is essential to prepare well-thought-out questions and actively listen to the responses to gather valuable qualitative data.

Surveys are another valuable data collection method in film studies. Surveys allow researchers to collect large amounts of quantifiable data from a diverse group of respondents. For example, surveys can be used to gauge public opinion about certain films, to assess the impact of specific cinematic techniques or to measure the effectiveness of film marketing strategies. When constructing surveys, it is important to ensure that the questions are clear, concise, and unbiased to elicit accurate responses.

Quantitative data analysis can be employed when dealing with numerical data related to films, such as box office revenue, ratings, or audience demographics. This method involves using statistical techniques to interpret and analyze data. Quantitative data can provide valuable insights into trends, patterns, or correlations, helping to support or challenge arguments and hypotheses.

When collecting and analyzing data in film studies, it is essential to ensure ethical considerations. It is important to obtain informed consent from any participants involved in interviews or surveys and to maintain the confidentiality and anonymity of the data collected. Additionally, it is crucial to accurately document and cite all sources and to use reputable and reliable data sources.

Overall, the choice of research methodology and methods of data collection will depend on both the research question and the availability of resources. By employing appropriate methodologies and methods, researchers can conduct rigorous and insightful extended essays in film.

Incorporating Visual Evidence

When writing an extended essay in film, it is crucial to include visual evidence to support your arguments and enhance the overall visual appeal of your essay. Visual evidence can come in various forms, such as film stills or screenshots, and it serves several important purposes.

• Supporting Arguments: Visual evidence helps to provide concrete examples and support for your analysis and interpretation of the films. By including relevant film stills or screenshots, you can illustrate specific scenes or moments that showcase the techniques or elements you are discussing. This visual evidence adds depth to your arguments and helps readers understand your points more effectively.
• Enhancing Engagement: Incorporating visual evidence can greatly enhance the overall visual appeal of your extended essay. Images capture attention and make your essay more visually engaging. They break up large blocks of text and add visual interest, making the content more appealing and easier to read. Visual evidence can create a more immersive experience for your readers, allowing them to visually connect with your analysis.
• Bolstering Credibility: Using visual evidence demonstrates thorough research and attention to detail. It shows that you have conducted a close analysis of the films and can accurately support your claims with tangible evidence. Including relevant film stills or screenshots not only strengthens your arguments but also lends credibility to your essay. It gives readers confidence in the validity and depth of your analysis.

Remember, when incorporating visual evidence, it is important to choose images strategically. Select film stills or screenshots that are relevant to your analysis and effectively demonstrate the techniques or elements you are discussing. Clearly label and explain the significance of each visual example in relation to your arguments.

To ensure that your visual evidence is of high quality, consider using reputable sources or capturing your own screenshots directly from the film if possible. Pay attention to image resolution and ensure that the visual evidence is clear and easily understood.

Always remember to properly credit the sources of your visual evidence in accordance with the chosen citation style. Include captions or figure labels that clearly identify the film, scene, and relevant details. This not only highlights your ethical responsibility but also allows readers to locate the specific scene or moment within the film.

Incorporating visual evidence not only adds credibility to your arguments but also enhances the visual appeal of your extended essay. By selecting appropriate images, you can provide concrete examples, increase engagement, and make your analysis more persuasive. Visual evidence brings your analysis to life, enabling readers to visualize and better understand the films you are discussing.

You Might Also Like:

• IB Business Management Extended Essay
• Psychology Extended Essay Topics
• English Literature Extended Essay Topics
• IB History Extended Essay Topics
• The Most Overused IB Extended Essay Topics
• How Long Does It Take to Write an IB Extended Essay?
• How to Choose a Research Question for Your IB Extended Essay
• The Easiest and Hardest Extended Essay Subjects
• What Is Theory of Knowledge in IB?

Writing and Revising the Extended Essay

When it comes to the extended essay in film, writing a well-crafted and well-structured essay is essential to effectively present your arguments and research findings. Here are some tips for efficient academic writing, structuring coherent arguments, accurately citing sources, and revising your essay for clarity and a strong overall presentation:

• 1. Effective Academic Writing: Start by developing a clear thesis statement that states the main argument of your essay. Use a formal academic tone and avoid vague or ambiguous language. Be concise and focused in your writing, ensuring that each paragraph serves a specific purpose in supporting your overall argument.
• 2. Structuring Arguments: Organize your essay into logical paragraphs and sections that flow smoothly from one idea to another. Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence that introduces the main point, followed by supporting evidence and analysis. Use transitional phrases to connect your ideas and create coherence throughout your essay.
• 3. Citing Sources Accurately: When referencing sources, use a recognized citation style such as MLA or APA. Include in-text citations whenever you paraphrase, quote, or use information from a source. Create a separate reference list or bibliography at the end of your essay to provide your readers with the necessary information to find your cited sources.
• 4. Revising for Coherence and Clarity: Review your essay for coherence, making sure that the flow of ideas is logical and easy to follow. Use transition words and phrases to create connections between paragraphs and sections. Check for clarity by reading your essay aloud or getting feedback from others. Edit for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors to ensure a polished final product.

When writing your extended essay in film, it is important to remember that presenting your arguments and research findings effectively is just as crucial as the content itself. By following these tips for effective academic writing, structuring arguments, citing sources accurately, and revising your essay thoroughly, you can create a compelling and well-presented extended essay that will impress your readers and contribute to the field of film studies.

When embarking on your extended essay in film, one of the most important considerations is the selection of suitable films for analysis. The choice of films will greatly influence the depth and scope of your research, as well as the overall quality of your essay.

There are various approaches you can take when selecting films for analysis. You may choose to focus on a specific genre, such as film noir or sci-fi, and delve into its characteristics, themes, and historical context. Alternatively, you could opt to explore the work of a particular director, analyzing their cinematic style and artistic vision throughout their filmography.

Another fascinating avenue to consider is examining the cultural significance of a particular film. You can explore how it shaped societal perceptions, influenced popular culture, or addressed significant social issues of its time. Such an approach allows for a comprehensive analysis of not only the film itself but also its broader impact and reception.

It is crucial to conduct a thorough evaluation of potential films before making your final selection. Consider their accessibility and availability, as access to viewing and analyzing the chosen films is imperative for conducting detailed research. Additionally, choose films that offer rich visual and narrative substance, keeping in mind the level of complexity they can provide for analysis.

Remember, your goal is to select films that offer ample scope for exploration and critical analysis. At the same time, it is essential to choose films that have received sufficient attention from scholars and film theorists. A wealth of existing research and critical perspectives will enrich your essay and facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of your chosen topic.

In some cases, it may be beneficial to choose films that share thematic or stylistic similarities. Comparing and contrasting multiple films within a specific context or subject matter can provide unique insights and create a more dynamic and engaging extended essay.

Finally, when choosing suitable films, always consider your own interests and preferences. Selecting films that you find genuinely captivating and exciting will undoubtedly enhance your motivation and enjoyment throughout the research and writing process.

In the next section, we will explore how to conduct thorough research, laying the groundwork for a robust and well-informed extended essay in film.

Nick Radlinsky

Nick Radlinsky is a devoted educator, marketing specialist, and management expert with more than 15 years of experience in the education sector. After obtaining his business degree in 2016, Nick embarked on a quest to achieve his PhD, driven by his commitment to enhancing education for students worldwide. His vast experience, starting in 2008, has established him as a reputable authority in the field.

Nick's article, featured in Routledge's " Entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe: Development through Internationalization ," highlights his sharp insights and unwavering dedication to advancing the educational landscape. Inspired by his personal motto, "Make education better," Nick's mission is to streamline students' lives and foster efficient learning. His inventive ideas and leadership have contributed to the transformation of numerous educational experiences, distinguishing him as a true innovator in his field.

How to Handle Stress and Pressure During IB Exams?

Dealing with the stress and pressure of IB exams can be challenging, but it’s manageable with the right strategies. In this article, I’ll give you practical tips on how to stay calm and focused during exam season. From setting up a balanced study routine to developing a positive mindset and using effective stress reduction techniques, these methods will help you approach IB exams with confidence.

The Role of TOK in Interdisciplinary Understanding

TOK encourages students to look into how different types of information connect and combine, which leads to a more all-around way of learning. TOK acts as a link between subjects that might otherwise seem unconnected, such as relating mathematical ideas to natural patterns or examining the moral ramifications of science developments.

How to Conduct Effective Peer Reviews in IB Projects?

Peer review in IB projects is a vital skill that can greatly improve the quality of your projects and your academic growth. From what I’ve seen, peer reviews are a great way to get helpful feedback, see things from different angles, and make your work better.

Utilizing Digital Tools for IB Study and Research

Now that we live in a digital world, using technology to its fullest can greatly improve your IB study and research. Staying prepared, controlling time, and conducting research have never been simpler thanks to the abundance of apps and platforms available. The important thing is to know which tools will help you reach your school goals.

How to Balance Extracurricular Activities and IB Studies?

Balancing extracurricular activities and IB studies can feel like walking a tightrope, but with the right strategies, it’s entirely possible to manage both effectively. In fact, many IB students successfully juggle academic demands with sports, clubs, and hobbies. The key lies in prioritization, time management, and staying organized.

What Is the IB Learner Profile? Attributes and Benefits

It’s more than just a framework; the IB learner profile is a list of ten traits that are meant to help students become well-rounded, globally aware people. As an IB writer, I can say that these characteristics, like thinking, communicating, and keeping an open mind, help students grow mentally and socially.

© 2024  I Bstudenthelp.com. This website is owned and operated by Udeepi OU Harju maakond, Tallinn, Lasnamäe linnaosa, Sepapaja tn 6, 15551. Disclaimer : Services we provide are only to assist the buyer like a guideline to complete any kind of writing assignment. Privacy Policy Terms and Conditions Cookie Policy Revision Policy Refund Policy

Choose Your Test

• Search Blogs By Category
• College Admissions
• AP and IB Exams
• GPA and Coursework

The Complete IB Extended Essay Guide: Examples, Topics, and Ideas

International Baccalaureate (IB)

IB students around the globe fear writing the Extended Essay, but it doesn't have to be a source of stress! In this article, I'll get you excited about writing your Extended Essay and provide you with the resources you need to get an A on it.

If you're reading this article, I'm going to assume you're an IB student getting ready to write your Extended Essay. If you're looking at this as a potential future IB student, I recommend reading our introductory IB articles first, including our guide to what the IB program is and our full coverage of the IB curriculum .

IB Extended Essay: Why Should You Trust My Advice?

I myself am a recipient of an IB Diploma, and I happened to receive an A on my IB Extended Essay. Don't believe me? The proof is in the IBO pudding:

If you're confused by what this report means, EE is short for Extended Essay , and English A1 is the subject that my Extended Essay topic coordinated with. In layman's terms, my IB Diploma was graded in May 2010, I wrote my Extended Essay in the English A1 category, and I received an A grade on it.

What Is the Extended Essay in the IB Diploma Programme?

The IB Extended Essay, or EE , is a mini-thesis you write under the supervision of an IB advisor (an IB teacher at your school), which counts toward your IB Diploma (learn more about the major IB Diploma requirements in our guide) . I will explain exactly how the EE affects your Diploma later in this article.

For the Extended Essay, you will choose a research question as a topic, conduct the research independently, then write an essay on your findings . The essay itself is a long one—although there's a cap of 4,000 words, most successful essays get very close to this limit.

Keep in mind that the IB requires this essay to be a "formal piece of academic writing," meaning you'll have to do outside research and cite additional sources.

The IB Extended Essay must include the following:

• A title page
• Contents page
• Introduction
• Body of the essay
• References and bibliography

Additionally, your research topic must fall into one of the six approved DP categories , or IB subject groups, which are as follows:

• Group 1: Studies in Language and Literature
• Group 2: Language Acquisition
• Group 3: Individuals and Societies
• Group 4: Sciences
• Group 5: Mathematics
• Group 6: The Arts

Once you figure out your category and have identified a potential research topic, it's time to pick your advisor, who is normally an IB teacher at your school (though you can also find one online ). This person will help direct your research, and they'll conduct the reflection sessions you'll have to do as part of your Extended Essay.

As of 2018, the IB requires a "reflection process" as part of your EE supervision process. To fulfill this requirement, you have to meet at least three times with your supervisor in what the IB calls "reflection sessions." These meetings are not only mandatory but are also part of the formal assessment of the EE and your research methods.

According to the IB, the purpose of these meetings is to "provide an opportunity for students to reflect on their engagement with the research process." Basically, these meetings give your supervisor the opportunity to offer feedback, push you to think differently, and encourage you to evaluate your research process.

The final reflection session is called the viva voce, and it's a short 10- to 15-minute interview between you and your advisor. This happens at the very end of the EE process, and it's designed to help your advisor write their report, which factors into your EE grade.

