8. Montage Reloaded: From Russian Avant-Garde to the Audiovisual Essay

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the relevance of early Russian montage theory and practice to new issues raised by the shift from the essay film to the audiovisual essay. I investigate how, specifically, Sergei Eisenstein’s vision of the new type of cinema of ideas formulated in his project for filming Marx’s Das Kapital, Dziga Vertov’s foregrounding of subjectivity and reflexivity in The Man with a Movie Camera, and Esphir Shub’s practice of ‘compilation film’ contributed to the emergence of the essay film and continue to stimulate the theory and practice of the audiovisual essayism.