Video Essays at the Museum of the Moving Image
Plus, a new podcast episode on Ways of Doing & some other stuff I've been thinking about
Hello video essay makers, watchers, and friends,
2024 has been, without question, one of the oddest years for me personally when it comes to video essays. Since I started The Video Essay Podcast more than five years ago, I’ve more or less felt that I had a decent feel for a sizable chunk (of course not all) of the videographic happenings in the academic space, and a solid awareness of what was going on in more critical and popular spaces.
But a lot has changed in ways both (mostly!) good and bad. Now, it seems that each week there is a new special issue, a new CFP, a new curated program of video essay works. And, of course, the offerings on YouTube continue to grow in exciting ways, albeit in an online ecosystem that has become even more difficult to parse through.
Just this week, Film School Rejects, a website to which I used to regularly contribute, and once one of the most prolific chroniclers of the video essay scene (especially in Meg Shields’ column, The Queue), announced after months of not publishing that it is for sale. A major loss for the video essay ecosystem.
My intention is to publish another newsletter at the end of this year, offering some more reflections and also curating a big list of all that has happened in the videographic space in 2024: edited issues, online talks, in person events, festival screenings, publications, etc.
I want to catch up, and I’m sure other folks do too.
Please send me an email (willdigravio[@]gmail.com) with anything you’d like me to include—don’t be shy!
Onward,
Will
P.S. I too am now on Blue Sky.
Video Essays at MoMI!
On Friday, January 3rd, the annual conference of the American Historical Association will feature a panel on the video essay with papers by John Gibbs, Mara Oliva, Evelyn Kreutzer, and Kevin B. Lee!
On that same evening, the quartet of video essayists and myself will also launch “Expanded Screens: The Video Essay” at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City (Astoria, Queens, to be exact).
We hope that anyone in the greater NYC area can join us! If you plan on attending, please let us know as we look forward to hopefully meeting many new folks! You can learn more about the four programs we curated, here.
A very happy congratulations to Maryam Tafakory, winner of this year’s Film London Jarman award, awarded for British excellence in the field of moving image! Maryam’s 2022 work, Nazarbazi, will screen as part of the program, “The New Avant-Garde.”
On “Ways of Doing”
The latest episode of The Video Essay Podcast features an interview with Lucy Fife Donaldson, Colleen Laird, Dayna McLeod, and Alison Peirse on their ongoing series of collaborations and methodological practices, "Ways of Doing." They are interviewed by Kevin B. Lee.
This episode is the seventh in an ongoing collaboration between The Video Essay Podcast and "The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies," a three-year research project on video essays led by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema at USI University of Lugano, with Johannes Binotto and Evelyn Kreutzer, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
For more on Ways of Doing, visit their website and subscribe to their newsletter.
Miklós Kiss Writes In
Another recent episode of The Video Essay Podcast featured Evelyn Kreutzer and Alan O’Leary discussing the importance of writings on video essays, during which they talked at length about the work of Miklós Kiss.
Following the episode, Miklós asked if I might consider publishing his written response to the episode. I happily agreed and you can find his text, an illuminating piece of writing on videographic criticism in its own right, here.
Some stuff I wrote and am thinking about
I’ve been finally making my way through this essential, new(ish) two volume issue of Academic Quarter on “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities,” co-edited by Libertad Gills, Catherine Grant, and Alan O’Leary.
Those familiar with my own videographic work, and just, frankly, my general existence, will know of my intense love for all things Dean Martin. For the Los Angeles Review of Books earlier this month, I wrote an essay-review on Dino’s work with Jerry Lewis, in the context of The Biggest Thing in Show Business: Living It Up with Martin & Lewis, a great new book from SUNY Press by Murray Pomerance and Matthew Solomon. Read here.
My obsession with classic comedy, and in particular its circulation on YouTube (the #1 desktop doc I’d like to someday make!) has led to my writing more about late night television. I now write a weekly recap column over at Paste Magazine and have begun contributing feature pieces on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson over at a fab, newish website, LateNighter. I was quite interested to see the news that David Letterman’s company will be launching “Letterman TV,” a 24-hour channel featuring archival material from both his NBC and CBS shows. Imagine the videographic possibilities …
If you’re looking for viewing over the holidays:
I’d highly recommend Hasan Minhaj’s new Netflix special, which I reviewed for Time magazine.
A great film I feel has flown mostly under the radar is Ellen Kuras’ Lee, starring Kate Winslet as the photographer and photojournalist Lee Miller. My review of the film is included in the Winter 2024 issue of Cineaste. You can read a preview (and learn more about our latest issue) here.
Also for the magazine, I shared some thoughts on the 2024 New York Film Festival, focusing on five films that have stayed with me since (read here):
No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor) on the displacement of Palestinians by the Israeli military in the West Bank;
Jimmy (Yashaddai Owens), a reenactment/reimagining of James Baldwin first arriving in Paris;
The newly restored Northern Lights (1978; John Hanson & Rob Nilsson), on the founding of the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota
Eephus (Carson Lund), on a final day of baseball
Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra) on bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey
