Essay Film Festival
WHAT WE DO
The essay film has become one of the key focal points of Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image’s activities since the first Essay Film Festival in 2015. Although the main festival takes place over a week at the end of March each year, BIMI organises essay-related screenings and events as part of its general programme.
In the run up to the annual festival, we also schedule a series of 'prelude' essay film events, which form a very significant part of our broad research interests concerning the historical as well as contemporary manifestations of the essay form.
ESSAY FILMS
Our programming reflects an open and inclusive idea of the essay film, which we think of as a hybrid form that brings together elements of documentary and experimental filmmaking into a highly personal and often politically engaged mode of expression. Some classic exponents of the essay film are Humphrey Jennings, Harun Farocki, Patrick Keiller, and Agnès Varda. But more recently, the essay has flourished in the new era of digital filmmaking, and one of the aims of the festival is to provide a focus for the current global expansion of the form.
ESSAY FILM FESTIVAL 2023
The 2023 Essay Film Festival returned in March with a wide-ranging selection of formally ambitious and politically engaged films of past and present.
The festival took place 25-31 March, with screenings and events at the ICA and Birkbeck Cinema, and additional special events at the BFI and other venues.
Explore the BFI's collection of free films in their Arts on Film series.
PAST EVENTS
View video content from previous years.
Listen to recordings of past events.
CONTACT US
BIMI is located at Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD (Google Maps).
BIMI Director: Ian Christie
BIMI Manager: Matthew Barrington
Find out more via our social channels: BIMI Facebook, BIMI Twitter and BIMI Instagram.