In its highly self-reflexive mode, questioning the notion of filmic images as ‘visible evidence’, the essay film is an epistemological tool for the study of visual politics. Therefore, it can offer useful insights into the mediatization of cultural memory. This paper will look at the use of the essay film by minoritized groups (Black, diasporic, feminist, queer), focussing on the remediations of archival footage. How can essay films be conceptualised as an emancipatory practice opening up discursive spaces for vernacular and alternative memories without lapsing into essentialism? Using Black British avant-garde filmmaking as an example, this paper examines filmic interventions into the visual archive. It outlines three practices of an anti-essentialist use of images defying notions of ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’:  reworking the archive as a) ways of deconstructing hegenomic representation, b) as archaeological excavations into the archive, and c) as a mode of carving out discursive spaces for utopian visions.