Here are the topics covered in your viva voce :

• A check on plagiarism and malpractice
• Your reflection on your project's successes and difficulties
• Your reflection on what you've learned during the EE process

Your completed Extended Essay, along with your supervisor's report, will then be sent to the IB to be graded. We'll cover the assessment criteria in just a moment.

We'll help you learn how to have those "lightbulb" moments...even on test day!  

What Should You Write About in Your IB Extended Essay?

You can technically write about anything, so long as it falls within one of the approved categories listed above.

It's best to choose a topic that matches one of the IB courses , (such as Theatre, Film, Spanish, French, Math, Biology, etc.), which shouldn't be difficult because there are so many class subjects.

Here is a range of sample topics with the attached extended essay:

• Biology: The Effect of Age and Gender on the Photoreceptor Cells in the Human Retina
• Chemistry: How Does Reflux Time Affect the Yield and Purity of Ethyl Aminobenzoate (Benzocaine), and How Effective is Recrystallisation as a Purification Technique for This Compound?
• English: An Exploration of Jane Austen's Use of the Outdoors in Emma
• Geography: The Effect of Location on the Educational Attainment of Indigenous Secondary Students in Queensland, Australia
• Math: Alhazen's Billiard Problem
• Visual Arts: Can Luc Tuymans Be Classified as a Political Painter?

You can see from how varied the topics are that you have a lot of freedom when it comes to picking a topic . So how do you pick when the options are limitless?

How to Write a Stellar IB Extended Essay: 6 Essential Tips

Below are six key tips to keep in mind as you work on your Extended Essay for the IB DP. Follow these and you're sure to get an A!

#1: Write About Something You Enjoy

You can't expect to write a compelling essay if you're not a fan of the topic on which you're writing. For example, I just love British theatre and ended up writing my Extended Essay on a revolution in post-WWII British theatre. (Yes, I'm definitely a #TheatreNerd.)

I really encourage anyone who pursues an IB Diploma to take the Extended Essay seriously. I was fortunate enough to receive a full-tuition merit scholarship to USC's School of Dramatic Arts program. In my interview for the scholarship, I spoke passionately about my Extended Essay; thus, I genuinely think my Extended Essay helped me get my scholarship.

But how do you find a topic you're passionate about? Start by thinking about which classes you enjoy the most and why . Do you like math classes because you like to solve problems? Or do you enjoy English because you like to analyze literary texts?

Keep in mind that there's no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing your Extended Essay topic. You're not more likely to get high marks because you're writing about science, just like you're not doomed to failure because you've chosen to tackle the social sciences. The quality of what you produce—not the field you choose to research within—will determine your grade.

Once you've figured out your category, you should brainstorm more specific topics by putting pen to paper . What was your favorite chapter you learned in that class? Was it astrophysics or mechanics? What did you like about that specific chapter? Is there something you want to learn more about? I recommend spending a few hours on this type of brainstorming.

One last note: if you're truly stumped on what to research, pick a topic that will help you in your future major or career . That way you can use your Extended Essay as a talking point in your college essays (and it will prepare you for your studies to come too!).

#2: Select a Topic That Is Neither Too Broad nor Too Narrow

There's a fine line between broad and narrow. You need to write about something specific, but not so specific that you can't write 4,000 words on it.

You can't write about WWII because that would be a book's worth of material. You also don't want to write about what type of soup prisoners of war received behind enemy lines, because you probably won’t be able to come up with 4,000 words of material about it. However, you could possibly write about how the conditions in German POW camps—and the rations provided—were directly affected by the Nazis' successes and failures on the front, including the use of captured factories and prison labor in Eastern Europe to increase production. WWII military history might be a little overdone, but you get my point.

If you're really stuck trying to pinpoint a not-too-broad-or-too-narrow topic, I suggest trying to brainstorm a topic that uses a comparison. Once you begin looking through the list of sample essays below, you'll notice that many use comparisons to formulate their main arguments.

I also used a comparison in my EE, contrasting Harold Pinter's Party Time with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in order to show a transition in British theatre. Topics with comparisons of two to three plays, books, and so on tend to be the sweet spot. You can analyze each item and then compare them with one another after doing some in-depth analysis of each individually. The ways these items compare and contrast will end up forming the thesis of your essay!

When choosing a comparative topic, the key is that the comparison should be significant. I compared two plays to illustrate the transition in British theatre, but you could compare the ways different regional dialects affect people's job prospects or how different temperatures may or may not affect the mating patterns of lightning bugs. The point here is that comparisons not only help you limit your topic, but they also help you build your argument.

Comparisons are not the only way to get a grade-A EE, though. If after brainstorming, you pick a non-comparison-based topic and are still unsure whether your topic is too broad or narrow, spend about 30 minutes doing some basic research and see how much material is out there.

If there are more than 1,000 books, articles, or documentaries out there on that exact topic, it may be too broad. But if there are only two books that have any connection to your topic, it may be too narrow. If you're still unsure, ask your advisor—it's what they're there for! Speaking of advisors...

Don't get stuck with a narrow topic!

#3: Choose an Advisor Who Is Familiar With Your Topic

If you're not certain of who you would like to be your advisor, create a list of your top three choices. Next, write down the pros and cons of each possibility (I know this sounds tedious, but it really helps!).

For example, Mr. Green is my favorite teacher and we get along really well, but he teaches English. For my EE, I want to conduct an experiment that compares the efficiency of American electric cars with foreign electric cars.

I had Ms. White a year ago. She teaches physics and enjoyed having me in her class. Unlike Mr. Green, Ms. White could help me design my experiment.

Based on my topic and what I need from my advisor, Ms. White would be a better fit for me than would Mr. Green (even though I like him a lot).

The moral of my story is this: do not just ask your favorite teacher to be your advisor . They might be a hindrance to you if they teach another subject. For example, I would not recommend asking your biology teacher to guide you in writing an English literature-based EE.

There can, of course, be exceptions to this rule. If you have a teacher who's passionate and knowledgeable about your topic (as my English teacher was about my theatre topic), you could ask that instructor. Consider all your options before you do this. There was no theatre teacher at my high school, so I couldn't find a theatre-specific advisor, but I chose the next best thing.

Before you approach a teacher to serve as your advisor, check with your high school to see what requirements they have for this process. Some IB high schools require your IB Extended Essay advisor to sign an Agreement Form , for instance.

Make sure that you ask your IB coordinator whether there is any required paperwork to fill out. If your school needs a specific form signed, bring it with you when you ask your teacher to be your EE advisor.

#4: Pick an Advisor Who Will Push You to Be Your Best

Some teachers might just take on students because they have to and aren't very passionate about reading drafts, only giving you minimal feedback. Choose a teacher who will take the time to read several drafts of your essay and give you extensive notes. I would not have gotten my A without being pushed to make my Extended Essay draft better.

Ask a teacher that you have experience with through class or an extracurricular activity. Do not ask a teacher that you have absolutely no connection to. If a teacher already knows you, that means they already know your strengths and weaknesses, so they know what to look for, where you need to improve, and how to encourage your best work.

Also, don't forget that your supervisor's assessment is part of your overall EE score . If you're meeting with someone who pushes you to do better—and you actually take their advice—they'll have more impressive things to say about you than a supervisor who doesn't know you well and isn't heavily involved in your research process.

Be aware that the IB only allows advisors to make suggestions and give constructive criticism. Your teacher cannot actually help you write your EE. The IB recommends that the supervisor spends approximately two to three hours in total with the candidate discussing the EE.

#5: Make Sure Your Essay Has a Clear Structure and Flow

The IB likes structure. Your EE needs a clear introduction (which should be one to two double-spaced pages), research question/focus (i.e., what you're investigating), a body, and a conclusion (about one double-spaced page). An essay with unclear organization will be graded poorly.

The body of your EE should make up the bulk of the essay. It should be about eight to 18 pages long (again, depending on your topic). Your body can be split into multiple parts. For example, if you were doing a comparison, you might have one third of your body as Novel A Analysis, another third as Novel B Analysis, and the final third as your comparison of Novels A and B.

If you're conducting an experiment or analyzing data, such as in this EE , your EE body should have a clear structure that aligns with the scientific method ; you should state the research question, discuss your method, present the data, analyze the data, explain any uncertainties, and draw a conclusion and/or evaluate the success of the experiment.

#6: Start Writing Sooner Rather Than Later!

You will not be able to crank out a 4,000-word essay in just a week and get an A on it. You'll be reading many, many articles (and, depending on your topic, possibly books and plays as well!). As such, it's imperative that you start your research as soon as possible.

Each school has a slightly different deadline for the Extended Essay. Some schools want them as soon as November of your senior year; others will take them as late as February. Your school will tell you what your deadline is. If they haven't mentioned it by February of your junior year, ask your IB coordinator about it.

Some high schools will provide you with a timeline of when you need to come up with a topic, when you need to meet with your advisor, and when certain drafts are due. Not all schools do this. Ask your IB coordinator if you are unsure whether you are on a specific timeline.

Below is my recommended EE timeline. While it's earlier than most schools, it'll save you a ton of heartache (trust me, I remember how hard this process was!):

• January/February of Junior Year: Come up with your final research topic (or at least your top three options).
• February of Junior Year: Approach a teacher about being your EE advisor. If they decline, keep asking others until you find one. See my notes above on how to pick an EE advisor.
• April/May of Junior Year: Submit an outline of your EE and a bibliography of potential research sources (I recommend at least seven to 10) to your EE advisor. Meet with your EE advisor to discuss your outline.
• Summer Between Junior and Senior Year: Complete your first full draft over the summer between your junior and senior year. I know, I know—no one wants to work during the summer, but trust me—this will save you so much stress come fall when you are busy with college applications and other internal assessments for your IB classes. You will want to have this first full draft done because you will want to complete a couple of draft cycles as you likely won't be able to get everything you want to say into 4,000 articulate words on the first attempt. Try to get this first draft into the best possible shape so you don't have to work on too many revisions during the school year on top of your homework, college applications, and extracurriculars.
• August/September of Senior Year: Turn in your first draft of your EE to your advisor and receive feedback. Work on incorporating their feedback into your essay. If they have a lot of suggestions for improvement, ask if they will read one more draft before the final draft.
• September/October of Senior Year: Submit the second draft of your EE to your advisor (if necessary) and look at their feedback. Work on creating the best possible final draft.
• November-February of Senior Year: Schedule your viva voce. Submit two copies of your final draft to your school to be sent off to the IB. You likely will not get your grade until after you graduate.

Remember that in the middle of these milestones, you'll need to schedule two other reflection sessions with your advisor . (Your teachers will actually take notes on these sessions on a form like this one , which then gets submitted to the IB.)

I recommend doing them when you get feedback on your drafts, but these meetings will ultimately be up to your supervisor. Just don't forget to do them!

The early bird DOES get the worm!

How Is the IB Extended Essay Graded?

Extended Essays are graded by examiners appointed by the IB on a scale of 0 to 34 . You'll be graded on five criteria, each with its own set of points. You can learn more about how EE scoring works by reading the IB guide to extended essays .

• Criterion A: Focus and Method (6 points maximum)
• Criterion B: Knowledge and Understanding (6 points maximum)
• Criterion C: Critical Thinking (12 points maximum)
• Criterion D: Presentation (4 points maximum)
• Criterion E: Engagement (6 points maximum)

How well you do on each of these criteria will determine the final letter grade you get for your EE. You must earn at least a D to be eligible to receive your IB Diploma.

Although each criterion has a point value, the IB explicitly states that graders are not converting point totals into grades; instead, they're using qualitative grade descriptors to determine the final grade of your Extended Essay . Grade descriptors are on pages 102-103 of this document .

Here's a rough estimate of how these different point values translate to letter grades based on previous scoring methods for the EE. This is just an estimate —you should read and understand the grade descriptors so you know exactly what the scorers are looking for.

Here is the breakdown of EE scores (from the May 2021 bulletin):

How Does the Extended Essay Grade Affect Your IB Diploma?

The Extended Essay grade is combined with your TOK (Theory of Knowledge) grade to determine how many points you get toward your IB Diploma.

To learn about Theory of Knowledge or how many points you need to receive an IB Diploma, read our complete guide to the IB program and our guide to the IB Diploma requirements .

This diagram shows how the two scores are combined to determine how many points you receive for your IB diploma (3 being the most, 0 being the least). In order to get your IB Diploma, you have to earn 24 points across both categories (the TOK and EE). The highest score anyone can earn is 45 points.

Let's say you get an A on your EE and a B on TOK. You will get 3 points toward your Diploma. As of 2014, a student who scores an E on either the extended essay or TOK essay will not be eligible to receive an IB Diploma .

Prior to the class of 2010, a Diploma candidate could receive a failing grade in either the Extended Essay or Theory of Knowledge and still be awarded a Diploma, but this is no longer true.

Figuring out how you're assessed can be a little tricky. Luckily, the IB breaks everything down here in this document . (The assessment information begins on page 219.)

