The best video essays of 2017
It’s been another boom year for the art of movie-based movie criticism – for better and sometimes worse. Kevin B. Lee and David Verdeure asked 33 top practitioners and scholars to pick out the best.
Web exclusive
Introduction
Has the video essay become a victim of its own success? These digitally produced, critical (or at times, not-so-critical) reworkings of film and media continue to proliferate at a rate beyond what anyone can possibly keep up with. Their ubiquity marks them as a sure sign of film culture’s passage into the era of digital and social media. As an open-source method to express our media-based experiences to ourselves and others, the video essay can be seen as a powerful means by which a generation of digital natives makes sense of its contemporary condition of audiovisual over-saturation. At its best, the video essay provides a compass to navigate an ever-expanding ocean of media.
But with so many video essays being produced, we now seem to be engulfed in an ocean of compasses, as the form expands across multiple contexts. On online platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, movie fans use them to express their passion and expertise amongst peers. In film studies classrooms around the world, teachers not only use video essays as a teaching tool, but also have students make their own videos, demonstrating their ability to analyse media through media making. Video essays find their way into academic journals as supplements to (or substitutes for) text-based scholarship. They are screened in film festivals as introductions to films, or as standalone works of art. (Obversely, they’re also increasingly an object of commodification. 2017 saw more explicit attempts to harness, and thus rein in, the power of the form to serve the interest of commercial websites, from movie streaming start-ups to venerable film criticism sites. In this regard, the video essay has become a mirror of the movies it studies, prone to product placement, overzealous formatting and sequelisation.)
As video essays make their way through different venues, the same holds for video essay makers. This year began with notable video essayist kogonada premiering his first feature film, Columbus, at festivals and later in cinemas. After several years producing video essays for Fandor, Kevin B. Lee moved on to a residency with the Harun Farocki Institute. At the close of the year, the phenomenally successful video essay channel Every Frame a Painting by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos announced they would be shutting down, partly due to a waning enthusiasm for the form. In their postmortem reflection Zhou admitted: “I felt trapped by what we’d created – and also trapped by that success.”
While Zhou and others may feel their engagement with video essays is exhausted, there is no shortage of newcomers eager to take their place. As the landscape continues to both shift and expand, we wonder where exactly where can one find work that truly stands out.
In an admittedly quixotic attempt to try to make sense of an increasingly unruly landscape, we conducted the following survey with the input of peers who have demonstrated their accomplishment and enthusiasm for this field. While this is the largest video-essay poll conducted to date, there are no doubt many other great works and creators not mentioned in this poll, simply because our network hasn’t encountered them, so we should acknowledge the limitations of this exercise. Nonetheless, it may stand as a navigational device in development, mapping out just a few of the places where outstanding work in this form can be found.
— Kevin B. Lee and David Verdeure
Luís Azevedo
Video essayist
The Art and Ethics of Digital De-Aging Leigh Singer
Leigh Singer’s two-parter explores the limitations at the new frontier of CGI. His video delves into the limitations of digital de-aging and brilliantly conveys the ethical unease of digital resurrections.
The Legacy of Paranoid Thrillers Travis Lee Ratcliff
Ratcliff peruses through the history of one genre and indelibly ties it with its context, opening timely parallels with our present.
Delphine Imprisoned Ricardo Pinto de Magalhães
A gaze-challenging multi-frame experience.
The Empty Screen Mark Rappaport
A multifaceted approach to our relationship with the screen.
In Praise of Blur Richard Misek and Martine Beugnet
A poetic look at the beauty and functionality of one of cinema’s imperfections.
When Words Fail David Verdeure
A beautiful combination of graphic and sound design.
Past Futures: Nostalgia in the Age of Escapism Asher Isbrucker
An avid examination of vicarious nostalgia through the discovery of old home movies.
The Letter That Changed My Life Will Schoder
A recombination of archival footage structured around an old letter from Will’s grandfather.
Fidget Spinners: The Toy That Changed America The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak)
A brilliant parody documentary.
Conor Bateman
Writer, video editor and managing editor of 4:3
A tripartite horizon line: 2.35:1 | 1.66:1 | 1.66:1. Silhouettes move through the seemingly endless expanse in all three frames. After two minutes, the meditative qualities of this comparative framework emerge, only to be abruptly cut off by a black screen. The first part has come to a close. As for the second? Enter old hands (Michael Snow, James Benning) and new (Inger Lise Hansen, Emily Richardson).
The landscapes of Gala Hernández’s probing study Films desiertos are distinct in colour, format, texture yet they are bound across decades by similar strategies of representation: movement within and without, the scorching heat rendered as an alien barrier. The natural world is unknown, even when captured on film. The pursuit of that unknown, though, is exactly what draws us to landscape. This, in its simplicity and elegance of form, is one of the best video essays of the year.
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
Instructive and playful, Charlie Lyne’s first video for academic journal [in]Transition takes an Eisenstein essay as its inspiration and investigates the ideology embedded in aspect ratio. Though the obvious delights are the depth of research and eclectic selection of films, it’s the presentation that I’m most drawn to, whether in the simple but haunting music loop by Anthony Ing (more on him in a sec) or the illustration of aspect-ratio experiments hiding in plain (read: 16:9) sight. Also, “an amazingly bolshie piece of work” might just be the best throwaway line in a video essay this side of Kentucker Audley.
Silencer Tope Ogundare
Of the videos selected as part of Mubi and Filmadrid Festival Internacional de Cine’s The Video Essay programme, a promising series filled with fascinating ideas often dampened by conventional execution, one work that stood out: Tope Ogundare’s Silencer. Beginning with white text on a black screen, Ogundare establishes a personal bugbear: if a shot is fired in an empty park in Michael Antonioni’s Blow-Up, why can’t he recall ever hearing a gun go off?
Rather than just presenting an analysis of the film’s soundtrack himself, Ogundare positions another cinematic obsessive, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) in The Conversation, as his surrogate. In an ingenious act of cinematic mash-up, Harry replays a conversation from Blow-Up over and over until a point of discovery is reached. But, though the video essay’s title suggests a possible solution, true confirmation is elusive. After the myriad rewinds and reversals, though, finding an abnormality is satisfying enough.
Title Drops Roman Holiday
‘Matt’, who goes under the pseudonym Roman Holiday for video essay work, is a prolific supercut maker on Vimeo. A lot of the videos he makes, though, tend to be mere catalogues (i.e. all the shots in American Psycho filmed in close-up, presented in chronological order). That said, sometimes the effect of cataloguing works wonders. Two years ago, he made a supercut of close-ups in Psycho that is fascinating not in terms of it conveying any pattern of composition but, much like Daniel Martinico’s cheeky 24 Second Psycho, testing the ability of the viewer to follow the plot within a much faster narrative framework.
