ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses two essay films that establish the saturation point of the audiovisual thinking that defines this filmic form: its maximum complexification as a result of the evolution of technology and the essayistic practice itself. In Level Five (Chris Marker, 1996), the enunciative devices multiply, hybridise, and fragment, showing a point of saturation in which the thinking process seems no longer possible. Cyberspace and digital technology provoke a condition that prevents reflection: information saturation nullifies critical thinking. Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988–1998) instrumentalises the quota-tion—literary, philosophical, pictorial, photographic, and cinematic—to create reflective constellations—defined by the absence of a previously codified enunciative device—that reach the saturation of the audiovisual thinking.