40+ Sample Extended Essays for the IB Diploma Programme

In case you want a little more guidance on how to get an A on your EE, here are over 40 excellent (grade A) sample extended essays for your reading pleasure. Essays are grouped by IB subject.

• Business Management 1
• Chemistry 1
• Chemistry 2
• Chemistry 3
• Chemistry 4
• Chemistry 5
• Chemistry 6
• Chemistry 7
• Computer Science 1
• Economics 1
• Design Technology 1
• Design Technology 2
• Environmental Systems and Societies 1
• Geography 1
• Geography 2
• Geography 3
• Geography 4
• Geography 5
• Geography 6
• Literature and Performance 1
• Mathematics 1
• Mathematics 2
• Mathematics 3
• Mathematics 4
• Mathematics 5
• Philosophy 1
• Philosophy 2
• Philosophy 3
• Philosophy 4
• Philosophy 5
• Psychology 1
• Psychology 2
• Psychology 3
• Psychology 4
• Psychology 5
• Social and Cultural Anthropology 1
• Social and Cultural Anthropology 2
• Social and Cultural Anthropology 3
• Sports, Exercise and Health Science 1
• Sports, Exercise and Health Science 2
• Visual Arts 1
• Visual Arts 2
• Visual Arts 3
• Visual Arts 4
• Visual Arts 5
• World Religion 1
• World Religion 2
• World Religion 3

What's Next?

Trying to figure out what extracurriculars you should do? Learn more about participating in the Science Olympiad , starting a club , doing volunteer work , and joining Student Government .

Studying for the SAT? Check out our expert study guide to the SAT . Taking the SAT in a month or so? Learn how to cram effectively for this important test .

Not sure where you want to go to college? Read our guide to finding your target school . Also, determine your target SAT score or target ACT score .

Trending Now

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

ACT vs. SAT: Which Test Should You Take?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Get Your Free

Find Your Target SAT Score

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

How to Get a Perfect SAT Score, by an Expert Full Scorer

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading and Writing

How to Improve Your Low SAT Score

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading and Writing

Find Your Target ACT Score

Complete Official Free ACT Practice Tests

How to Get a Perfect ACT Score, by a 36 Full Scorer

Get a 36 on ACT English

Get a 36 on ACT Math

Get a 36 on ACT Reading

Get a 36 on ACT Science

How to Improve Your Low ACT Score

Get a 24 on ACT English

Get a 24 on ACT Math

Get a 24 on ACT Reading

Get a 24 on ACT Science

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

As an SAT/ACT tutor, Dora has guided many students to test prep success. She loves watching students succeed and is committed to helping you get there. Dora received a full-tuition merit based scholarship to University of Southern California. She graduated magna cum laude and scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT. She is also passionate about acting, writing, and photography.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Gr. 11-12 Extended Essay

• Reflections
• Choose a Subject
• Choose a Topic
• Draft a Research Question
• Develop Your Search Strategy
• Computer Science

Film EE Overview

Formatting style, online resources, guide to topic and assessment, academic and professional film titles.

• EE Examples
• Visual Arts
• World Studies
• Introduction
• Academic Integrity
• Common Questions
• For Supervisors
• Film EE: Workflow and Expectations An overview of the workflow and expectations for students pursuing an Extended Essay in Film, by Mr. Corsano.

Check with your supervisor about which style to use.

• Videos & Film APA Style 7th ed. (Sheridan Library)
• Getting Started with APA Style (7th ed.) (Sheridan Library)
• Getting Started With Chicago Style (Sheridan Library)

TIFF Reference Library  - Find here resources available at the Film Reference Library. Note: Because this is a reference library, you must request an item beforehand, which is available for in-library use only. Click here for a list of subject-specific research guides prepared by the librarians.

Feature Films (Internet Archive)  - Find archived full-length feature films for viewing and downloading.

Film Journal Archives (Boxoffice)  - Find full-text issues of Film Journal, a trade magazine (last publication date 2018). 

Click the title to access the issues that are available from Toronto Public Library via the databases listed. You will be prompted to enter your Toronto Public Library card and pin. Don't have a library card?  Here's how to get one .   

Film criticism  

Film & history

Film quarterly

• Film Topic and Assessment
• Film: getting the marks

Film Studies

Film Cultures

Film Theory

Film Theory and Criticism

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory

This volume takes the position that film theory is a form of writing that produces a unique cinematic grammar; and like all grammars, it forms part of the system of rules that govern a language, and is thus applicable to wider range of media forms. In their creation of authorial trends, identification of the technology of cinema as a creative force, and production of films as aesthetic markers, film theories contribute an epistemological resource that connects the technologies of filmmaking and film composition.

Understanding Film Theory

"Emerging filmmakers need to know the basics of their art form: the language of the camera, and lenses, the different crew roles, the formats, the aspect ratios. They also need to know some bare-bones theory: what an auteur is, what montage is, what genres are"--Back cover.

The cinematic mode of production : attention economy and the society of the spectacle

Explains the history, theory, language, and technology of film, discusses the change from analog to digital filmmaking, and includes a chronology of film and media, as well as a list of titles for further reading.

"Film Studies is a concise and indispensable introduction to the formal study of cinema. Ed Sikov offers a step-by-step curriculum for the appreciation of all types of narrative cinema, detailing the essential elements of film form and systematically training the spectator to be an active reader and critic. He treats a number of fundamental factors in filmmaking, including editing, composition, lighting, the use of color and sound, and narrative. His description of mise-en-scene helps readers grasp the significance of montage, which in turn reveals the importance of a director's use of camera movement. -- Provided by publisher.

Provides an overview of film history.

Presents a new theory of film genres based on the uneasy competitive, yet complimentary, relationship among genre users. Discusses a wide variety of films and their genres, as well as the roles played by industry critics and audiences in making and re-making genres.

• Film A paper example 1
• Film B paper example 1
• Film B paper example 2
• Film B paper example 3
• Film C paper example 1
• Film C paper example 2
• Film C paper example 3
• << Previous: English
• Next: Geography >>
• Last Updated: Sep 10, 2024 9:51 AM
• URL: https://yorkschool.libguides.com/extendedessay

Film Extended Essay Topic Ideas for IB Diploma

Table of contents

• Writing Metier

Welcome to our guide on Film Extended Essay topic ideas. If you’re passionate about cinema and eager to explore its many facets in your Extended essay, you’ve come to the right place. 

From the nuances of film genres and styles to the intricate workings of the film industry, our list covers a wide range of topics that will inspire and challenge you. 

Each Film EE topics category offers a unique perspective on Film, inviting you to analyze, critique, and appreciate the art of cinema in new and exciting ways.

List of Film extended essay topic categories

Evolution of the Horror Genre

The Rise of Documentary Filmmaking

Characteristics of Modern Science Fiction Films

Auteur Theory in Contemporary Cinema

Feminist Film Theory and Representation of Women

Postmodernism in Film

The Impact of the French New Wave

Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema

Italian Neorealism and Its Legacy

The Art of Visual Storytelling in Cinematography

Innovations in Film Editing Techniques

The Role of Sound Design in Modern Filmmaking

Representation of Minorities in Contemporary Cinema

Film as a Tool for Social Change

The Influence of Cinema on Popular Culture

The Evolution of the Global Film Market

Independent Filmmaking vs. Major Studio Productions

The Impact of Streaming Services on the Film Industry

Now, let’s discover each of these categories and subcategories in detail with exact Film extended essay topic ideas and research questions.

IB Film EE topic ideas

Here are two topics and corresponding research questions for each subcategory in extended essay Film topics.

Film Genres and Styles

Welcome to the exploration of Film Genres and Styles. 

In this category, we’re uncovering the evolving narratives and techniques in cinema, from the chilling progression of the horror genre to the insightful storytelling in documentaries and the imaginative worlds of modern science fiction films.

• Research Question:  How have horror film techniques evolved since the 1980s, and what factors have influenced this evolution?
• Research Question:  How do contemporary horror films reflect the cultural fears and anxieties of their time?
• Research Question:  How has the advent of digital technology transformed the production and distribution of documentary films?
• Research Question:  How have documentaries about environmental issues influenced public opinion and policy?
• Research Question:  How is artificial intelligence portrayed in modern science fiction films, and what does this say about contemporary societal concerns?
• Research Question:  How have advancements in special effects technology expanded the narrative possibilities in science fiction cinema?

Breathe Easy! We’re Handling Your Paper

• Polished Papers : Styled right, glitch-free
• Ask Away : Direct chat with your writer
• Free Goodies : Revisions, title page, and bib
• Fair Prices : Plus a money-back guarantee
• All Human : No AI, just real experts
• Private & Secure : Your details, our secret

Bye-Bye, Burnout!

Slash 15% OFF using the coupon code: BLG15WM

Film Theory and Criticism

In Film Theory and Criticism, we engage with the intellectual frameworks shaping our understanding of cinema. 

This section delves into the auteur theory’s role in contemporary filmmaking, examines feminist perspectives in Film, and explores the complex layers of postmodernism in cinema.

• Research Question:  How does Wes Anderson’s distinctive style exemplify the concept of the auteur in contemporary cinema?
• Research Question:  How does Quentin Tarantino’s unique directing style influence audience perceptions of violence in his films?
• Research Question:  How have female protagonists in action films evolved since 2000, and how do they reflect changes in feminist film theory?
• Research Question:  How has the Bechdel Test influenced the representation of women in contemporary films?
• Research Question:  How do David Lynch’s films exemplify the characteristics of postmodern cinema?
• Research Question:  How does intertextuality contribute to the postmodern aesthetic in contemporary films?

Film History and Movements

Our path through Film History and Movements revisits the pivotal eras that have defined cinema. 

Here, we explore the groundbreaking impact of the French New Wave, the iconic era of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and the profound influence of Italian Neorealism on global filmmaking.

• Research Question:  How did the French New Wave influence the styles and techniques of independent American filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s?
• Research Question:  What were the key cinematic innovations introduced by the French New Wave, and how have they impacted modern filmmaking?
• Research Question:  How did the star system evolve during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and what was its impact on film production and marketing?
• Research Question:  How did film noir contribute to and define the artistic achievements of Hollywood’s Golden Age?
• Research Question:  How has Italian Neorealism influenced the techniques and themes of contemporary realist filmmakers?
• Research Question:  How did Italian Neorealist films use social commentary to reflect the post-World War II reality in Italy?

Cinematography and Film Production

Focusing on Cinematography and Film Production, we explore the art and techniques behind the camera. 

This category sheds light on the craft of visual storytelling, the evolution of film editing, and the critical role of sound design in enhancing the cinematic experience.

• Research Question:  How does cinematography contribute to the emotional impact of a film, with specific examples from contemporary cinema?
• Research Question:  How have cinematic techniques evolved in the portrayal of biographical films, and how do they enhance storytelling?
• Research Question:  How has non-linear editing influenced the narrative structure and storytelling techniques in modern cinema?
• Research Question:  How did the montage techniques of Soviet cinema influence modern film editing practices?
• Research Question:  How has sound design evolved in horror films, and how does it enhance the genre’s emotional and psychological impact?
• Research Question:  How do contemporary filmmakers integrate diegetic and non-diegetic sound to create immersive film experiences?

Social and Cultural Impact of Film

In the Social and Cultural Impact of Film, we examine how cinema mirrors and influences societal dynamics . 

This section explores the representation of minorities in Film, the power of cinema as a tool for social change, and the significant role of films in shaping popular culture.

• Research Question:  How has the portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in 21st-century films evolved, and what impact does it have on societal attitudes?
• Research Question:  How does diversity in casting affect film narratives and audience reception in contemporary cinema?
• Research Question:  How have documentary films contributed to environmental advocacy and influenced public awareness and policy?
• Research Question:  How does contemporary cinema influence public perception and understanding of mental health issues?
• Research Question:  How have superhero films influenced trends and themes in modern popular culture?
• Research Question:  How has cinema influenced fashion trends over the past two decades?

Film Industry and Business

Our final category, Film Industry and Business, takes a broader look at the evolution of the film market. 

We discuss the changing dynamics of the global film industry, the contrast between independent filmmaking and major studio productions, and the transformative impact of streaming services on traditional cinema.

• Research Question:  How have international co-productions influenced the themes, styles, and distribution of global cinema?
• Research Question:  How has globalization affected film production and distribution practices in the film industry?
• Research Question:  How do the creative freedoms and limitations in independent filmmaking compare to those in major studio productions?
• Research Question:  How have digital platforms (like Netflix, Amazon Prime) impacted the success and visibility of independent films?
• Research Question:  How have streaming services like Netflix and Hulu changed film viewing habits and preferences among audiences?
• Research Question:  How are streaming services influencing the financing, production, and distribution of films, and what does this mean for the future of cinema?

These topics are designed to be both engaging and feasible for investigation, allowing students to explore various aspects of Film within the framework of an IB Extended Essay.

As we conclude our exploration of Film Extended Essay topics, it’s clear that the world of cinema offers a rich tapestry of themes and concepts for in-depth study . 

Like with Music extended essay topics , whether you’re drawn to the artistic expressions in cinematography, the cultural reflections in film genres, or the evolving landscapes of the film industry, these topics provide a platform for a comprehensive and insightful analysis. 

Keep in mind that a successful Extended Essay in Film not only demonstrates your understanding of cinematic concepts but also reflects your ability to engage with and analyze the medium critically . 

Need a Dope Paper Written? We've Got Your Back!

If you find yourself needing guidance or support in shaping your ideas into a compelling Film extended essay, our team at Writing Metier is here to assist. 

We’re committed to helping you craft an essay that not only meets the IB criteria but also showcases your unique insights into the world of Film. Let’s turn your passion for cinema into an exceptional piece of academic work.

Free topic suggestions

Vasy kafidoff.

Vasyl Kafidoff is a co-founder and CEO at WritingMetier. He is interested in education and how modern technology makes it more accessible. He wants to bring awareness about new learning possibilities as an educational specialist. When Vasy is not working, he’s found behind a drum kit.

Similar posts

Business management extended essay topic ideas and rqs.

Looking for the perfect topic for your IB Business Management Extended Essay? Dive into our comprehensive guide, covering everything from organizational leadership to the latest trends. And if you need a bit of extra help, Writing Metier is just a click away to assist with topic suggestions, writing, and editing.

Economics Extended Essay Topic Ideas for IB Students

This article serves as a launchpad for students crafting their Economics Extended Essays, offering a diverse array of topics that span from the intricacies of microeconomic market structures to the broad strokes of macroeconomic policy. It provides a rich tapestry of ideas, inviting exploration into the complex interplay between economic theory and real-world application across various branches such as labor, environmental, and health economics.

English B Extended Essay Topic Ideas

Discover the perfect English B Extended Essay topic with our curated list, designed to spark your creativity and intellectual curiosity. And if you're looking for a bit of expert assistance in crafting your masterpiece, Writing Metier is just a message away. Let's turn your Extended Essay into a standout success!

Global Politics Extended Essay Topics and Research Questions

Dive into the dynamic world of Global Politics with our curated list of Extended Essay topics for 2023. From the digital revolution in democracy to the environmental challenges reshaping our planet, these topics offer a gateway to understanding and analyzing the pressing issues of our time.

IB History Extended Essay Topics and Research Questions

Explore our curated list of IB History Extended Essay topics, neatly categorized to simplify your selection process. From world conflicts to cultural revolutions, find the perfect subject for your academic exploration. Dive into history with us and uncover the stories that shaped our world!

How to Write a Reaction Paper to a Movie: Easy Steps

Writing a movie review can be a really interesting assignment. Why? Well, for starters, one of the tasks you would have to do is to watch the movie and who does not like watching movies for fun?

We rely on cookies to give you the best experince on our website. By browsing, you agree to it. Read more

• Customer Reviews
• Extended Essays
• IB Internal Assessment
• Theory of Knowledge
• Literature Review
• Dissertations
• Essay Writing
• Research Writing
• Assignment Help
• Capstone Projects
• College Application
• Online Class

Film Extended Essay: The Complete Guide for IB Students 

0  Comments

by  Antony W

September 2, 2022

Working on a film extended essay gives you the opportunity to conduct in-depth research on a topic of your interest in the subject.

By engaging in personal, diligent research, you can explore and develop the discipline in a way that brings out creativity and relevance appropriate for television.

Film projects demand complex skills and creative thinking.

So when it comes to working on the extended essay, you have to demonstrate a clear and critical understand of how films tell stories, pass crucial information, and create emotional effect.

How to Choose Film Extended Essay Topic

Film extended essay project requires you to select and work on a topic of your interest, as long as it’s within the umbrella of film and in respect to the guidelines of the assignment.

The assignment demands clarity and consistency of ideas.

By paying attention to details, you’ll not only write a more comprehensive extended essay on the subject but also do so within the time limit provided.

It’s important that the topic you choose allows you to come up with a relevant research question or issue to enable you write an essay that’s coherent, logical, and economical in words.

You might want to ask yourself the following questions when selecting a topic:

• Will the topic enable me to write a critical essay about cinema, film theory, and film history without tempting me to stray into unnecessary areas?
• Is the research issue narrow enough to provide a complete study within the essay's word limit?
• Does the research question allow me to compose an essay that meets the highest standards of the evaluation criteria?

Film Extended Essay Writing Help

A film Extended Essay project can be quite involving. Add to this the related assignments in the IB course and you’re more than likely to find the workload overwhelming.

Fortunately, you can get online help and have your film EE written and submitted on time.

Help for Assessment has the  best IB Extended Essay writing service   tailored to help you handle this type of assignment. Whether you need the first draft written or you have only two weeks to submit the final draft after your supervisor’s comments, you will find our writing service extremely helpful.

Our writing service is the most affordable solution online. More importantly, our writers and editors work together to ensure you get high quality papers if you place your order with us.

Also, we make sure we deliver your work on time, so you never run late with your film Extended Essay submission.

How to Treat Your Extended Essay Topic

There are rules you need to observe to write a more comprehensive extended essay on a film topic of your choice, and they’re as follows:

1. Start Early, Even Right Now

An extended essay in film is an assignment that requires more than attention to details.

It also requires time and dedication, which means you need to avoid last minute rush and avoid procrastination if you want to get the assignment right.

So start early.

It helps to create a timetable that can help you work flawlessly, even if unanticipated issues arise.

During the period that you’ll be working on your extended essay, you’ll attend a few reflection sessions with your supervisor to evaluate the quality of your film assignment.

Since the reflection session is part of the assessment, it’s necessary to attend all of them.

2. Cite Your Sources More Appropriately

You should cite film and/or television literature to support your ideas.

There must be comprehensive references to at least one film for primary sources, which may include the film(s), the script, the screenplay, the music, and personal contacts and communication with persons involved in the film's production.

For secondary sources, there must be close references to relevant sources that pertain to the title of the essay.

Examples of secondary sources may include journal and magazine articles, reviews, second unit material, promotional writings, and internet-based content.

3. Focus on Content Depth and Use Multiple Sources

Instead of summarizing the narrative or describing the characters, your film extended essay must focus on developing and defending your thesis.

The focus of the essay should be on evaluating the arguments in the sources, as opposed to merely restating what the sources state.

Your film extended essay should not rely excessively on a single secondary source or many works by the same author. It is necessary to investigate a vast array of ideas from many sources.

4. Use the Right Language

The use of precise vocabulary is a crucial necessity for a lengthy film essay. You must therefore pay particular attention to the proper and exact application of film terminologies.

Illustrations of the text, such as sketches, diagrams, storyboard frames, or camera layouts, are particularly appropriate in a film essay. All such references, along with all other source materials, must appear as citation in a properly formatted list of sources.

It is essential to highlight that the most effective essays are frequently those with a strong voice that conveys the students’ passion and research with clarity and conviction. The extended essay should demonstrate a logical and well-informed engagement with the topic you choose, while not deviating from the use of appropriate language.

Related Reading

• Visual Arts Extended Essay Guide
• The Complete Guide to History EE
• A Student’s Handbook for English Extended Essay

Film Extended Essay Assessment Criteria

The following is the assessment criteria used to evaluate film extended essay assignments:

Criterion A: Research Question

Your research question can be in the form of a question or in the form of a debatable statement or proposal.

For your research question to be viable for the film extended essay, it must be:

• Precise and narrowly focused
• Relevant to the specific area of cinema being examined
• Centered on film
• Explicitly expressed early in the essay

Criterion B: Introduction

The introduction should tie the research question to the existing body of knowledge on the topic.

Do not include your personal experience or viewpoint here, as it’s rarely helpful at this stage.

Criterion C: Investigation

Here, the examiner looks at whether you’ve utilized the films and/or television programs as primary sources, supplemented by secondary materials such as textbooks, reviews, websites, and DVD.

The appropriate structuring of the essay requires examining sources in light of the research topic so that the opinions of academics and theorists are utilized to support the student's own argument rather than as a replacement for it.

Criteria D: Knowledge and Comprehension of the Research Issue

You must demonstrate knowledge and comprehension of the selected films and/or television programs, as well as its historical, social, cultural, and academic settings.

You should base this information partially on original sources, if feasible.

Criterion E: Argument

You should be aware of the necessity to provide a developing argument in the body of your film extended essay.

In order to persuade the reader of the correctness of your opinions, you must do the very best you can to back your claims with logical arguments.

Descriptive or narrative reports that lack analysis typically do not contribute to an argument, and you must therefore avoid them when writing your film extended essay.

Criterion F: Use of Subject-Appropriate Analytic and Evaluative Skills

You must exhibit a correct and consistent use of relevant textual analysis to illuminate the aspects of the selected films.

By using the right analytical and evaluative skills, it becomes easier to demonstrate a clear grasp of the subject and a convincing personal interpretation.

The central idea of extended essay is to examine how moving-image texts in cinema and/or television establish or construct meaning and to assess how others have interpreted these meanings.

This criterion also requires that you use internet-based sources with caution and a keen knowledge of their possible unreliability.

Criteria G: Use of Subject-Appropriate Language 

Where applicable, you must employ film-specific language as you write the extended essay on a topic of your choice.

Criterion H: Conclusion

The important term here is "consistent".

In other words, the conclusion should flow from the argument and not add new or irrelevant material.

Also, the conclusion should not duplicate the information presented in the introduction, but rather give a new synthesis in light of the conversation.

Criterion I: Formal Presentation

This criterion addresses the extent to which the essay complies with academic norms about the format of research papers.

• Note that it’s inappropriate to offer an essay without a bibliography or citations.
• Essays that remove one of the needed parts — title page, table of contents, or page numbers — are rated no higher than good (maximum level 2)
• Extended essays that that omit two of the parts of the acceptable structure of the assignment get a subpar rating.
• You should provide filmographies where applicable.
• Images, including thumbnail screen captures, and tables and charts should appear as near as feasible to their initial mention in the body of the essay.

Criteria J: Then Abstract

As you already know, it’s no longer a requirement to include an abstract in an extended essay .

However, if you do include one, this criterion will assess it based on the clarity with which it provides a summary of the study and not on the quality of the research question, argument, or conclusions.

Criteria K: A General Perspective

In accordance with this criterion, you will get a reward for the following:

• Intellectual initiative demonstrated in essays by the selection of a topic and research question.
• The use of a broad variety of materials, including some that may have been used infrequently or were created specifically for the study, and the utilization of a vast array of sources (for instance, transcripts of oral interviews)
• Insight and depth of comprehension are most likely to be displayed because of extensive study, comprehensive and well-informed thought, and well-reasoned argument that consistently and successfully answers the research topic.
• Creativity: In cinema studies, this may involve the comparison of filmic characteristics, imaginative techniques to textual analysis, and novel approaches to popular issues.

Final Thoughts

We hope this guide helps you to write your film extended essay in a topic of your choice.

Also, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our writing team if you need help with writing. 

About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

IB Film Extended Essay Ideas

As a seasoned IB writer with years of experience, I’ve seen how difficult it can be to choose topics for Extended Essays, especially in the IB Film course. In my opinion, this paper is a perfect opportunity to engage deeply with your passion for film concepts and broaden your knowledge. Today, I’m excited to provide some thoughts and ideas to help you choose the best options from different IB Film Extended Essay topics.

What Is the IB Film Course?

The IB DP Film course is a dynamic, inspiring program that encourages students aged 16-19 to engage with and create film as a powerful form of artistic expression and communication. From my experience, this course focuses on the practical and theoretical aspects of film-making, understanding film as an art form, and analyzing various films from different cultures and eras. Moreover, this subject emphasizes three core areas:

• Film Making (Production Skills) . Students learn the technical skills to produce films, including directing, editing, sound, and cinematography. They are encouraged to develop their creative vision by creating film projects, allowing them to apply theoretical knowledge practically.
• Film Theory and History . This component introduces students to film history and various critical approaches to film studies. It covers multiple film traditions and genres from different cultures, aiming to build a deep understanding of how film reflects and influences society and culture.
• Textual Analysis . Students analyze films critically, focusing on narrative, theme, technique, and genre. The objective is to develop students’ ability to interpret films and understand the intent behind various cinematic choices.

Assessment in the IB Film course is both internal and external. Internally, students are assessed through their practical work, including film projects they have conceived and realized themselves. Externally, assessments may include written examinations that test students’ understanding of film theory, history, and analysis skills.

In my years guiding students, I’ve observed that the Extended Essay in the IB Film course is a unique beast. It’s your chance to demonstrate critical thinking, analytical skills, and an understanding of cinematic elements. Therefore, choosing the right topic is crucial. From my experience, the key is to find a balance between your interests and the feasibility of conducting thorough research.

