Ken posted a provocation about essay films;

In his own way, Farocki’s work fulfils another wish for the essay film expressed by Tracy that I share, to see the image “as part of a matrix of meaning that extends beyond the screen.” This takes me back to this article’s starting point in the contemporary morass of online clip compilations and fan tributes that pass as essays, and what alternative mode of media could place us in a more critically aware position with regard to how media functions in our lives, where it comes from, what larger forces are behind its dissemination and our consumption of them.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/video-essay-essay-film-some-thoughts

This this passage there are number of points that relate directly to my own motivations for film-making. The first is the idea of “a matrix of meaning”, human knowledge is constructed from web of infinite complexity, it is now impossible for any one person to completely know, let alone understand all of this, we must rely on the supportive network of others to situate or own thinking, but also it seems impossible that alone reading our work will have an identical network in which to decode the work we have created from the screen. In this way the meaning that they decode is likely to diverge base on the amount of difference in that network. Although this is stretching Hall’s (1973) Encoding and decoding in the Television discourse, I feel that it is a useful reference point for the discussion because there is a balance between the hegemonic power of the major culture and the individuals agency, and attempts to weight those relative power positions. This brings me to the second point that I feel is significant “place us in a more critically aware position”. Having the power to create a piece of work infers the responsibility in how that power is used, a potential response to this situation is to attempt to raise awareness of how the complexity of these textual interactions.

In this way, the essay film might realise a greater purpose than existing as a trendy label, or as cinema’s submission to high-toned and half-defined literary concepts. Instead, the essay film may serve as a springboard to launch into a vital investigation of knowledge, art and culture in the 21st century, including the question of what role cinema itself might play in this critical project: articulating discontent with its own place in the world.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/video-essay-essay-film-some-thoughts

I really like the opinion of “articulating discontent”.

I feel that essay film might be a useful contextualisation on the approach to this film.