Essay Film and Narrative Techniques: Screen-writing Non-fiction Kiki Tianqi Yu (University of Nottingham Ningbo China) 9781835951477

The collection explores various methods of screen-writing for essay film, through a diverse set of reflections and analyses of canonical and unconventional approaches of essay filmmaking. It includes contributions from filmmakers and practice-led researchers, who reflect on their production process in the form of production diaries or self-critique, and analyses from scholars who investigate the production contexts of essay film, as well as interviews with filmmakers on how their practices are conceptualised and contextualised. Overall, it takes essay film as an expression of personal camera, collaborative/collective work, and experimental work where the boundaries between different art forms blurs and merges.

Romana Turina is Associate Professor at Arts University Bournemouth. She is a writer, filmmaker and historian. While leading research in the 'Essay Film' for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS), Romana engages in the creative processes. Her work includes the essay films Lunch with Family (2016) and San Sabba (2016), shortlisted at the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2018 and awarded at the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards 2018. In 2024, she completed the essay film Three Sisters in a Sketchbook (2024), selected at the LA Independent Women Film Awards 2024, and the Hollywood Independent Filmmaker Awards and Festivals 2024. Romana received her Ph.D. in Theatre, Film and Television from the University of York, UK. She taught creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Indianapolis, the University of York, and the University of Greenwich.

Kiki Tianqi Yu is a writer, filmmaker, curator, and senior lecturer in film at the Queen Mary University of London. Her research, in theory and practice, explores cinema in relation to decoloniality, personal expressions, and eastern philosophies, with a focus on creative documentary and nonfiction, women's cinema, and Chinese cinemas. She is currently working on 'Daoism and Cinema' and Sinophone women's cinema. She is the author of 'My' Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China (EUP, 2019), co-editor of China's iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the 21st Century (Bloomsbury 2014). Her films include Memory of Home (2009), China's van Goghs (2016), and The Two Lives of Li Ermao (2019). Kiki also curates film screening series including Dancing with Water: Women's Cinema from Contemporary China across various venues in London (February-April 2024).