The Essay as Mode of Expression and the Essayistic Practices in Radu Jude’s Cinema Doru POP Abstract: Like most European national cinemas, the Romanian film industry has developed a strong tendency towards authorship, with many contemporary filmmakers using various forms of expression that represent their personal views about the world, society and humanity. While Romanian cinema did not fully develop its own version of the essay genre, most often using more traditional modes of expression to highlight the subjectivity of the moviemaker in the cinematic discourse, a moviemaker like Radu Jude provides illustrative exeptions, showing how various modes of expression provided by essay films can be used. This contribution explores the modalities practiced by Jude in his recent productions, mainly in the highly awarded film Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn / Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc, but also in several other works where this filmmaker uses cinema as an implicit essayistic instrument, from the early attempts in Aferim! to more experimental productions as Uppercase Print / Tipografic Majuscul, or a politically charged film like I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians / Îmi este indiferent dacă în istorie vom intra ca barbari. This paper does not propose a re-evaluation of the theories about the essay film, instead is a reflection on the existing theoretical premises proposed among others by David Montero (2012), who argues that the essay films is a form of thinking and links this type of film with the traits of European cinema (strong authorial presence, open-ended narratives and the explicit social and artistic drive of these movies). Keywords: Romanian cinema, essay film, essayistic practices, visual essay, essay genre, Radu Jude DOI: 10.24193/ekphrasis.26.12 |