This year, the video of his that I was drawn to was also a pointed act of context erasure. Title Drops is, as one would expect, a catalogue of film clips in which a character says the name of the film they are in. It is also gleefully nonsensical and inadvertently distressing as it goes on and on and on.
The Truth LJ Frezza
Also a supercut, but an ingenious one. LJ Frezza riffs on his brilliant Seinfeld video Nothing with another video about empty spaces, this time interior settings in episodes of The X-Files. The sheer volume of material requires some very clever editing and Frezza delivers in spades: the clashing sound of clips ratchets up tension, in a sense like the back half of Too Many Cooks.
Day After Day Anthony Ing
A masterful recut from Charlie Lyne collaborator Anthony Ing that sees Doris Day trapped in a prison of her own (movie)making. She turns a corner and travels through time and space, falls in and out of love, loses her mind and, at one brief point midway through, takes charge of narrating the story, only for control to be wrested from her by a successive line of men, who carry her off and away. In a short obsessed with identity, Jimmy Stewart’s cameo (excerpted from The Man Who Knew Too Much) calls to mind another Hitchcock film entirely: Vertigo.
Motifs of Movement and Modernity Patrick Keating
I can’t really stand video essays that serve as lectures. After only two video essays, though, I know that I will always make an exception for Patrick Keating. Information dense and nimbly assembled, his videos illustrate concepts swiftly and compellingly. In the essay which accompanies the Motifs of Movement and Modernity in the journal Movie, Keating seems to hit at the heart of his fascination with the video essay form: “the audiovisual essay seems like an ideal tool for a ‘motivic’ approach to film history.” This is to say, it is the ideal format for analysis of visual motifs. I can’t think of anyone who does this kind of detailed analysis better than Keating.
I would be remiss not to mention a few other great 2017 video essays about visual motifs in film. kogonada’s Once There Was Everything, which looks at the significance of doors in the films of Robert Bresson, harks back to his 2015 video Mirrors of Bergman.
Richard Misek and Martine Beugnet’s In Praise of Blur, which is unfortunately not a filmic paean to Magic America but is rather a beautifully executed video essays that matches its form to its subject. And Sandra Teixeira’s Sounds of Ethnographic Experience puts two Lucien Castaing-Taylor films side by side, identifying patterns in the approach of the director and his collaborators to ethnographic study.
Ivana Brehas
Filmmaker
The Master | The Sweetness of Freddie Film Radar
This essay is incisive, sweet, and brings up new points of view I hadn’t considered before. It reveals a context of inspiration and meaning behind The Master of which I was previously unaware (see: the references to Let There Be Light and even Baraka). Freddie was always a captivating, mysterious character to me, but this essay helped me realise just what it was that made him so fascinating and sympathetic. The exploration of his primal motivations and behaviour is great. The formal qualities are equally lovely, it’s clear that the essayist has done their research and cares! Hooray! A very well put-together essay.
Born Sexy Yesterday Pop Culture Detective
Pop Culture Detective has been doing great work throughout the year (Predatory Romance in Harrison Ford Movies is a must-watch), but this one’s a standout. The infantilisation of women in our media is an epidemic that so often goes unnoticed. The trope he identifies is a harmful representation of an entire gender, and it has a real and damaging effect on women the world over.
Ex Machina, The Control of Information Lessons from the Screenplay (Michael Tucker)
Thank goodness for Michael Tucker. A lot of film education, for better or worse, can seem perpetually skewed towards directors, approaching things from their perspective only. I’m so glad that this channel exists and is focused on screenwriting specifically. My favourite thing about this essay is its great insights into all the ruthless editing that shaped Ex Machina into the sleek, sophisticated story it is today. Kill your darlings, indeed.
Why Bruno Mars’ ‘24K Magic’ Makes You Dance The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak)
It’s nice when video essays aren’t about cinema at all. A reminder that the form has such vast potential. Plus, music history is ridiculously interesting and 24K Magic is very funky.
Philip Brubaker
Filmmaker, video essayist and podcast host of In The Queue: Film Conversations with Andrew and Phil
I gotta say, I really like parody. Not just a workaround to achieve Fair Use immunity, those videos are often very intelligent. Many video essays are self-important and pound into the viewer’s head the genius of the video’s subject, or of the essayist themselves. That said, I also like serious examples of the medium. Genuine, thoughtful analyses of film always pique my interest. If I am moved, that also endears the video essay to me.
Steven Spielberg: The Power of Touch Vince di Meglio & Matt Steinauer
Intimate and warm.
Jack Frost the Snowman Nelson Carvajal
Another seamless trailer mashup parody by someone who does them very well. I smirked and laughed throughout.
What Is Result Direction Travis Lee Ratcliff
Great informative piece for aspiring feature film directors, like me.
She’s All That and the Power of Transformation Kentucker Audley
One of the most astute (and hilarious) takedowns of both videographic film study seriousness and Hollywood sexism.
Excellent use of graphics to accentuate a comprehensive reading of two like-minded films.
Women’s Time-Image Jessica McGoff
A refreshing perspective in the world of video essays.
How David Fincher Hijacks Your Eyes The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak)
Truly surprising insight into what makes David Fincher’s technique so captivating.
The Childhood Whimsy of Wes Anderson Philip Brubaker
There are others I’ve done that I really like, and are more scholarly, but this one is a pleasure to watch. Shared narration by my wife and I.
Darren Aronofsky’s Extreme Close-Ups Jacob T. Swinney
The supercut master.
Harry Dean Philip Brubaker
Oh, what the hell, I had an extra slot. I made this tribute for Harry Dean Stanton’s birthday, and when he died it became the most popular thing I’ve ever done on social media. Rest in peace, one of my favourite actors.
Nelson Carvajal
Video artist and founder of FreeCinemaNow.com
Letter from Marker Luís Azevedo
Chris Marker is one of my idols, and a titan of influence in the moving image essay. In the spirit of Marker, Azevedo employs the third party voiceover trait to bring to life Marker’s writings. It reinstates the power of juxtaposing impressionistic image-making with feelings and thoughts.
The Unloved: The Mangler Scout Tafoya
Tafoya has done what so many video essayists can’t: deliver a moving performance in their narration. Time and time again his ‘Unloved’ videos come from a place of deep affection, and it’s largely due to his vocal performance.