Film Extended Essay Topics and Research Questions

According to general IB criteria, a perfect Extended Essay topic should be specific, manageable, and significantly interesting to you. Moreover, it should allow for critical analysis and interpretation rather than mere description. Here are some Film Extended Essay ideas you can consider for research:

• The Evolution of Visual Effects in Science Fiction Films . How have visual effects in science fiction films evolved from the 1980s to the present, and what has this had on audience engagement and perception?
• Representation of Women in Action Cinema . How has the representation of women in action cinema changed since the turn of the millennium, and what cultural shifts does this reflect?
• The Influence of Film Noir on Modern Cinema . In what ways has film noir influenced the thematic and aesthetic elements of contemporary films?
• The Role of Music in Establishing Film Genres . How does the use of music contribute to the establishment of film genres, with specific examples from horror and romance cinema?
• The Impact of Independent Films on Mainstream Cinema . What impact have independent films had on the narratives and styles of mainstream cinema in the past two decades?
• The Cultural Significance of Bollywood Films in the Global Cinema Landscape . How do Bollywood films reflect and influence global cultural perceptions and practices?
• The Psychological Effect of Horror Films on Teenagers . What psychological effects do horror films have on teenagers, and how do these effects manifest in different cultural contexts?
• The Depiction of Artificial Intelligence in Film . How has the depiction of artificial intelligence in film evolved over the last 50 years, and what does this say about societal attitudes toward technology?
• The Renaissance of Animated Films . What factors have contributed to the renaissance of animated films in the 21st century, and how have these films influenced the perceptions of animation among adult audiences?
• The Portrayal of Historical Events in Cinema . How accurately do films portray historical events, and how does this accuracy impact public understanding of history?
• The Influence of French New Wave on American Independent Filmmaking . In what ways did the French New Wave influence American independent filmmaking, particularly in narrative and visual style?
• The Role of Cinematography in World Building in Fantasy Films . How does cinematography contribute to world-building in fantasy films, and what techniques are used to immerse audiences in these fantastical worlds?
• The Social Impact of Documentary Films . What role do documentary films play in shaping public opinion on social issues, and can they be considered a form of activism?
• The Portrayal of Mental Health in Modern Cinema . How has the portrayal of mental health issues in modern cinema changed in the past two decades, and what impact does this have on societal stigma?
• The Influence of Neo-Noir Cinema on Contemporary Filmmaking . How has neo-noir cinema influenced contemporary filmmaking practices, particularly narrative complexity and visual style?
• The Evolution of LGBTQ+ Representation in Cinema . How has the representation of LGBTQ+ characters and themes in cinema evolved from the 1990s to the present?
• The Global Influence of Korean Cinema . What factors have contributed to the global rise of Korean cinema, and how has it influenced filmmaking and audience perceptions worldwide?
• The Environmental Message in Animated Films . How do animated films for children convey environmental messages, and what impact do these messages have on young audiences?
• The Role of Propaganda Films in Shaping National Identity . How have propaganda films historically been used to shape national identity, and what are their long-term impacts on societal beliefs?
• The Effect of Streaming Services on Film Production . How have streaming services changed the film production and distribution landscape, particularly regarding creative freedom and audience reach?
• The Portrayal of Teenagers in Coming-of-Age Films . How accurately do coming-of-age films portray the challenges and realities of teenage life?
• The Influence of Italian Neorealism on Contemporary Social Realist Films . In what ways has Italian Neorealism influenced contemporary social realist films in terms of thematic focus and cinematic techniques?
• The Role of Film in Preserving Endangered Languages . How do films play a role in preserving and revitalizing endangered languages and cultures?
• The Impact of Color Theory on Film Aesthetics . How does color theory influence the aesthetics and emotional impact of films?
• The Depiction of Space Research in Science Fiction Films . How do science fiction films depict space research, and how does this influence public perceptions of space travel?
• The Portrayal of Artificial Environments in Dystopian Cinema . How are artificial environments portrayed in dystopian cinema, and what do they signify about societal fears and aspirations?
• The Influence of Film Festivals on Independent Cinema . What role do film festivals play in promoting independent cinema, and how do they affect the success and distribution of indie films?
• The Representation of Disability in Films . How do films represent disability, and how does this representation affect societal attitudes towards disabled individuals?
• The Use of Silence in Film Narratives . How is silence used as a narrative tool in films, and how does it affect storytelling and audience engagement?
• The Evolution of the Superhero Genre in Cinema . How has the superhero genre evolved in cinema over the past two decades, and what cultural shifts does this evolution reflect?
• The Portrayal of Urban Versus Rural Life in Cinema . How do films contrast urban and rural life, and what does this contrast reveal about societal values and tensions?
• The Role of Interactivity in Film Through Emerging Technologies . How are emerging technologies like VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) transforming the film experience into an interactive medium, and what implications does this have for the future of storytelling?
• The Depiction of Time Travel in Films . How do films depict time travel, and what narrative techniques address the paradoxes and ethical dilemmas associated with it?
• The Influence of Classical Literature on Modern Cinema . How has classical literature been adapted and reimagined in modern cinema, and what does this say about the universal themes that resonate across time?
• The Ethical Implications of Documentary Filmmaking . What ethical considerations arise in documentary filmmaking, especially when dealing with sensitive subjects or vulnerable populations?
• The Influence of Social Media on Modern Filmmaking . How has social media influenced the production and marketing strategies of modern films?
• Evolution of Female Directors in Hollywood . How have female directors influenced Hollywood over the past two decades, and what changes have they brought about in storytelling and representation?
• The Role of Color in Wes Anderson’s Films . How does Wes Anderson use color to create a unique aesthetic and emotional tone in his films?
• The Representation of Religion in Contemporary Cinema . How is religion portrayed in contemporary films, and what does this portrayal say about modern societal attitudes toward religion?
• The Impact of the French New Wave on Modern Film Editing Techniques . What editing techniques introduced during the French New Wave have had a lasting impact on modern cinema?
• The Rise of Non-Traditional Superheroes in Cinema . What has led to the rise of non-traditional superheroes in film, and how do these characters challenge conventional superhero archetypes?
• The Use of Silence in Suspense Films . How is silence used to build suspense and tension in thriller and suspense films?
• The Economic Impact of Film Festivals . What economic impact do film festivals have on their host cities, particularly for local filmmaking industries?
• The Depiction of Virtual Reality in Films . How do films depict virtual reality, andhow does this portrayal affectr public understanding of VR technology?
• Archetypes and Stereotypes in Teen Movies . What are teen movies’ most common archetypes and stereotypes, and how have they evolved?
• The Influence of Cinema on Fashion Trends . How has cinema influenced fashion trends over the past century?
• The Portrayal of Climate Change in Documentary Films . How do documentary films portray the issue of climate change, and what influence do these portrayals have on public perception and action?
• The Evolution of Animated Heroines . How have animated heroines evolved in character depth and complexity since the 1990s?
• Cross-Cultural Influences in Cinema . How do films from different cultures influence each other in terms of storytelling, style, and thematic elements?
• The Role of Drones in Modern Cinematography . How have drones changed the landscape of cinematography in film production?
• The Impact of Political Events on Filmmaking . How do significant political events influence filmmaking regarding themes, funding, and audience reception?
• The Representation of Indigenous Cultures in Film . How are indigenous cultures represented in contemporary cinema, and what are the effects of these portrayals?
• The Ethics of Biopics . What ethical considerations arise increatingf biopics, particularly when dealing with the portrayal of the subject’s personal life?
• The Influence of Film Schools on Modern Cinema . What role do film schools play in shaping the careers of filmmakers and the overall industry?
• The Depiction of Artificial Intelligence as Antagonists in Films . How is artificial intelligence portrayed as an antagonist in films, and what does this reflect about societal fears?

As you begin your research, I advise prioritizing primary sources and reputable academic journals. It will ensure the credibility of your essay. In addition, don’t hesitate to contact experts or use university libraries to deepen your investigation.

Don’t let the stress of the IB curriculum hold you back.

Are you struggling to come up with topic suggestions for your IB Extended Essay? Or do you need help with Internal Assessment?

Our experienced writers can help you choose the perfect topic and assist you with any assignment.

You can order an Extended Essay tailored to your specific subject and requirements.

Our experienced IB writers are always ready to help.

Simply click:

More Topics to Read:

• How To Set Goals For Success In The IB DP?
• Does IB Prepare You for College?
• What Is IB Music MLI? Guide for IB Students
• How Many Points Do You Need for the IB Diploma?
• Do Mock Exams Matter in IB?
• IB English Language and Literature. Guide for IB Students
• What Level of Math to Choose in IBDP?
• Transitioning from MYP to DP: What to Expect
• The Evolution of the IB Programme: A Look into Its History
• Interdisciplinary Nature of the IB. A Closer Look at Transdisciplinary Skills
• How to Engage in Constructive Feedback in the IB?

So, choosing IB Film Extended Essay topics takes enthusiasm, creativity, and critical thinking. As you begin to work on your paper, remember that it is an opportunity to expand your knowledge of cinema and its many facets. My final advice is to find a topic that truly excites you. This excitement will be your best partner throughout the writing process. In addition, you can always order custom-written Extended Essays from our IB experts.

Get hot offers and discounts for your IB Assignments

Our writing solutions cater to all disciplines within the IB program, and we specialize in crafting academic papers for students of all levels. We follow the IB criteria.

Adhering strictly to the rigorous standards set by the IB, we deploy a methodical approach to our writing process. This ensures that every piece of content we generate not only meets but exceeds the expectations set within the program.

Contact us:

[email protected]

[email protected]

Latest Articles:

Interdisciplinary Topics in Extended Essays. Ideas for IB Students

How to Write a Conclusion for Your IB Extended Essay? Tips and Tricks

How to Write a Body Section for Your IB Extended Essay?

Our services:.

• Buy Internal Assessment
• Buy Math IA
• Buy Extended Essay
• Buy TOK Essay
• Buy TOK Exhibition

IBWritingService.com is an independent academic writing aid with no official ties to the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO). Our use of “IB” in the domain and title is purely for identification, and we neither claim nor imply any endorsement or partnership with the IBO. Our services aim to support students’ educational needs without violating IBO policies. Trademarks mentioned are property of their owners and do not suggest affiliations. By using our services, you acknowledge our non-affiliation with the IBO and that we’re not a substitute for IBO requirements. We deny any liability for use of our services in relation to the IBO.

ALL PAPERS WRITTEN BY OUR EXPERTS AS PART OF THIS WRITING SERVICE ARE FOR REFERENCE PURPOSES ONLY. WHEN USING CONTENT PURCHASED FROM THIS WEBSITE, IT MUST BE PROPERLY REFERENCED.

• Terms & Conditions
• Revision Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Refund Policy
• Cookie Policy

© 2024. All Rights Reserved.

• Resource Library
• Events and Webinars

Extended Essays in Film

I need to be crystal clear here, The following reflects my personal opinion, and my remarks in no way reflect IB thinking or policy.

However many examiners of the Extended Essay are also teachers of Film, and their students do benefit from the insights they provide into the processes of assessment, so why shouldn’t anyone else?

The point of this post is mostly as a warning to grade eleven students in the IB.

If you’re considering making film studies the academic area for your extended essay and aren’t in an IB fim studies course, DON’T .

You may love films, but the IB and the Extended essay is about much more than your passions, it is a serious research paper, an opportunity for you to demonstrate an ability to research a topic to a reasonably high level within an academic context. Candidates who select film studies for their Extended essay are required to select a topic which allows them to demonstrate a good working knowledge of academic frameworks and critical approaches in Film studies, as well as skills in textual analysis.

Your love of film alone is unlikely to equip you suffuciently to demonstrate these in any measure enough to ensure success in the Extended essay.

It would be like someone not studying Geography writing an EE on the Geology of the Western Sahara, you just have to know the basic lingua franca of the academic area of study.

The truth is that the IB is tough enough without unnecessarily loading extra learning on to yourself, however much you may love film.

Choose wisely

Recent Posts

5 Activities to Get Your DP Students Exam-Ready

OSC Study for Schools: Now with IB Exams!

5 Hot Tips for the Maths Exams. With OSC Study and OSC Exams

Extended Essay Exemplars

Below are Extended Essay Exemplars in some of the most common subjects submitted to IB offered at MHS. They include the IB examiner's comments on each part of the rubric and a sample RPPF. When writing your paper, pay special attention to how these papers are constructed and use them as models when you construct your own essay. Pay attention to the examiner's comments as they will provide insight as to how to write a good Extended Essay. Finally, at the bottom is a blank RPPF that you will need when you submit your final EE to IB.

Exemplar English Language & Literature Essays

Exemplar History Extended Essays

Exemplar psychology extended essays, exemplar business management extended essays, exemplar biology extended essays, exemplar chemistry extended essays, exemplar physics extended essays, exemplar sports, exercise, and health science extended essays, exemplar math extended essays, exemplar film extended essays, exemplar visual arts extended essays, below is a blank copy of the rppf that you must submit with your extended essay. note that you must use adobe to complete the form; google chrome will not work.

