Grand Tour – a film in-debt(ed): Exploring the possibilities of the essayistic filmmaking form.

This practice-as-research thesis concentrates on the field of essayistic filmmaking. Through my practice and the written thesis, I explore how the montage of interwoven layers of images, sound, interactivity and networking connectivity can potentially expand the conventions of essayistic filmmaking practice. At the heart of my research is the creative practice of researching and developing an online essay film, Grand Tour a film in-debt(ed). The film explores an alternative reading of the recent Greek financial crisis without explicitly addressing the crisis, but in the tradition of essayistic filmmaking, by exploring the disjunctive threads that make links with the past and open the present to new interpretations. The development of Grand Tour is grounded in multiple iterative prototypes. Based on this incremental research process, I explore the possibilities of multiple interwoven layers of montage and the new creative potentials this creates for essayistic filmmaking practice. I define the montage of multiple interwoven temporalities as metabatic, and through the practice of developing Grand Tour, I suggest an alternative way of thinking about the recent Greek financial crisis which challenges the dominant narratives.

My inspiration for developing Grand Tour is drawn from the writings of European travellers who visited Greece in the 18th and 19th centuries. For more than eight years I immersed myself in extensive archival research and developed several online film prototypes. Through this research I understood the role that these travellers had in the formation of the emerging modern Greek identity and explored their links to subsequent political and financial interventions and the accumulation of debt in the modern Greek state. Following the essayistic filmmaking tradition, I dialectically associate the financial debt with the cultural debt of ancient Greece, suggesting modes of ambiguity and speculative thinking that describe Greece as a place in a constantly disjointed state, defined by a series of fragmented political, economic and cultural past and present encounters. The creative process of my practice is a montage of multiple disjunctive fragments where linearity is constantly disrupted. My iterative creative practice and the disjunctive nature of the film do not offer specific answers and fixed interpretations. Instead, they suggest and explore questions, and enable new essayistic threads, that challenge the current limited narratives about the Greek financial crisis.