The Coen Brothers: Raise the Evil Dead Philip Brubaker
Brubaker’s tone here wisely leans more towards mass appeal zippiness as opposed to academic knowledge-dropping. No doubt lots of the preproduction went into studying the film history details between the Coen brothers and Sam Raimi but watching this feels like watching an entertaining documentary short for a college cinematography class.
As one of the pillars of the video essay form, Lee once again challenges our notion on “what a video essay should look like” by manipulating the very desktop we watch our moving image content on. This was a timely piece, from the beginning of the year, when the nation was still processing the shock of the election and no less the new first lady.
Vanishing Point: a visual essay Zoya Street
What’s special about Vanishing Point is how it employs quite literally the essay ‘text’ and footnotes and brings them to life. It gives an impression on what all essays might someday look like in school English classroom, with each student typing away and editing on their tablets or smartphones.
La La Land: Movie References Sara Preciado
I’m a big employer of the side-by-side clips in many of my video essays as of late. This piece by Preciado spoke to me because I appreciated the work ethic in accumulating the clips – but, more importantly, I can identify with the artistry of finding the right moments to punctuate on, in regards to the music and feeling.
Denis Villeneuve Through Glass Mikolaj Kacprzak
Is there a bigger director working today than Denis Villeneuve? The masterstroke here by Kacprzak is by focusing intensely on an aspect of Villeneuve’s style that is not an obvious one upon first viewings of his films. And isn’t that the ultimate point of a video essay – to show others what no one else is seeing?
Tracy Cox-Stanton
Video essayist and editor of The Cine-Files
Facing Film Johannes Binotto
This simple and concise study wonderfully brings together the classical and the avant-garde, evoking questions that are not so simple after all.
Once There was Everything kogonada
A beautiful and effective hook opens the video: the first shot of Robert Bresson’s first film begins on a door; the final shot of his final film ends on a door. And it just gets better from there! I especially appreciate the way the voiceover adds a critical component, but leaves plenty of space for the essential noises of Bresson’s films.
The SENSES of an ENDING Catherine Grant
A sound-a-rific example of the epigraphic video. I like the way it experiments with the text, using the same font for the film’s subtitles and the scholarly quotes, and merging the second quote with the film’s credits. As we contemplate these wonderful ideas (from Deborah Martin and Sophie Mayer) about this scene’s sensory qualities, we recognise the materiality of text as well.
The Sea Speaks Cristina Alvarez-Lopez and Adrian Martin
I sometimes wonder if it is enough to merely re-cut films and hope that, through careful juxtaposition and layering of the films’ already existing images and sounds, a video essay adds something new. While I usually desire some additional element of sound or image that is the video essayists’ alone, I think The Sea Speaks makes an evocative and effective statement merely with a montage of Jean Epstein’s films.
In Praise of Blur Richard Misek and Martine Beugnet
The Black Screen Richard Misek
Both of these videos, as part of [In]Transition’s double issue on Indefinite Visions, offer thoughtful, playful, substantive and elegant meditations on cinematic vision.
Ray/Godard David Verdeure and Emmanuelle André
Also from the Indefinite Visions issue, this video contemplates the “multiple image” aesthetic shared by Nicholas Ray and Jean-Luc Godard. The video offers its own exciting intervention in multiple image, suggesting three different ways it might be viewed – side-by-side, superimposed via video or (ideally) projected onto opposing sides of a semi-translucent screen.
Noir Jukebox Corey Creekmur
The video wonderfully conveys the nervous wildness of film noir, illuminating the jukebox’s role as catalyst; but it also invites us to contemplate the jukebox’s own material existence as we recognise the vitality of this sleek chunk of metal. I love the way it defamiliarises these common objects; the cash registers are amazing too.
A Woman’s Search for Meaning: Notes on Cleo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond Serena Bramble and Arielle Bernstein
An illuminating and smart study of female agency and representation in these two films by Agnès Varda. I especially like its ambitious and effective links to contemporary media texts, and the way it uses two different female narrators, mirroring the female performers’ search for meaning within the films.
Opening Choices in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious John Gibbs and Douglas Pye
A beautiful example of how videographic possibilities can enhance traditional close analysis. In particular, the video uses multiple screens and repetition (in addition to the voiceover) to demonstrate how the opening scene of Notorious (which was revised after the film was completed) illuminates the film’s key motifs.
Allison de Fren
Media maker and scholar
Age-Pocalypse Now: Digital Aging Onscreen Leigh Singer
A smart foray into not just the uncanny, but also the ethical terrain of CGI de-aging and resurrection.
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
An exemplary instance of what video essays do best: bringing to foreground for contemplation what normally remains invisible, in this case, the frame surrounding the cinematic image.
How Not to Adapt a Movie The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak)
For its expert use of audiovisual rhetoric to level the kind of critique that GIS fans like me were hoping for.
In Praise of Blur Richard Misek and Martine Beugnet
A stunning cine-poem on indefinite vision.
Koyaanisqatsi and Its Complex Legacy Brows Held High by Kyle Kallgren
Breathtaking in its scope, Kallgren’s analysis had me alternately gasping and chuckling at the cultural normalisation of Koyaanisqatsi’s (read: global capitalism’s) visual repertoire.
Motifs of Movement and Modernity Patrick Keating
A masterful demonstration of how the most modern of art forms – the cinema – conveyed the experience of modernity.
The Weight of Gravity Filmscalpel
For the compelling way in which it grounds the high-tech wizardry of Gravity in cinema and art history.
Steven E. de Souza
Screenwriter and film commentator for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Premiere and Empire magazines
Noir Jukebox Cory K. Creekmur
This struck me mainly because it had never struck me in the first place. Like Waldo, once you find one Wurlitzer, damned if you don’t realize one’s lurking in every frame: with its penetration of both culture and landscape, the jukebox all but demanded a walk-on in every mid-century contemporary film. Perhaps the bane of set designers, in the hands of the right filmmakers a conveniently placed jukebox could provide diegetic content that could impact characters and viewers alike.
Born Sexy Yesterday Jonathan McIntosh, Pop Culture Detective
I watched this essay with some trepidation: with an eye on her return to the screen, I have been shepherding the current reboot of comic-book legend Will Eisner’s Sheena Queen of the Jungle character, who first appeared 80 years ago, a year before Superman and four years before that Jane-come-lately Wonder Woman. Every month, this trope lurks like quicksand on the edges of our storytelling, but I was relieved to see we seem to be in sync with McIntosh’s message to future tale spinners: innocence is not sexy; knowledge and experience are. (Yes, she’s still drawn sexy… but by women.)
Goodbye Uncanny Valley Alan Warburton
While not ostensibly a film essay, Warburton segues into tentpole movies, and overall builds a case that the audience’s presumption that CGI is undetectable has brought us to a point where an audience aware that anything they see on screen can be fabricated can come to question everything they see.
This commanded my attention because, like John Snow (the epidemiologist, not the King of the North), Warburton has identified the well that’s poisoned the soul of the audience with an insidious virus which leaves its victims indifferent to special effects for effects sake: call it CGI Fatigue. Like the virus that compels Amazonian carpet ants to climb tall leaves of grass until their brains explode, this one compels audiences to stay home, making studio executives’ brains explode.
How Action Movies are Spectacular… and Boring Science of Editing Series, This Guy Edits/Sven Pape & Dr Karen Pearlman
In a perfect companion piece to Warburton, Sven Pape and Dr Karen Pearlman don’t flag computer graphics per se as a contributor to the boredom factor setting in with current blockbusters, instead defining their bête noire as ‘spectacle’, and its cardinal sin as interrupting emotional narrative. However, as most of the examples they cite are chock-a-block with CGI, their critique leaves the door open for further debate: is a spectacular sequence dependent on cast and crew rather than zeroes and ones permissible, even at the risk of narrativus interruptus?
One of the key points of Alan Warburton’s Goodbye, Uncanny Valley (above) is that widely available and increasingly powerful software suites have made CGI so ubiquitous across all media that we have arrived at a post-truth era, when knowing that anything can be fabricated, the audience may soon trust nothing… fertile ground for the seed of doubt a Jingo Appleseed could plant and call Fake News…
How an 80s Arnold Schwarzenegger Film Predicted Our Future Daniel Oberhaus / Motherboard
So, last, and probably least (as this selection could be accused of nepotism, or more accurately, onanism), this essay claims Fake News and much more of our 2017 gestalt was prefigured 30 years ago.
Daniel Clarkson Fisher
Video activist and student in the MFA documentary media programme at Ryerson University
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
Lyne does absolutely first-rate work here, grappling with Sergei Eisenstein’s essay The Dynamic Square and the “enduring cinematic tussle between frame and container”. Engaging, inspired and downright revelatory, this is what video essayism is all about.
A closer look at a deliberately inserted, nanosecond-long flash of red in Terrence Malick’s 1998 masterpiece The Thin Red Line is only the beginning of this brilliantly impressionistic meditation on the use of red in war films. ‘RW’ also considers the colour’s relationship to blood, nationalism, emotion and the rest of the cinematographic palette in films like Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998), Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) and Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985).
Ultimately, the essay makes a very convincing case that Malick’s use of the colour is unique among war films, and “goes hand in hand with [The Thin Red Line’s] endeavour to awaken us to the wonders of what [the character Witt] defines as ‘another world’, which is actually a different way of perceiving and co-inhabiting this world, the only one we have.”
Letter from Marker Luís Azevedo
This paean to Chris Marker was hands-down the most beautiful and eminently rewatchable video essay I saw this year; the way that Azevedo weaves together the mighty essay filmmaker’s words (read by Marta Pereira) with footage from the work itself is both exquisitely and insightfully done. Committed Marker disciples will be in hog heaven, and it definitely serves as an enticing entry point for the uninitiated.
A Male Eye. John Berger Marina Trigueros
In commemoration of the eminent art critic, Trigueros reads passages from his classic Ways of Seeing over footage from Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished 1964 film L’Enfer. It’s the perfect way of illustrating how film often reflects Berger’s observations about the male gaze.
Cameraperson to Person Conor Bateman
Kirsten Johnson’s 2016 documentary ‘memoir’ Cameraperson employed a singular, almost indefinable structure to tell its story. Bateman heads to his editing timeline to break it down in this ingenious exploration of a monumentally great film.
The Unloved – Beloved Scout Tafoya
This heartfelt tribute to the late Jonathan Demme argues that the director’s largely ignored 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel is actually “his magnum opus.” With emotion apparent in his voice by the end, Tafoya finds in Demme’s uniquely humanitarian cinema a clarion call to viewers: “We must always move forward, and find it in our hearts to love with abandon.”
WTF IS THAT? The Pre- and Post-Cinematic Tendencies of Paranormal Activity Allison de Fren and Brian Cantrell
Responding to Steve Shaviro’s article The Glitch Dimension: Paranormal Activity and the Technologies of Vision, de Fren and Cantrell underscore how the Paranormal Activity series scares its audience using a range of techniques, including those pre- (eg anamorphosis) and post-cinematic (eg glitch art). It’s a perceptive look at how this seemingly vapid series actually tells us a lot about where visual art has been and where it seems to be going.
The Future Doesn’t Exist Until We Get There: Musical Power in Ava DuVernay’s I Will Follow (2010) and Middle of Nowhere (2012) Meghan Joyce Tozer
Video essayists have really slept on the work of Ava DuVernay. No more, I think, after this excellent analysis of the use of music in her first two narrative films. Created for the 2017 Music and the Moving Image Conference, Tozer’s video essay makes clear how, “by musically privileging the perspectives of black, female characters in both films, [DuVernay, singer-composer Kathryn Bostic and music supervisor Morgan Rhodes] subtly encourage the audience to empathise with the real, underrepresented people who share those characters’ identities,” as well as “create a literal and figurative second voice through which the protagonists’ experiences are communicated”.
Storaro on Color: Bulworth Michael Mclennan
Overlaying comments from cinematographer Vittorio Storaro onto footage from director Warren Beatty’s underappreciated 1998 satire, Mclennan creates here an essential little masterclass in storytelling with colour. It’s straightforward, but elegantly so.
#movieofmylife Kevin B. Lee (for the Locarno Film Festival)
Lee’s contribution to the Locarno Film Festival’s #movieofmylife series is both a touching remembrance of his grandfather and a meaningful rumination on the intrinsically personal nature of our relationship with films (in this particular case, Yasujirō Ozu’s 1953 classic Tokyo Story).
Chloé Galibert-Laîné
Filmmaker
This year I started teaching a ‘history of the video essay’ class in Paris, which gave me a great opportunity both to (re)discover the French scene and to follow my students’ recommendations. I was very impressed by the diversity of formats I discovered and thought it could be useful to contribute a selection of French videos:
The oldest source of French video essays, together with Allociné’s more popular but less substantial equivalent, is the online series Blow Up, produced for Arte by Luc Lagier since 2010. Lagier himself has produced many great videos this year, but also invited several filmmakers and researchers to contribute to the series, including:
Jake Gyllenhal par Laetitia Masson Laetitia Masson
Masson’s videos are always personal letters to actors (or sometimes directors).
In his videos, Trufo investigates long forgotten (or lost) films, documenting his research process.