US - Extended Essay Guide: Film

• 2025 EE Deadline Calendar
• Examples of Extended Essays
• Computer Science
• Design Technology
• Global Politics
• Studies in Lang. and Lit. (Group 1)
• Studies in Lang. and Lit. (Group 2)
• Mathematics
• Sports, Exercise, and Health Science
• World Studies
• EE Subject Reports
• Print and eBooks
• Web Resources
• Searching Tips
• Referencing and citing
• Notetaking Advice
• Tools and Strategies to Narrow Your Topic
• Supervisor Support

Film Overview

• Film: Subject Specific Guidance An extended essay (EE) in film gives students an opportunity to undertake an in-depth investigation into a topic in film of particular interest to them. Students should undertake the study of at least two films in consideration of their chosen topic. Complex skills are involved in the interpretation of film. The EE requires students to develop and demonstrate a critical understanding of how and why film texts: tell stories create emotional responses give information. In the spirit of intercultural understanding, students are encouraged to explore film in an international context.
• Film: Subject Specific Guide
• << Previous: Economics
• Next: Geography >>
• Last Updated: Nov 5, 2024 1:21 PM
• URL: https://libguides.zis.ch/ee2025

Extended Essay (First Exams 2018): Examples of Extended Essays

• EE Intro to Inquiry
• Examples of Extended Essays
• Recommended Research Tools
• How-to: Research Help
• EE Module Videos

Samples from the IBO

The IBO publishes two volumes of  50 Excellent Extended Essays , covering all Diploma Programme groups -- and all scored a top A grade.

Click on the link below to access PDFs of the essays. 

50 Excellent Extended Essays

All 50 essays are also available in electronic form in the QD Library on the iPads.  Look for the display at the circulation desk. The essays are found in the iBooks app. The iPads are available for check out at the circulation for periods of 30 minutes at one time.

Recently, the IBO has produced another list of exemplars with marks. Click on the link below to access this:

• Assessed Student Work  
• << Previous: EE Intro to Inquiry
• Next: Recommended Research Tools >>
• Last Updated: Sep 13, 2024 12:48 PM
• URL: https://libguides.qibaodwight.org/ee

The essay film

Andrew Tracy explores the characteristics that have come to define this most elastic of forms, while eight more contributors highlight a dozen influential milestone essay films, from Jean Vigo to Chris Marker.

from our August 2013 issue

I recently had a heated argument with a cinephile filmmaking friend about Chris Marker’s Sans soleil (1983). Having recently completed her first feature, and with such matters on her mind, my friend contended that the film’s power lay in its combinations of image and sound, irrespective of Marker’s inimitable voiceover narration. “Do you think that people who can’t understand English or French will get nothing out of the film?” she said; to which I – hot under the collar – replied that they might very well get something, but that something would not be the complete work.

The Sight & Sound Deep Focus season Thought in Action: The Art of the Essay Film runs at BFI Southbank 1-28 August 2013, with a keynote lecture by Kodwo Eshun on 1 August, a talk by writer and academic Laura Rascaroli on 27 August and a closing panel debate on 28 August.

To take this film-lovers’ tiff to a more elevated plane, what it suggests is that the essentialist conception of cinema is still present in cinephilic and critical culture, as are the difficulties of containing within it works that disrupt its very fabric. Ever since Vachel Lindsay published The Art of the Moving Picture in 1915 the quest to secure the autonomy of film as both medium and art – that ever-elusive ‘pure cinema’ – has been a preoccupation of film scholars, critics, cinephiles and filmmakers alike. My friend’s implicit derogation of the irreducible literary element of Sans soleil and her neo- Godard ian invocation of ‘image and sound’ touch on that strain of this phenomenon which finds, in the technical-functional combination of those two elements, an alchemical, if not transubstantiational, result.

Mechanically created, cinema defies mechanism: it is poetic, transportive and, if not irrational, then a-rational. This mystically-minded view has a long and illustrious tradition in film history, stretching from the sense-deranging surrealists – who famously found accidental poetry in the juxtapositions created by randomly walking into and out of films; to the surrealist-influenced, scientifically trained and ontologically minded André Bazin , whose realist veneration of the long take centred on the very preternaturalness of nature as revealed by the unblinking gaze of the camera; to the trash-bin idolatry of the American underground, weaving new cinematic mythologies from Hollywood detritus; and to auteurism itself, which (in its more simplistic iterations) sees the essence of the filmmaker inscribed even upon the most compromised of works.

It isn’t going too far to claim that this tradition has constituted the foundation of cinephilic culture and helped to shape the cinematic canon itself. If Marker has now been welcomed into that canon and – thanks to the far greater availability of his work – into the mainstream of (primarily DVD -educated) cinephilia, it is rarely acknowledged how much of that work cheerfully undercuts many of the long-held assumptions and pieties upon which it is built.

In his review of Letter from Siberia (1957), Bazin placed Marker at right angles to cinema proper, describing the film’s “primary material” as intelligence – specifically a “verbal intelligence” – rather than image. He dubbed Marker’s method a “horizontal” montage, “as opposed to traditional montage that plays with the sense of duration through the relationship of shot to shot”.

Here, claimed Bazin, “a given image doesn’t refer to the one that preceded it or the one that will follow, but rather it refers laterally, in some way, to what is said.” Thus the very thing which makes Letter “extraordinary”, in Bazin’s estimation, is also what makes it not-cinema. Looking for a term to describe it, Bazin hit upon a prophetic turn of phrase, writing that Marker’s film is, “to borrow Jean Vigo’s formulation of À propos de Nice (‘a documentary point of view’), an essay documented by film. The important word is ‘essay’, understood in the same sense that it has in literature – an essay at once historical and political, written by a poet as well.”

Marker’s canonisation has proceeded apace with that of the form of which he has become the exemplar. Whether used as critical/curatorial shorthand in reviews and programme notes, employed as a model by filmmakers or examined in theoretical depth in major retrospectives (this summer’s BFI Southbank programme, for instance, follows upon Andréa Picard’s two-part series ‘The Way of the Termite’ at TIFF Cinémathèque in 2009-2010, which drew inspiration from Jean-Pierre Gorin ’s groundbreaking programme of the same title at Vienna Filmmuseum in 2007), the ‘essay film’ has attained in recent years widespread recognition as a particular, if perennially porous, mode of film practice. An appealingly simple formulation, the term has proved both taxonomically useful and remarkably elastic, allowing one to define a field of previously unassimilable objects while ranging far and wide throughout film history to claim other previously identified objects for this invented tradition.

It is crucial to note that the ‘essay film’ is not only a post-facto appellation for a kind of film practice that had not bothered to mark itself with a moniker, but also an invention and an intervention. While it has acquired its own set of canonical ‘texts’ that include the collected works of Marker, much of Godard – from the missive (the 52-minute Letter to Jane , 1972) to the massive ( Histoire(s) de cinéma , 1988-98) – Welles’s F for Fake (1973) and Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), it has also poached on the territory of other, ‘sovereign’ forms, expanding its purview in accordance with the whims of its missionaries.

From documentary especially, Vigo’s aforementioned À propos de Nice, Ivens’s Rain (1929), Buñuel’s sardonic Las Hurdes (1933), Resnais’s Night and Fog (1955), Rouch and Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (1961); from the avant garde, Akerman’s Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974), Straub/Huillet’s Trop tôt, trop tard (1982); from agitprop, Getino and Solanas’s The Hour of the Furnaces (1968), Portabella’s Informe general… (1976); and even from ‘pure’ fiction, for example Gorin’s provocative selection of Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909).

Just as within itself the essay film presents, in the words of Gorin, “the meandering of an intelligence that tries to multiply the entries and the exits into the material it has elected (or by which it has been elected),” so, without, its scope expands exponentially through the industrious activity of its adherents, blithely cutting across definitional borders and – as per the Manny Farber ian concept which gave Gorin’s ‘Termite’ series its name –  creating meaning precisely by eating away at its own boundaries. In the scope of its application and its association more with an (amorphous) sensibility as opposed to fixed rules, the essay film bears similarities to the most famous of all fabricated genres: film noir, which has been located both in its natural habitat of the crime thriller as well as in such disparate climates as melodramas, westerns and science fiction.

The essay film, however, has proved even more peripatetic: where noir was formulated from the films of a determinate historical period (no matter that the temporal goalposts are continually shifted), the essay film is resolutely unfixed in time; it has its choice of forebears. And while noir, despite its occasional shadings over into semi-documentary during the 1940s, remains bound to fictional narratives, the essay film moves blithely between the realms of fiction and non-fiction, complicating the terms of both.

“Here is a form that seems to accommodate the two sides of that divide at the same time, that can navigate from documentary to fiction and back, creating other polarities in the process between which it can operate,” writes Gorin. When Orson Welles , in the closing moments of his masterful meditation on authenticity and illusion F for Fake, chortles, “I did promise that for one hour, I’d tell you only the truth. For the past 17 minutes, I’ve been lying my head off,” he is expressing both the conjuror’s pleasure in a trick well played and the artist’s delight in a self-defined mode that is cheerfully impure in both form and, perhaps, intention.

Nevertheless, as the essay film merrily traipses through celluloid history it intersects with ‘pure cinema’ at many turns and its form as such owes much to one particularly prominent variety thereof.

The montage tradition

If the mystical strain described above represents the Dionysian side of pure cinema, Soviet montage was its Apollonian opposite: randomness, revelation and sensuous response countered by construction, forceful argumentation and didactic instruction.

No less than the mystics, however, the montagists were after essences. Eisenstein , Dziga Vertov and Pudovkin , along with their transnational associates and acolytes, sought to crystallise abstract concepts in the direct and purposeful juxtaposition of forceful, hard-edged images – the general made powerfully, viscerally immediate in the particular. Here, says Eisenstein, in the umbrella-wielding harpies who set upon the revolutionaries in October (1928), is bourgeois Reaction made manifest; here, in the serried ranks of soldiers proceeding as one down the Odessa Steps in Battleship Potemkin (1925), is Oppression undisguised; here, in the condemned Potemkin sailor who wins over his imminent executioners with a cry of “Brothers!” – a moment powerfully invoked by Marker at the beginning of his magnum opus A Grin Without a Cat (1977) – is Solidarity emergent and, from it, the seeds of Revolution.

The relentlessly unidirectional focus of classical Soviet montage puts it methodologically and temperamentally at odds with the ruminative, digressive and playful qualities we associate with the essay film. So, too, the former’s fierce ideological certainty and cadre spirit contrast with that free play of the mind, the Montaigne -inspired meanderings of individual intelligence, that so characterise our image of the latter.

Beyond Marker’s personal interest in and inheritance from the Soviet masters, classical montage laid the foundations of the essay film most pertinently in its foregrounding of the presence, within the fabric of the film, of a directing intelligence. Conducting their experiments in film not through ‘pure’ abstraction but through narrative, the montagists made manifest at least two operative levels within the film: the narrative itself and the arrangement of that narrative by which the deeper structures that move it are made legible. Against the seamless, immersive illusionism of commercial cinema, montage was a key for decrypting those social forces, both overt and hidden, that govern human society.

And as such it was method rather than material that was the pathway to truth. Fidelity to the authentic – whether the accurate representation of historical events or the documentary flavouring of Eisensteinian typage – was important only insomuch as it provided the filmmaker with another tool to reach a considerably higher plane of reality.

Midway on their Marxian mission to change the world rather than interpret it, the montagists actively made the world even as they revealed it. In doing so they powerfully expressed the dialectic between control and chaos that would come to be not only one of the chief motors of the essay film but the crux of modernity itself.

Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), now claimed as the most venerable and venerated ancestor of the essay film (and this despite its prototypically purist claim to realise a ‘universal’ cinematic language “based on its complete separation from the language of literature and the theatre”) is the archetypal model of this high-modernist agon. While it is the turning of the movie projector itself and the penetrating gaze of Vertov’s kino-eye that sets the whirling dynamo of the city into motion, the recorder creating that which it records, that motion is also outside its control.

At the dawn of the cinematic century, the American writer Henry Adams saw in the dynamo both the expression of human mastery over nature and a conduit to mysterious, elemental powers beyond our comprehension. So, too, the modernist ambition expressed in literature, painting, architecture and cinema to capture a subject from all angles – to exhaust its wealth of surfaces, meanings, implications, resonances – collides with awe (or fear) before a plenitude that can never be encompassed.

Remove the high-modernist sense of mission and we can see this same dynamic as animating the essay film – recall that last, parenthetical term in Gorin’s formulation of the essay film, “multiply[ing] the entries and the exits into the material it has elected (or by which it has been elected)”. The nimble movements and multi-angled perspectives of the essay film are founded on this negotiation between active choice and passive possession; on the recognition that even the keenest insight pales in the face of an ultimate unknowability.

