A first screen, between Reflections and Inscriptions, sets out the essay in the first person: on the one hand a return to the subjective, but at the same time the contemporary scene’s insatiable wish to reread the document, archives or history. The second screen moves between Inscriptions and Explorations, discovering and chronicling the world, a place of encounter. In this case the essay conducts the inquiry, constructing an outlook on the world. The third screen, linking Explorations to Reflections, seeks ways and means of telling stories. Goodbye to past illusions of objectivity, of cinéma-vérité – and back to a kind of fiction that can take its cue from documentary logic.

The three screens offer a cartography of the essay: deliberately uneven, and full of shifts and crossovers. The essay, as an anti-discipline, compels us to rethink our cinema vocabulary. Each film is chosen for its unusual way of marking or occupying a territory, and capturing our gaze – there is nothing restful about essay cinema.

The exhibition is presented by the research group Start Making Sense! The essay transformed by contemporary cinema and art.

Making Sense opens with nine Prologues to the essay, a project by Ursula Biemann with Jean Bacchetta, Mélanie Badoud, Etienne Chosson, Léa Graham, Emmanuelle Griffon, Maëlle Gross, Raphael Harari, Deborah Helle, Line De Kaenel, Yi Chun Kuo, Catherine Ofwono Anyango, Florence Pellacani, Sophie Perrier, Thomas Reichlin, Julie Sando, Zahra Vargas and Julie Yara Zimmermann, students from the Cinema/Cinema of the Real and Information/Fiction faculties, supervised by Michel Favre and Frank Westermeyer.