I was really impressed by the formal creativity that is demonstrated by French YouTubers when they talk about cinema. One defining feature is the key role acting plays in these videos, with the narrators taking on a theatrical part, with a costume, a specific language, a fictional name…
The Devil’s Rejects Le Fossoyeur de films (aka François Theurel)
The most famous French video essayist, Theurel has been producing video essays for over five years. In them he embodies the fictional character of a gravedigger looking for old B-movies.
Le miracle de l’image documentaire Les Chroniques du désert rouge (aka Baptiste Sibony)
A more confidential, younger channel, the form of which is closer to the standards of international video essays production, using film excerpts and an analytical voiceover.
Room 237 – Cinéphile facile #14 Amazing Lucy (aka Lucie Bellet)
A female voice in this ocean of male cinephiles, Bellet does a great job bringing together analysis and humour, film excerpts and Internet imagery, with a very compelling editing style. Her reading of Room 237 is amazing.
Unknown Movies #26 – Final Cut INTHEPANDA (aka Victor Bonnefoy)
Another popular channel with a very intriguing format, where the narrator presents himself as a serial killer passionate for cinema, and where the analytical moments of the video are embedded in long fictional scenes.
Fictional mashups: besides the unclassifiable Mozinor, who has been producing incredibly popular ‘détournements’ of movie scenes for over ten years, several French filmmakers have been producing great mashups this year. (Though Fabrice Mathieu alas didn’t produce anything as great as his short film In the shadows)
Hell’s Club Official Antonio Maria Da Silva
“There is a place where all fictional characters meet… Outside of time, outside of all logic, this place is known as HELL’S CLUB.”
Munchsferatu Julien Lahmi
Also artistic director of the Mash Up Film Festival, his films are creative reappropriations of film clips, embedded in a new narrative.
Video essays about new media:
A newcomer on YouTube who is developing a promising format, using a laptop and video projections.
Tu mens Simon Puech
Mainly known for his videos on videogames, this YouTuber has launched a new ‘concept’ last year for two-minute videos about contemporary society and new media that are worth watching, if only to observe an original use of film clips.
Ian Garwood
Video essayist and Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow
To manage this task, I decided to focus on audiovisual essays published in the last year that have used voiceover/disembodied voices in particularly illuminating, thought-provoking and evocative ways:
Simulacrum (for Carrie Fisher) Catherine Grant
The Thinking Machine 4: Wish I Had a River Cristina Alvarez Lopez and Adrian Martin
A Male Eye: John Berger Marina Trigueros
Dubbing: Making the Voice Visible Bea Domeova
Motifs of Movement and Modernity Patrick Keating
Procedural: Zodiac and the Digital Cityscape Conor Bateman
The Black Screen Richard Misek
My Crush Was a Superstar Chloé Galibert-Laîné
Peet Gelderblom
Director, editor, video essayist
On a general note: I’ve seen a lot of unimaginative appreciations and easy clickbait this year. Is it interesting enough for a video essay to summarise an actor, director, genre or cinematic technique by simply presenting a few superficial qualities, sprinkled with dummy-proof titles and crappy stock music? I would hope not. The growing greed for more eyeballs and a fear of legal issues aren’t exactly helping the genre forward.
What I look out for are video essays that offer unique perspectives, creative deconstructions and, ultimately, new ways of seeing. Give me a viewpoint that truly informs, opens or tickles the mind.
My favourite of the year:
How David Fincher Hijacks Your Eyes The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak)
A perfectly executed, eye-opening video essay by the always interesting Evan Puschak, who goes so far as filming himself in the style of David Fincher to make his point. I thought I had picked up on just about every directing tactic filmmaker Fincher deploys. And yet this video essay showed me something I had overlooked – that Fincher’s typical way of using the camera is intrinsically linked to his main obsession: human behaviour over time.
I also enjoyed:
The Art of David Lynch Menno Kooistra (VoorDeFilm)
Menno is a friend of mine and I know him as a film enthusiast in the most exuberant sense of the word. With this video essay he delivers a very measured, purely visual piece that puts the work of David Lynch side to side to its surreal inspirations.
Strange Continuity Adam D’Arpino (Aeon Video)
Some of the ideas in this video have been explored before by Walter Murch in his book In The Blink of an Eye, but it is refreshing to see a similar philosophy explained in audiovisual terms. What this also proves is that video essays can be made by a collective: Adam D’Arpino based it on an essay by Jeffrey M Zacks, uses Karl Miller as narrator, music by YACHT/Dave Depper and opens with hand-drawn animation (!) by Ermina Takenova.
Jacques Tati, Where to Find Visual Comedy Andrew Saladino (The Royal Ocean Film Comedy)
A video essay offering plenty of smiles.
Honourable mention:
The visually and intellectually striking lectures of John P. Hess (Filmmaker IQ)
Ethan Gilbert
Video essay enthusiast
Koyaanisqatsi and Its Complex Legacy Brows Held High
The Power of VHS | SCANLINE H. Bomberguy and Shannon Strucci
Rogue One: A Star Wars Legacy Sideways
PlayTime, Controlled Chaos The Royal Ocean Film Society
Daniel Golding
Academic and video essayist
Master of None: iPhone and Bicycle Thieves Nelson Carvajal
La La Land, Movie References Sara Preciado
Two of my favourite video essays this year work in very similar ways: they’re simply unadorned comparisons between recent screen works and the films from which they take inspiration. I’m including them here because they’re both the kind of video essay that seems to make itself in really obvious and uninteresting ways, but in both cases actually revealed more about the work than I was anticipating. I found both Master of None and La La Land’s homages to be pretty uninspiring on first viewing, but these videos illustrate that there’s both more and less at work than I had seen.
This clever and sardonic video essay takes a great work of Australian trash and makes it precisely what it is not.
Catherine Grant
Professor of digital media and screen studies, Birkbeck, University of London
1. My crush was a superstar Chloé Galibert-Laîné
2. A Male Eye. John Berger Marina Trigueros
3. “Twin Peaks: The Return”, Then He Kissed Me and The Thinking Machine 9: The Sea Speaks Cristina Alvarez López and Adrian Martin
4. In Praise of Blur Martine Beugnet and Richard Misek
5. Frames and containers Charlie Lyne
6. Dead Time Catherine Fowler, Claire Perkins, and Andrea Rassell
7. Goodbye Uncanny Valley Alan Warburton
8. Why a Blockbuster is Spectacular and Boring Sven Pape/“This Guy Edits” and Dr Karen Pearlman
9. An Introduction to Terence Davies’s SUNSET SONG Oswald Iten (or watch it in German)
10. FACING FILM Johannes Binotto
11. Cat People as Meshwork Tracy Cox Stanton
Honourable mention:
The Per una controstoria del cinema italiano/Towards a Counter History of Italian Cinema project organised by Filmidée and Chiara Grizzaffi with multiple videos and authors. Watch the trailer here.
Chiara Grizzaffi
Scholar and Co-editor, [in]Transition
I have had the privilege to watch and to contribute to the publication of many groundbreaking video essays this year. Besides all of them (I would never be able to choose just one or a few!), these are my coups de foudre:
The Empty Screen Mark Rappaport
I Furrow My Own Film Inside Those I Pass Through Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin
Not a Grand Dame Catherine Grant
The Sound of JACKIE Oswald Iten
Missing Episode Ross Sutherland and Charlie Lyne
#movieofmylife Kevin B. Lee (for the Locarno Film Festival)
H. Perry Horton
Video content editor, One Perfect Shot and creator @CinemaGrids
12 Angry Men – A Lesson in Staging Andrew Saladino/The Royal Ocean Film Society
The Graduate, Exploring the Generation Gap Jack’s Movie Reviews
Camera Angles and Movement: Analyzing the Coin Toss Scenes in No Country For Old Men Sareesh Sudhakaran / wolfcrow
Kelly Reichardt: “Elaborated Time” Travis Lee Ratcliff
Abiding the Gulf War: In the Parlance of Our Times Bradley Weatherholt / Ministry of Cinema
Where a Gun Begins Larry Erens / Filmscalpel
Rear Window, Turning Audience into Voyeur Matt Draper
Oswald Iten
Scholar and video essayist
Telefoni Neri Hannah Leiss (all eyes | all ears)
This feels like a short film about the inability to communicate and the melancholy inherent in some of my favourite Italian films. The rhythm is just perfect and I love the fact that it’s achieved without additional music.
Raging Bull, and Cut. Jop Leuven (Love of Film)
A simple concept with a strong impact. Even though I have analysed this scene for Raging Bull several times before, the visual fracturing made me see it in a different light, as if my perception of time had altered for those few minutes. Besides, I learned a thing or two about how my eyes constantly wander around all the frames on the screen, even though only one contains movement.
This Land of Broken Dreams Catherine Grant
The disparate layers of image, music and words effortlessly work as one. Probably because the music and the spoken words seemed to be competing I actually paid attention to the lyrics of the well-known song What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted? for the very first time.
Special mention:
Maybe not a favourite but still important to me because Golding’s film music analyses are unusually well-informed and he actively takes part in the ongoing video essay ‘conversation’ about the quality of current blockbuster film music.
Rishi Kaneria
Filmmaker and video essayist
There’s so much good content out there in terms of video essays, yet so much of it feels the same. Some may not readily identify my main pick as a video essay, but it stood out to me:
history of the entire world, i guess Bill Wurtz
…which I choose for its creativity, energy, unique voice and ambition. In addition to all the comfort food in the video-essay genre, I also enjoy seeing things I’ve never seen before, and content that challenges our expectations and stretches the definition of ‘video essay’. As a content creator myself this video fills me with excitement and a feeling of endless possibility. And that keeps me inspired.
A Brief History of Radiohead Pitchfork
Sting’s Name Change Blank on Blank
Young Thug, Wyclef Jean [Official Video] Young Thug
How Do You Edit an Animated Film The Royal Ocean Film Society
What To Do If Your Parachute Fails austinmcconnell
Inglourious Basterds, The Elements of Suspense Lessons from the Screenplay
How Not to be Boring The School of Life
Miklós Kiss
Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of Groningen, NL / co-author of Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video
Goodbye Uncanny Valley Alan Warburton
This highly informative video, one among the most educationally potent works of 2017, looks into “the other side of Uncanny Valley’. Following a rapid and illuminating walkthrough of the history and frontier of the phenomenon, claiming that the photorealistic CGI has won (meaning that image technology has already bridged the uncanny valley), this well-structured video gives a glimpse into the future of computer-generated renders in the domains of post-truth reality, post-cinema and theoretical photorealism.
The Museum of Lars Von Trier, Art References Titouan Ropert
This simple split-screen video elevates the ‘know’ genre (of comparative videos revealing artistic influences) by sensitive editing and subtle animations, blurring the line between expertly sampled fine-art references and Von Trier’s moving images.
The Magnificent Anders(s)ons, The Look of Reality Luís Azevedo, Beyond the Frame
I’m normally the last one to fall for such a title, comparing apple-Wes with pear-Roy, just because of their names’ similarity. But then comes Luís, with his trademark deadpan narration, tons of research, playful jokes and one of the most fluid editing styles I’ve seen, and I’m already bought at the five-minute mark of this 15-minute treadmill of bright insights.
In Praise of Blur Richard Misek and Martine Beugnet
In terms of videographic expression there’s nothing new here. Still, this concentrated juxtaposition of blurry images – gently supercut and sensitively interpreted by Misek – is a powerful reminder of what cinema could be but, through its technological efforts for visual ‘perfection’, perhaps less and less is. As Misek puts it: “A brief respite from the visual precision of the ultra-high definition image.”
How David Fincher Hijacks Your Eyes The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak)
Puschak is probably the most fluent video essayist out there. His effortless style stands out, whether breaking down jokes (of Louis CK… I know, still), analysing sound (when Listening to Blade Runner) or even saving a mediocre film by reshuffling its plot (Passengers, Rearranged).
My choice went for his Fincher video, showing that little camera movement trick that has been always there yet which most of us have failed to spot. Alongside these masterfully crafted videos, it would be highly educational to watch a Nerdwriter video about how the Nerdwriter makes a video.
Denis Lavant Wins Michael McLennan
A well-thought, well-done little idea: a running competition among film protagonists while listening to David Bowie’s Modern Love. Make it loud (and wait for the joke at the end)!
Kevin B. Lee
Filmmaker and critic
Ecstasy Hu Di
The Empty Screen Mark Rappaport
Goodbye Uncanny Valley Alan Warburton
Koyaanisqatsi and Its Complex Legacy Kyle Kallgren (Brows Held High)
Missing Episode Ross Sutherland and Charlie Lyne
Procedural: Zodiac and the Digital Cityscape Conor Bateman
Snake Oil for Niggertown Fever Steven Boone
What Happened to Her Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
Où en êtes-vous, Christian Petzold? Christian Petzold and Christoph Hochhausler
Wyclef Jean Ryan Staake and Young Thug
Honorable mentions:
The 2017 Chris Marker Legacy Awards (for most Markeresque video essays) goes to Letter from Marker by Luis Azevedo, and Once There Was Everything by kogonada.