The other key inheritance the essay film received from the classical montage tradition, perhaps inevitably, was a progressive spirit, however variously defined. While Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938) amply and chillingly demonstrated that montage, like any instrumental apparatus, has no inherent ideological nature, hers were more the exceptions that proved the rule. (Though why, apart from ideological repulsiveness, should Riefenstahl’s plentifully fabricated ‘documentaries’ not be considered as essay films in their own right?)

The overwhelming fact remains that the great majority of those who drew upon the Soviet montagists for explicitly ideological ends (as opposed to Hollywood’s opportunistic swipings) resided on the left of the spectrum – and, in the montagists’ most notable successor in the period immediately following, retained their alignment with and inextricability from the state.

Progressive vs radical

The Grierson ian documentary movement in Britain neutered the political and aesthetic radicalism of its more dynamic model in favour of paternalistic progressivism founded on conformity, class complacency and snobbery towards its own medium. But if it offered a far paler antecedent to the essay film than the Soviet montage tradition, it nevertheless represents an important stage in the evolution of the essay-film form, for reasons not unrelated to some of those rather staid qualities.

The Soviet montagists had created a vision of modernity racing into the future at pace with the social and spiritual liberation of its proletarian pilot-passenger, an aggressively public ideology of group solidarity. The Grierson school, by contrast, offered a domesticated image of an efficient, rational and productive modern industrial society based on interconnected but separate public and private spheres, as per the ideological values of middle-class liberal individualism.

The Soviet montagists had looked to forge a universal, ‘pure’ cinematic language, at least before the oppressive dictates of Stalinist socialist realism shackled them. The Grierson school, evincing a middle-class disdain for the popular and ‘low’ arts, sought instead to purify the sullied medium of cinema by importing extra-cinematic prestige: most notably Night Mail (1936), with its Auden -penned, Britten -scored ode to the magic of the mail, or Humphrey Jennings’s salute to wartime solidarity A Diary for Timothy (1945), with its mildly sententious E.M. Forster narration.

What this domesticated dynamism and retrograde pursuit of high-cultural bona fides achieved, however, was to mingle a newfound cinematic language (montage) with a traditionally literary one (narration); and, despite the salutes to state-oriented communality, to re-introduce the individual, idiosyncratic voice as the vehicle of meaning – as the mediating intelligence that connects the viewer to the images viewed.

In Night Mail especially there is, in the whimsy of the Auden text and the film’s synchronisation of private time and public history, an intimation of the essay film’s musing, reflective voice as the chugging rhythm of the narration timed to the speeding wheels of the train gives way to a nocturnal vision of solitary dreamers bedevilled by spectral monsters, awakening in expectation of the postman’s knock with a “quickening of the heart/for who can bear to be forgot?”

It’s a curiously disquieting conclusion: this unsettling, anxious vision of disappearance that takes on an even darker shade with the looming spectre of war – one that rhymes, five decades on, with the wistful search of Marker’s narrator in Sans soleil, seeking those fleeting images which “quicken the heart” in a world where wars both past and present have been forgotten, subsumed in a modern society built upon the systematic banishment of memory.

It is, of course, with the seminal post-war collaborations between Marker and Alain Resnais that the essay film proper emerges. In contrast to the striving culture-snobbery of the Griersonian documentary, the Resnais-Marker collaborations (and the Resnais solo documentary shorts that preceded them) inaugurate a blithe, seemingly effortless dialogue between cinema and the other arts in both their subjects (painting, sculpture) and their assorted creative personnel (writers Paul Éluard , Jean Cayrol , Raymond Queneau , composers Darius Milhaud and Hanns Eisler ). This also marks the point where the revolutionary line of the Soviets and the soft, statist liberalism of the British documentarians give way to a more free-floating but staunchly oppositional leftism, one derived as much from a spirit of humanistic inquiry as from ideological affiliation.

Related to this was the form’s problems with official patronage. Originally conceived as commissions by various French government or government-affiliated bodies, the Resnais-Marker films famously ran into trouble from French censors: Les statues meurent aussi (1953) for its condemnation of French colonialism, Night and Fog for its shots of Vichy policemen guarding deportation camps; the former film would have its second half lopped off before being cleared for screening, the latter its offending shots removed.

Appropriately, it is at this moment that the emphasis of the essay film begins to shift away from tactile presence – the whirl of the city, the rhythm of the rain, the workings of industry – to felt absence. The montagists had marvelled at the workings of human creations which raced ahead irrespective of human efforts; here, the systems created by humanity to master the world write, in their very functioning, an epitaph for those things extinguished in the act of mastering them. The African masks preserved in the Musée de l’Homme in Les statues meurent aussi speak of a bloody legacy of vanquished and conquered civilisations; the labyrinthine archival complex of the Bibliothèque Nationale in the sardonically titled Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) sparks a disquisition on all that is forgotten in the act of cataloguing knowledge; the miracle of modern plastics saluted in the witty, industrially commissioned Le Chant du styrène (1958) regresses backwards to its homely beginnings; in Night and Fog an unprecedentedly enormous effort of human organisation marshals itself to actively produce a dreadful, previously unimaginable nullity.

To overstate the case, loss is the primary motor of the modern essay film: loss of belief in the image’s ability to faithfully reflect reality; loss of faith in the cinema’s ability to capture life as it is lived; loss of illusions about cinema’s ‘purity’, its autonomy from the other arts or, for that matter, the world.

“You never know what you may be filming,” notes one of Marker’s narrating surrogates in A Grin Without a Cat, as footage of the Chilean equestrian team at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics offers a glimpse of a future member of the Pinochet junta. The image and sound captured at the time of filming offer one facet of reality; it is only with this lateral move outside that reality that the future reality it conceals can speak.

What will distinguish the essay film, as Bazin noted, is not only its ability to make the image but also its ability to interrogate it, to dispel the illusion of its sovereignty and see it as part of a matrix of meaning that extends beyond the screen. No less than were the montagists, the film-essayists seek the motive forces of modern society not by crystallising eternal verities in powerful images but by investigating that ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic relationship between our regime of images and the realities it both reveals and occludes.

— Andrew Tracy

1.  À propos de Nice

Jean Vigo, 1930

Few documentaries have achieved the cult status of the 22-minute A propos de Nice, co-directed by Jean Vigo and cameraman Boris Kaufman at the beginning of their careers. The film retains a spontaneous, apparently haphazard, quality yet its careful montage combines a strong realist drive, lyrical dashes – helped by Marc Perrone’s accordion music – and a clear political agenda.

In today’s era, in which the Côte d’Azur has become a byword for hedonistic consumption, it’s refreshing to see a film that systematically undermines its glossy surface. Using images sometimes ‘stolen’ with hidden cameras, A propos de Nice moves between the city’s main sites of pleasure: the Casino, the Promenade des Anglais, the Hotel Negresco and the carnival. Occasionally the filmmakers remind us of the sea, the birds, the wind in the trees but mostly they contrast people: the rich play tennis, the poor boules; the rich have tea, the poor gamble in the (then) squalid streets of the Old Town.

As often, women bear the brunt of any critique of bourgeois consumption: a rich old woman’s head is compared to an ostrich, others grin as they gaze up at phallic factory chimneys; young women dance frenetically, their crotch to the camera. In the film’s most famous image, an elegant woman is ‘stripped’ by the camera to reveal her naked body – not quite matched by a man’s shoes vanishing to display his naked feet to the shoe-shine.

An essay film avant la lettre , A propos de Nice ends on Soviet-style workers’ faces and burning furnaces. The message is clear, even if it has not been heeded by history.

— Ginette Vincendeau

2. A Diary for Timothy

Humphrey Jennings, 1945

A Diary for Timothy takes the form of a journal addressed to the eponymous Timothy James Jenkins, born on 3 September 1944, exactly five years after Britain’s entry into World War II . The narrator, Michael Redgrave , a benevolent offscreen presence, informs young Timothy about the momentous events since his birth and later advises that, even when the war is over, there will be “everyday danger”.

The subjectivity and speculative approach maintained throughout are more akin to the essay tradition than traditional propaganda in their rejection of mere glib conveyance of information or thunderous hectoring. Instead Jennings invites us quietly to observe the nuances of everyday life as Britain enters the final chapter of the war. Against the momentous political backdrop, otherwise routine, everyday activities are ascribed new profundity as the Welsh miner Geronwy, Alan the farmer, Bill the railway engineer and Peter the convalescent fighter pilot go about their daily business.

Within the confines of the Ministry of Information’s remit – to lift the spirits of a battle-weary nation – and the loose narrative framework of Timothy’s first six months, Jennings finds ample expression for the kind of formal experiment that sets his work apart from that of other contemporary documentarians. He worked across film, painting, photography, theatrical design, journalism and poetry; in Diary his protean spirit finds expression in a manner that transgresses the conventional parameters of wartime propaganda, stretching into film poem, philosophical reflection, social document, surrealistic ethnographic observation and impressionistic symphony. Managing to keep to the right side of sentimentality, it still makes for potent viewing.

— Catherine McGahan

3. Toute la mémoire du monde

Alain Resnais, 1956

In the opening credits of Toute la mémoire du monde, alongside the director’s name and that of producer Pierre Braunberger , one reads the mysterious designation “Groupe des XXX ”. This Group of Thirty was an assembly of filmmakers who mobilised in the early 1950s to defend the “style, quality and ambitious subject matter” of short films in post-war France; the signatories of its 1953 ‘Declaration’ included Resnais , Chris Marker and Agnès Varda. The success of the campaign contributed to a golden age of short filmmaking that would last a decade and form the crucible of the French essay film.

A 22-minute poetic documentary about the old French Bibliothèque Nationale, Toute la mémoire du monde is a key work in this strand of filmmaking and one which can also be seen as part of a loose ‘trilogy of memory’ in Resnais’s early documentaries. Les statues meurent aussi (co-directed with Chris Marker) explored cultural memory as embodied in African art and the depredations of colonialism; Night and Fog was a seminal reckoning with the historical memory of the Nazi death camps. While less politically controversial than these earlier works, Toute la mémoire du monde’s depiction of the Bibliothèque Nationale is still oddly suggestive of a prison, with its uniformed guards and endless corridors. In W.G. Sebald ’s 2001 novel Austerlitz, directly after a passage dedicated to Resnais’s film, the protagonist describes his uncertainty over whether, when using the library, he “was on the Islands of the Blest, or, on the contrary, in a penal colony”.

Resnais explores the workings of the library through the effective device of following a book from arrival and cataloguing to its delivery to a reader (the book itself being something of an in-joke: a mocked-up travel guide to Mars in the Petite Planète series Marker was then editing for Editions du Seuil). With Resnais’s probing, mobile camerawork and a commentary by French writer Remo Forlani, Toute la mémoire du monde transforms the library into a mysterious labyrinth, something between an edifice and an organism: part brain and part tomb.

— Chris Darke

4. The House is Black

(Khaneh siah ast) Forough Farrokhzad, 1963

Before the House of Makhmalbaf there was The House is Black. Called “the greatest of all Iranian films” by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who helped translate the subtitles from Farsi into English, this 20-minute black-and-white essay film by feminist poet Farrokhzad was shot in a leper colony near Tabriz in northern Iran and has been heralded as the touchstone of the Iranian New Wave.

The buildings of the Baba Baghi colony are brick and peeling whitewash but a student asked to write a sentence using the word ‘house’ offers Khaneh siah ast : the house is black. His hand, seen in close-up, is one of many in the film; rather than objects of medical curiosity, these hands – some fingerless, many distorted by the disease – are agents, always in movement, doing, making, exercising, praying. In putting white words on the blackboard, the student makes part of the film; in the next shots, the film’s credits appear, similarly handwritten on the same blackboard.

As they negotiate the camera’s gaze and provide the soundtrack by singing, stamping and wheeling a barrow, the lepers are co-authors of the film. Farrokhzad echoes their prayers, heard and seen on screen, with her voiceover, which collages religious texts, beginning with the passage from Psalm 55 famously set to music by Mendelssohn (“O for the wings of a dove”).

In the conjunctions between Farrokhzad’s poetic narration and diegetic sound, including tanbur-playing, an intense assonance arises. Its beat is provided by uniquely lyrical associative editing that would influence Abbas Kiarostami , who quotes Farrokhzad’s poem ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ in his eponymous film . Repeated shots of familiar bodily movement, made musical, move the film insistently into the viewer’s body: it is infectious. Posing a question of aesthetics, The House Is Black uses the contagious gaze of cinema to dissolve the screen between Us and Them.

— Sophie Mayer

5. Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still

Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972

With its invocation of Brecht (“Uncle Bertolt”), rejection of visual pleasure (for 52 minutes we’re mostly looking at a single black-and-white still) and discussion of the role of intellectuals in “the revolution”, Letter to Jane is so much of its time as to appear untranslatable to the present except as a curio from a distant era of radical cinema. Between 1969 and 1971, Godard and Gorin made films collectively as part of the Dziga Vertov Group before they returned, in 1972, to the mainstream with Tout va bien , a big-budget film about the aftermath of May 1968 featuring leftist stars Yves Montand and  Jane Fonda . It was to the latter that Godard and Gorin directed their Letter after seeing a news photograph of her on a solidarity visit to North Vietnam in August 1972.

