Label jars not films?

According to Giannetti, for instance, “an essay is neither fiction nor fact, but a personal investigation involving both the passion and intellect of the author.”
Reading the Rascaroli reading this week, I found myself asking again if it is really that imperative to define terms such as ‘film essay’. The more we look at this type of writing, the more I think it’s completely useless and we should instead just make what we want to make and try to put the meaning we want into it – how it is received and judged and defined… I don’t really care for.
I think its essential for filmmakers to study film history in order to learn and be inspired and aspire to be, etc, but I’m getting more and more inclined to ignore labels altogether. If someone makes a great work that straddles fiction and non-fiction, I’m not going to sit here and write five pages about the “in-betweenness”. I really think it is more important what the work does than what the work quote unquote is.
Besides, didn’t we spend a whole semester unlearning what an essay or lecture is? This reading seems to argue the definition of a film essay and then gives a litany of others’ interpretations –> I’m confused what the relevance is, stating that there is a typology and then giving a number of definitions insinuating we can make our own definition? I don’t understand the exercise and I don’t understand the relevance of labels!

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