The Video Essaying Film History Award goes to the Per una controstoria del cinema italiano (Towards a Counter History of Italian Cinema) project organised by Filmidée and Chiara Grizzaffi, and Motifs of Movement and Modernity by Patrick Keating.
Charlie Lyne
Filmmaker and critic
The Hollow Coin Frank Heath
Rat Film Theo Anthony
The Black Screen Richard Misek
Snake Oil for Niggertown Fever Steven Boone
The Whole Plate (series) Lindsay Ellis
The Zen in: Cuphead Goldvision
Silica Pia Borg
The Art of Editing and Suicide Squad Dan Olson
I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck
Once There Was Everything kogonada
Jessica McGoff
Video essayist
Consent in Cinema Ivana Brehas
I saw this video at the start of this year, admired its personal quality and was drawn to its sense of anger. It articulated the frustration that comes with watching art made by abusive men. Now, after more and more of this abuse continues to come to light, it plays as vital and prescient.
WTF IS THAT? The Pre- and Post-Cinematic Tendencies of Paranormal Activity Allison De Fren and Brian Cantrell
The video essay, itself fitting comfortably within post-cinematic discourse, can be an excellent tool to explore post-cinematic tendencies. This essay does so informatively and engagingly, whilst also taking the study of genre seriously.
AT THE LIMIT (Or, Vice Versa) Catherine Grant
Deleuze studies lends itself well to the format of the video essay, so much of it involving play, remix, becomings. This essay so elegantly and artfully provokes thought. Catherine Grant continues to be at the forefront of using the medium to do so.
#movieofmylife Kevin B. Lee (for the Locarno Film Festival)
My favourite thing about this video essay is how it puts a film out in to the world. It talks of Tokyo Story not just as study of object but as a material presence. Briefly, but with a deep sense of emotion, it communicates cinema’s tangibility within and upon our lives.
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
If Lee’s video signals cinema out in the tangible world, Lyne’s video explores the ‘containment’ of it within the screen. This video has a cogent grasp on the realities of watching cinema in the digital era, and vividly updates theory to suit the malleability of the frames it offers us.
Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy Daniel Mcilwraith
This video presents an engaging exploration of a trilogy that perhaps best sums up Kiarostami’s work. The video balances play with a sense of investigation, mirroring the trilogy’s approach. Made just a few months after Kiarostami’s death, it also serves as a reminder of all that we lost.
Daniel McIlwraith
Video essayist
Letter from Marker Luís Azevedo
Consent in Cinema Ivana Brehas
The Swamp (La Ciénaga): a videoessay Monica Delgado
The SENSES of an ENDING Catherine Grant
Once There Was Everything kogonada
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
Women’s Time-Image Jessica McGoff
Kelly Reichardt: “Elaborated Time” Travis Lee Ratcliff
Richard Misek
Filmmaker and academic
My two favourite video essays of 2017 are Charlie Lyne’s Frames and Containers and Mark Rappaport’s The Empty Screen. In approach they are each other’s opposite: Lyne’s history of aspect ratios is conversational and expository, Rappaport’s collage of film clips featuring cinema screens is sparsely worded and oblique.
Yet in a way they are also each other’s mirror. Lyne’s video demonstrates how films have adapted to fit new containers such as web browsers, mobile screens and VR headsets; Rappaport’s video demonstrates how, long before the LCD screen, the cinema screen was already a physical (even tactile) interface between viewer and image.
I highly recommend both, together. Lyne’s for the provocative questions that it poses about how cinema can find a place for itself within emergent media; Rappaport’s for its reminder of what, despite the multiplicity of screens in the world, makes the cinema screen such a singular and powerful object.
Jason Mittell
Professor of American studies and film and media culture
What Happened to Her Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
Nothing a Little Soap and Water Can’t Fix Jennifer Proctor
The two best video essays I saw this year are not (yet) publicly available online, as both filmmakers are screening them in festivals. Together they make a powerful but disturbing pair, sharing approaches, topics, and attitudes. What Happened to Her compiles scenes of dead women from crime films and television; Nothing a Little Soap and Water Can’t Fix assembles images of women in bathtubs across cinematic history. But neither would be seen as a “supercut,” as each is expertly crafted in their argumentation and design, and together make a powerful case for the impact of video essays as a means of feminist critique.
Motifs of Movement and Modernity Patrick Keating
This is the best video essay I saw this year that’s available freely online. It starts as a polished and sophisticated version of an explanatory work of film history, exploring particular facets of camera movement in early Hollywood. Then slowly it becomes a form of visual poetry, expressing its arguments through its unexpected motion and captivating frame design.
In Praise of Blur Martine Beugnet and Richard Misek
When done right, a video essay both reveals new ideas about its topic, often calling our attention to something we’ve seen but never noticed, and creates a compelling aesthetic experience in its own right. This hypnotically poetic collaborative video has made me notice blurred images in my everyday viewing, and reframed them as a compelling way to see the world.
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
Like Keating’s piece, Lyne’s video focuses our attention to frames within a larger container, presenting a series of ideas and concepts that are native to the videographic form, seemingly requiring this method to present its compelling arguments.
V. Renee
Screenwriter and managing editor of No Film School
The Handmaid’s Tale: Framing Strong Women ScreenPrism
How Does Horror Comedy Work? Patrick H. Willems
Hayao Miyazaki’s Cosmologics Adrian Randall
Captain Fantastic: The Unofficial Reading List Hint of Film
Best Shots of All Time CineFix
Wes Anderson: Set Design Candice Drouet of Really Dim
My Favorite Movie Memory: The Tragicomedy Now You See It
Scorsese Onscreen Fandor
Moonlight Explained: Symbols, Camera, and More ScreenPrism
Milk in Movies: Why Do Characters Drink It? Now You See It
By far, the most memorable video essay of the year for me was ScreenPrism’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Framing Strong Women. It just totally eviscerated that show’s metaphors, motifs, themes and cinematography. I loved it and truly learned a lot.
Speaking of ScreenPrism… they’ve really been killing it. I can always count on them for beefy, in-depth film studies.
