Volume 3, Issue 2: A Return to Video Camp
An exciting opportunity for videographic mentorship and more!
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Greetings from Middlebury, Vermont, where I am thrilled to once again be working as the teaching assistant for the 2022 Scholarship in Sound & Image Workshop. Many thanks to my former (and always) teachers, Jason Mittell and Christian Keathley, and Ethan Murphy for inviting me back!
Jason, Chris and Catherine Grant developed the exercises created by the participants in the first week of the workshop, as detailed in their open-access book. The first exercise is a Videographic PechaKucha: 6, 10-second clips, accompanied by one minute of continuous audio. I had some free time on my hands and decided to make one myself. I went a little meta and worked with kogonada’s seminal video essay, “What is neorealism?” You can watch the full PechaKucha below:
One of the highlights of the videographic world in the past month or so has been the work going on over at Filmexplorer. The website has invited three video essayists — Chloé Galibert-Laîné, Johannes Binotto, and Kevin B. Lee — to curate video essays centered on various themes for their rotating “Video Essay Gallery.” You can learn more and watch the latest installment of the project here.
As part of the gallery, Chloé, Johannes, and Kevin have recorded a conversation about their selections. I am very pleased that The Video Essay Podcast is republishing those conversations! You can listen to the first, which centers on “Home Positions,” below.
A special thanks to the Filmexplorer team, Giuseppe Di Salvatore and Ruth Baettig, for this collaboration!
I’m very pleased to share that I am participating in the 2022 Screen Studies Conference on July 1. My talk is part of the panel “Playful Practices,” which will also feature papers by Charlotte Crofts and Thomas Ellis. You can learn more about the presentations, including my own, “I wonder as I tweet: on watching Rio Bravo for one year via Twitter,” here.
Later this year, I am very excited to be participating in the symposium, “Videography: Art and Academia. Epistemological, Political and Pedagogical Potentials of AudiovisualPractices,” which will take place in Hannover, Germany from November 2 - 4. One of the most exciting parts of the symposium, which is organized by Dr. Evelyn Kreutzer, Prof. Dr. Kathleen Loock, Anna Sophie Philippi, and Dr. Maike Reinerth, is a “Videography Mentorship Program” they will be running as part of the festivities. The deadline to apply is June 30, 2022!!
Here is their full call, which you can also access here:
Call for Applications: Videography Mentorship Program
The Videography Mentorship Program will run as part of the symposium “Videography: Art and Academia. Epistemological, Political and Pedagogical Potentials of Audiovisual Practices,” which will take place in Hannover, Germany on November 2 - 4, 2022 and is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. The Videography Mentorship Program is designed to open the videographic community of practice to up to 10 new members at the beginning of their own videographic journeys. We are thrilled that the following scholars/practitioners have agreed to serve as mentors: Catherine Grant, Christian Keathley, Jason Mittell, Allison de Fren, Kevin B. Lee, and Ian Garwood.
In the months leading up to the symposium, each mentee will be paired with a mentor, receive a short videographic assignment based on their proposal, and work towards producing a video essay (ca. 5-10 minutes) and an accompanying creator’s statement (ca. 800-1,000 words). The mentees will meet virtually with their mentor once before the symposium to discuss the completed assignment and the larger project and once during the symposium itself to give feedback on the work-in- progress.
You are invited to submit a proposal for the Videography Mentorship Program. No previous experience in making video essays is required. Access to editing software (e.g. Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, iMovie) and basic knowledge of how to use it will be necessary to work on the assignment and larger project. We welcome applications from graduate students and faculty. If admitted to th e program, your travel costs to the symposium and hotel accommodation will be covered. The program is open to applicants of all nationalities. However, we can only sponsor travel costs from within Europe.
Please send a brief proposal (max. 300 words) of your videographic project and a short bio (max. 100 words) with the subject line “Videography Mentorship Program” to videography@filmuniversitaet.de. The deadline is June 30, 2022. We will notify all applicants by mid-July 2022.
Dr. Evelyn Kreutzer, Prof. Dr. Kathleen Loock, Anna-Sophie Philippi, and Dr. Maike Reinerth
(the organizers of the symposium)
And one more shameless, plug: check out my contribution to the ongoing series of blogs reflecting on Ariel Avissar’s TV Dictionary Project, published at the Critical Studies in Television blog: “On Collaborative Videographic Criticism & The Myth of John Adams.”
Check out all the other entries here, or below:
“TV Dictionary on The Bridge/Bron/Broen” by Barbara Zecchi and Ian Garwood
“On Finding the Footage of American Bandstand” by Tomer Nechushtan
“The TV Dictionary and My First Cuts and Edits Into Videographic Criticism” by Dan O’Brien
“The TV Dictionary — An Introduction” by Ariel Avissar
And be sure to tune in to the June 29 roundtable dedicated to the project at the CST online slow conference. The roundtable will be held at 3:15 - 4:45 pm BST and feature Libertad Gills, Catherine Grant, Evelyn Kreutzer, Johannes Binotto, Ariel Avissar and Jason Mittell. More here.
More News & Notes
Please send news and notes for future newsletters to willdigravio@gmail.com.
Recent News
The latest issue of NECSUS features a fantastic collection of video essays curated by Liz Greene. The collection includes video essays by Catherine Grant, John Gibbs and Douglas Pye, Johannes Binotto, Ian Garwood, and Liz Greene. Read Liz’s introductory essay, “Sound and the audiovisual essay, part 2: The theory, history, and practice of film sound and music in videographic criticism.”
The 9th issue of Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays is now live! Check out the entire issue here.
Prolific video essayists Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López have been collecting their past works into the multi-volume “The Audiovisual Essay Collection.” From Cristina’s blog: “This collection aims to bring together the audiovisual essays that Adrian Martin and I have been making for more than ten years. All works have been revised for inclusion in this Collection, and many have been technically upgraded and improved.” Learn more via Cristina’s blog, here.
Evelyn Kreutzer has put out a new call for videos to be included as part of an ongoing project called Moving Poems, “a showcase of video essays based on poetry.” More here.
A new post by Catherine Grant for Film Studies for Free: “In the Nick of Time: On Cli-Fi and Ecocinema Film and Moving Image Studies.”
A new issue of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism was published last month and features a mix of written and audiovisual work. More here.
Coming up in July
The HOLLYWOOD MEMORIES research group is holding the in-person workshop “Audience Research: Methods and Approaches” at Leibniz University Hannover. The workshop will include a screening of video essays Catherine Grant, Ariel Avissar, Evelyn Kreutzer, Cormac Donnelly, and Kathleen Loock. Learn more about the July 8 event here.
Looking Ahead
“The Adelio Ferrero Award is the oldest and most renowned Italian award for young film critics, historically featuring two contests, for essays and reviews in Italian. The 38h edition features a section dedicated to video essays (audiovisual works that analyze works and issues related to the audiovisual field). This section is addressed to international participants, filmmakers and video essayists from everywhere.” The deadline to submit is September 15, 2022. Learn more here.
“Theory & Practice of The Video Essay,” an International Conference on Videographic Criticism, will be held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from September 22-23, 2022. Learn more here.