Intended to accompany the US release of Tout va bien, Letter to Jane is ‘a letter’ only in as much as it is fairly conversational in tone, with Godard and Gorin delivering their voiceovers in English. It’s stylistically more akin to the ‘blackboard films’ of the time, with their combination of pedagogical instruction and stern auto-critique.

It’s also an inspired semiological reading of a media image and a reckoning with the contradictions of celebrity activism. Godard and Gorin examine the image’s framing and camera angle and ask why Fonda is the ‘star’ of the photograph while the Vietnamese themselves remain faceless or out of focus? And what of her expression of compassionate concern? This “expression of an expression” they trace back, via an elaboration of the Kuleshov effect , through other famous faces – Henry Fonda , John Wayne , Lillian Gish and Falconetti – concluding that it allows for “no reverse shot” and serves only to bolster Western “good conscience”.

Letter to Jane is ultimately concerned with the same question that troubled philosophers such as Levinas and Derrida : what’s at stake ethically when one claims to speak “in place of the other”? Any contemporary critique of celebrity activism – from Bono and Geldof to Angelina Jolie – should start here, with a pair of gauchiste trolls muttering darkly beneath a press shot of ‘Hanoi Jane’.

6. F for Fake

Orson Welles, 1973

Those who insist it was all downhill for Orson Welles after Citizen Kane would do well to take a close look at this film made more than three decades later, in its own idiosyncratic way a masterpiece just as innovative as his better-known feature debut.

Perhaps the film’s comparative and undeserved critical neglect is due to its predominantly playful tone, or perhaps it’s because it is a low-budget, hard-to-categorise, deeply personal work that mixes original material with plenty of footage filmed by others – most extensively taken from a documentary by François Reichenbach about Clifford Irving and his bogus biography of his friend Elmyr de Hory , an art forger who claimed to have painted pictures attributed to famous names and hung in the world’s most prestigious galleries.

If the film had simply offered an account of the hoaxes perpetrated by that disreputable duo, it would have been entertaining enough but, by means of some extremely inventive, innovative and inspired editing, Welles broadens his study of fakery to take in his own history as a ‘charlatan’ – not merely his lifelong penchant for magician’s tricks but also the 1938 radio broadcast of his news-report adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds – as well as observations on Howard Hughes , Pablo Picasso and the anonymous builders of Chartres cathedral. So it is that Welles contrives to conjure up, behind a colourful cloak of consistently entertaining mischief, a rueful meditation on truth and falsehood, art and authorship – a subject presumably dear to his heart following Pauline Kael ’s then recent attempts to persuade the world that Herman J. Mankiewicz had been the real creative force behind Kane.

As a riposte to that thesis (albeit never framed as such), F for Fake is subtle, robust, supremely erudite and never once bitter; the darkest moment – as Welles contemplates the serene magnificence of Chartres – is at once an uncharacteristic but touchingly heartfelt display of humility and a poignant memento mori. And it is in this delicate balancing of the autobiographical with the universal, as well as in the dazzling deployment of cinematic form to illustrate and mirror content, that the film works its once unique, now highly influential magic.

— Geoff Andrew

7. How to Live in the German Federal Republic

(Leben – BRD ) Harun Farocki, 1990

Harun Farocki ’s portrait of West Germany in 32 simulations from training sessions has no commentary, just the actions themselves in all their surreal beauty, one after the other. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland is shown as a nation of people who can deal with everything because they have been prepared – taught how to react properly in every possible situation.

We know how birth works; how to behave in kindergarten; how to chat up girls, boys or whatever we fancy (for we’re liberal-minded, if only in principle); how to look for a job and maybe live without finding one; how to wiggle our arses in the hottest way possible when we pole-dance, or manage a hostage crisis without things getting (too) bloody. Whatever job we do, we know it by heart; we also know how to manage whatever kind of psychological breakdown we experience; and we are also prepared for the end, and even have an idea about how our burial will go. This is the nation: one of fearful people in dire need of control over their one chance of getting it right.

Viewed from the present, How to Live in the German Federal Republic is revealed as the archetype of many a Farocki film in the decades to follow, for example Die Umschulung (1994), Der Auftritt (1996) or Nicht ohne Risiko (2004), all of which document as dispassionately as possible different – not necessarily simulated – scenarios of social interactions related to labour and capital. For all their enlightening beauty, none of these ever came close to How to Live in the German Federal Republic which, depending on one’s mood, can play like an absurd comedy or the most gut-wrenching drama. Yet one disquieting thing is certain: How to Live in the German Federal Republic didn’t age – our lives still look the same.

— Olaf Möller

8. One Man’s War

(La Guerre d’un seul homme) Edgardo Cozarinsky , 1982

One Man’s War proves that an auteur film can be made without writing a line, recording a sound or shooting a single frame. It’s easy to point to the ‘extraordinary’ character of the film, given its combination of materials that were not made to cohabit; there couldn’t be a less plausible dialogue than the one Cozarinsky establishes between the newsreels shot during the Nazi occupation of Paris and the Parisian diaries of novelist and Nazi officer Ernst Jünger . There’s some truth to Pascal Bonitzer’s assertion in Cahiers du cinéma in 1982 that the principle of the documentary was inverted here, since it is the images that provide a commentary for the voice.

But that observation still doesn’t pin down the uniqueness of a work that forces history through a series of registers, styles and dimensions, wiping out the distance between reality and subjectivity, propaganda and literature, cinema and journalism, daily life and dream, and establishing the idea not so much of communicating vessels as of contaminating vessels.

To enquire about the essayistic dimension of One Man’s War is to submit it to a test of purity against which the film itself is rebelling. This is no ars combinatoria but systems of collision and harmony; organic in their temporal development and experimental in their procedural eagerness. It’s like a machine created to die instantly; neither Cozarinsky nor anyone else could repeat the trick, as is the case with all great avant-garde works.

By blurring the genre of his literary essays, his fictional films, his archival documentaries, his literary fictions, Cozarinsky showed he knew how to reinvent the erasure of borders. One Man’s War is not a film about the Occupation but a meditation on the different forms in which that Occupation can be represented.

—Sergio Wolf. Translated by Mar Diestro-Dópido

9. Sans soleil

Chris Marker, 1982

There are many moments to quicken the heart in Sans soleil but one in particular demonstrates the method at work in Marker’s peerless film. An unseen female narrator reads from letters sent to her by a globetrotting cameraman named Sandor Krasna (Marker’s nom de voyage), one of which muses on the 11th-century Japanese writer  Sei Shōnagon .

As we hear of Shōnagon’s “list of elegant things, distressing things, even of things not worth doing”, we watch images of a missile being launched and a hovering bomber. What’s the connection? There is none. Nothing here fixes word and image in illustrative lockstep; it’s in the space between them that Sans soleil makes room for the spectator to drift, dream and think – to inimitable effect.

Sans soleil was Marker’s return to a personal mode of filmmaking after more than a decade in militant cinema. His reprise of the epistolary form looks back to earlier films such as  Letter from Siberia  (1958) but the ‘voice’ here is both intimate and removed. The narrator’s reading of Krasna’s letters flips the first person to the third, using ‘he’ instead of ‘I’. Distance and proximity in the words mirror, multiply and magnify both the distances travelled and the time spanned in the images, especially those of the 1960s and its lost dreams of revolutionary social change.

While it’s handy to define Sans soleil as an ‘essay film’, there’s something about the dry term that doesn’t do justice to the experience of watching it. After Marker’s death last year, when writing programme notes on the film, I came up with a line that captures something of what it’s like to watch Sans soleil: “a mesmerising, lucid and lovely river of film, which, like the river of the ancients, is never the same when one steps into it a second time”.

10. Handsworth Songs

Black Audio Film Collective, 1986

Made at the time of civil unrest in Birmingham, this key example of the essay film at its most complex remains relevant both formally and thematically. Handsworth Songs is no straightforward attempt to provide answers as to why the riots happened; instead, using archive film spliced with made and found footage of the events and the media and popular reaction to them, it creates a poetic sense of context.

The film is an example of counter-media in that it slows down the demand for either immediate explanation or blanket condemnation. Its stillness allows the history of immigration and the subsequent hostility of the media and the police to the black and Asian population to be told in careful detail.

One repeated scene shows a young black man running through a group of white policemen who surround him on all sides. He manages to break free several times before being wrestled to the ground; if only for one brief, utopian moment, an entirely different history of race in the UK is opened up.

The waves of post-war immigration are charted in the stories told both by a dominant (and frequently repressive) televisual narrative and, importantly, by migrants themselves. Interviews mingle with voiceover, music accompanies the machines that the Windrush generation work at. But there are no definitive answers here, only, as the Black Audio Film Collective memorably suggests, “the ghosts of songs”.

— Nina Power

11.  Los Angeles Plays Itself

Thom Andersen, 2003

One of the attractions that drew early film pioneers out west, besides the sunlight and the industrial freedom, was the versatility of the southern Californian landscape: with sea, snowy mountains, desert, fruit groves, Spanish missions, an urban downtown and suburban boulevards all within a 100-mile radius, the Los Angeles basin quickly and famously became a kind of giant open-air film studio, available and pliant.

Of course, some people actually live there too. “Sometimes I think that gives me the right to criticise,” growls native Angeleno Andersen in his forensic three-hour prosecution of moving images of the movie city, whose mounting litany of complaints – couched in Encke King’s gravelly, near-parodically irritated voiceover, and sometimes organised, as Stuart Klawans wrote in The Nation, “in the manner of a saloon orator” – belies a sly humour leavening a radically serious intent.

Inspired in part by Mark Rappaport’s factual essay appropriations of screen fictions (Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, 1993; From the Journals of Jean Seberg , 1995), as well as Godard’s Histoire(s) de cinéma, this “city symphony in reverse” asserts public rights to our screen discourse through its magpie method as well as its argument. (Today you could rebrand it ‘Occupy Hollywood’.) Tinseltown malfeasance is evidenced across some 200 different film clips, from offences against geography and slurs against architecture to the overt historical mythologies of Chinatown (1974), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and L.A. Confidential (1997), in which the city’s class and cultural fault-lines are repainted “in crocodile tears” as doleful tragedies of conspiracy, promoting hopelessness in the face of injustice.

Andersen’s film by contrast spurs us to independent activism, starting with the reclamation of our gaze: “What if we watch with our voluntary attention, instead of letting the movies direct us?” he asks, peering beyond the foregrounding of character and story. And what if more movies were better and more useful, helping us see our world for what it is? Los Angeles Plays Itself grows most moving – and useful – extolling the Los Angeles neorealism Andersen has in mind: stories of “so many men unneeded, unwanted”, as he says over a scene from Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little Hearts (1983), “in a world in which there is so much to be done”.

— Nick Bradshaw

12.  La Morte Rouge

Víctor Erice, 2006

The famously unprolific Spanish director Víctor Erice may remain best known for his full-length fiction feature The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), but his other films are no less rewarding. Having made a brilliant foray into the fertile territory located somewhere between ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction’ with The Quince Tree Sun (1992), in this half-hour film made for the ‘Correspondences’ exhibition exploring resemblances in the oeuvres of Erice and Kiarostami , the relationship between reality and artifice becomes his very subject.

A ‘small’ work, it comprises stills, archive footage, clips from an old Sherlock Holmes movie, a few brief new scenes – mostly without actors – and music by Mompou and (for once, superbly used) Arvo Pärt . If its tone – it’s introduced as a “soliloquy” – and scale are modest, its thematic range and philosophical sophistication are considerable.

The title is the name of the Québécois village that is the setting for The Scarlet Claw (1944), a wartime Holmes mystery starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce which was the first movie Erice ever saw, taken by his sister to the Kursaal cinema in San Sebastian.

For the five-year-old, the experience was a revelation: unable to distinguish the ‘reality’ of the newsreel from that of the nightmare world of Roy William Neill’s film, he not only learned that death and murder existed but noted that the adults in the audience, presumably privy to some secret knowledge denied him, were unaffected by the corpses on screen. Had this something to do with war? Why was La Morte Rouge not on any map? And what did it signify that postman Potts was not, in fact, Potts but the killer – and an actor (whatever that was) to boot?

From such personal reminiscences – evoked with wondrous intimacy in the immaculate Castillian of the writer-director’s own wry narration – Erice fashions a lyrical meditation on themes that have underpinned his work from Beehive to Broken Windows (2012): time and change, memory and identity, innocence and experience, war and death. And because he understands, intellectually and emotionally, that the time-based medium he himself works in can reveal unforgettably vivid realities that belong wholly to the realm of the imaginary, La Morte Rouge is a great film not only about the power of cinema but about life itself.