Leigh Singer
Film writer and video essayist
Unseen Screens: Eye Tracking, Magic And Misdirection Tessa Dwyer & Jenny Robinson
Cameraperson to Person Conor Bateman
Letter From Marker Luis Azevedo
Why Horror VHS Artwork Was So F*Cked Up Adam Tinius
Stalker, Sculpting In Sound Alpha Alpaca Pack
The 3rd Shot: Superimposition in Film Philip Brubaker
The Weight of Gravity Filmscalpel
How David Fincher Uses Pop Music The Discarded Image
Showing Realistic Grief: Manchester by the Sea Thomas Flight
Jacob T. Swinney
Video essayist
One Way to Deconstruct There Will Be Blood – or any movie by The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak)
Quentin Tarantino: The Feminist Filmmaker? Philip Brubaker
These Are Films That Influenced The Master Philip Brubaker
Alfred Hitchcock // Point of View Jorge Luengo Ruiz
Scout Tafoya
Director, critic, video essayist
Facing Film Johannes Binotto
#movieofmylife Kevin B. Lee (for the Locarno Film Festival)
INTERVIEW Sofia Coppola: The Beguiled and Before the Shining Candice Drouet
Alien: Covenant – Art References Herrozzy (Santana Lopez)
Letter from Marker and Greta Moves Luís Azevedo
Michelangelo Antonioni’s Abstractions Camila Ausente
Milad Tangshir
Director
Reflexive Memories: The Images of the Cine-Essay Nelson Carvajal
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
Irina Trocan
Film critic and researcher
By now there are so many good video essays being made that I’ve given up trying to be objective. Here is my top ten, favouring personal stylistic preferences and cinematic interests and striving to strike some sort of overall balance, but without a doubt, all of them are really, really noteworthy. A couple of them are student works, which really proves that video-essay-making is (also) a vocation!
New Forms of Racism in the Post-Cinematic Dispositif v2 Jace Alexander Casey
It’s hard for written criticism to keep up with the minute alterations of digital images, showing them allows for more accuracy of detail. This robot-narrated, split-screen comparison in audiovisual makes a persuasive point about racial effacement in CGI-heavy blockbusters.
The Thinking Machine 6: Pieces of Spaces Adrian Martin & Cristina Alvarez-Lopez
Quoting from a film can severely distort the meaning of the excerpt, so AV essays aren’t always necessarily direct. It gets even trickier when dealing with sensitive material, and in this case, a ‘found footage’ film, Peter Tscherkassky’s experimental Outer Space is compared to its ‘raw’ source, Sidney J. Furie’s narrative fiction film The Entity.
SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN ascending length Jason Mittell
How much to quote from a film to still fall under the Fair Use provision? Two minutes? Ten minutes? How about all of it? Jason Mittell’s rearrangement of Singin’ in the Rain by shot length gives a good sense of its rhythm and the various types of narrative tropes within it, but obviously it does not replace or even resemble the experience of watching the original film.
What Happened to Her Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
The ever-growing body of fictional images can be used to tell a different story than the ones they were shot to narrate. This montage of naked young women’s corpses from male-detective-centred TV shows and thrillers exposes their inherent voyeurism. Do the detectives prove themselves by fighting for doing justice to the fragile victims who lay helpless in front of them? Yeah, but only after taking a good look.
Cameraperson to Person Conor Bateman
There’s structure in poetry, as this video essay argues with the evidence on screen: Kirsten Johnson’s work autobiography shows the unacknowledged director behind the cinematographer, and this video essay shows the editor behind her.
The Sound of Jackie Oswald Iten
Film sound is transient, and this makes it difficult to analyse in specific terms, but this video essay shows it’s by now means impossible. Commenting on Mica Levi’s soundtrack for Jackie, it resorts to repetition and precise visuals, in various shades of pink, following the film’s lead.
Frames and Containers Charlie Lyne
Showing and telling at its best, with the occasional punchline thrown in, it analyses the film frame throughout the cinematic/theoretic past, browser-window present and the five-minutes-in-the-future promise of VR.
Jack Frost the Snowman Nelson Carvajal
I do hope that, in their quest for legitimacy, video essays will not collectively forget to be lighthearted. This mashup of Jack Frost and The Snowman trailer has many inspired visual solutions and is surely preferable to watching either of the two films.
Delphine Aprisonada Ricardo Pinto de Magalhães
Delphine Seyrig has worked with so many indisputable auteurs that hardly any critical attention focuses on her authorship within the films. With split-screens that overcome the challenge of harmonising very different rhythms of narration, this video is an ode to a goddess of opaque film acting.
Video essays, ideally, have more freedom in retelling the history of cinema than canon-comprehensive, the-world-history-in-fifteen-hours audiovisual histories. It can also evoke film memory rather than compress it, a supercut with the mischiefs of Totò can spark nostalgia in viewers who know him, only to become creepy by accumulation. This series is the result of an initiation into video essays, avoids the most famous Italian directors and shifts gears often enough to keep spectators guessing, three excellent reasons to trick this poll by naming a series rather than a single title.
David Verdeure
It’s been a strange year. For video essays too. It seemed like the political turmoil and tribulations sucked the air out of the internet, making it hard for anything else to thrive or even survive in that online space. Making and watching video essays felt frivolous, given the state of reality.
Then again, the best video essays find ways to create their own atmosphere and to breathe life into art and reality. They reshape the object of their studies into a visual form that is both a revelatory end-point and a provocative starting point for further exploration. And sometimes they’re a little frivolous.
Here are ten such essays, in alphabetical order.
The Eternal Virgin Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas
For the way this hypnotic study of Setsuko Hara, the favourite actress of Yasujirō Ozu, adopts the formal rigour of Ozu himself.
Goodbye Uncanny Valley Alan Warburton
For its comprehensive and creative charting of the past, present and future of CGI in cinema and the visual arts.
In Praise of Blur Richard Misek and Martine Beugnet
For the aesthetic pleasure of seeing its on-screen texts not only comment on but also commune with its images.
Lego Movie Oswald Iten
For its methodical and keenly observed look at how state-of-the-art CGI is used to mimic more rudimentary forms of animation.
The Sea Speaks Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin
For the way this poetic montage of Jean Epstein excerpts floats ideas of femininity and the maritime.
Sergei / Sir Gay Mark Rappaport
For its inventive, inquisitive and irreverent exploration of Eisenstein’s sexuality.
Shining360 Claire Hentschker
For its use of 360 degrees and VR technology to create a visualisation that is both an architectural wonder and a warped mindscape.
Star Tribute Videos Catherine Grant
For the way Grant uses these homages to get not just to the heart of the deceased performers, but also of her own cinephilia.
Tramp the Dirt Down Conor Bateman
For its ingenious (and revelatory) parody of an Ozploitation classic. (And because Bateman’s Zodiac and the Digital Cityscape could also be on this list, for the eloquent and elegant way in which it ties together film and video games, criticism and academia, futurism and nostalgia).
Tension & Horror in Comics Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
For the astute ways in which this series of sequential art analysis videos dissects visual storytelling.