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In his 1992 essay ‘In Search of the Centaur’, the writer and critic Phillip Lopate described the essay-film as ‘a cinematic genre that barely exists’ He had a point: essay-films were scarce But Lopate made them seem even rarer than they were by his self-confessed fastidiousness as to what may rightly be called an essay-film, arguing that he finds the term, as others use it, too inclusive By his own admission, he sets the bar high, and recognises the difficulty of making ‘his idea of’ an essay-film But what is that?   All are agreed that the essay-film is a variant of documentary It uses original or existing footage, or both, in combination with a narrative voice that may be spoken or takes the shape of intertitles Cross-examination of the visual material by the voice and vice-versa is the distinguishing mark of the essay-film Like the written essay, it pursues a line of argument, a thought or idea; tests it, tries it on for size The essay-film interests itself in this process; is as much concerned with the manner of finding out as with the thing discovered – if anything is discovered Where the conventional documentary tilts at detachment or fashions its illusion, the essay-film has no business with impartiality: the spectator is made the film-maker’s familiar, and is given partial responsibility for fleshing out the interface between commentary and image   Lopate cannot conceive of an essay-film that does not deploy text in some form or other (written or spoken) Others ardently waive the genre’s debt to its literary senior These latter are adamant that the essay-film has outgrown its writerly heredity, that images may interrogate images as well as any words might The question with which Lopate closes his seminal essay is predicated on the adverse persuasion that text and picture must play equal part in the essay-film: ‘Will there ever be a way to join word and image together on screen so that they accurately reflect their initial participation in the arrival of a thought, instead of merely seeming mechanically linked, with one predominating over or fetched to illustrate the other?’   Lopate’s essay was by no means the last word