Volume 3, Issue 4: Back to School
Cary Grant, UMass Video Essay Conference, And More!
Hello everyone!
I hope that all of you students, staff and teachers out there have a great start to the school year. One of the most popular features of newsletters past was the “Student Spotlight” section, featuring interviews with student creators about their work. You can find an archive of past interviews here.
As the school year begins, I’m hoping to revive this section of the newsletter. Please send me the work of students who you think would make a good fit to be featured in this newsletter. And students, please feel free to send in your work as well! Don’t be shy! You can reach me at willdigravio[at]gmail.com.
Today’s spotlight features a conversation with Celia Sainz, who is a Ph.D. Candidate in Hispanic and Film Studies at UMass Amherst, where she works on her dissertation, Ecopathic Imaginaries: Iberian Visual Cultures in the Anthropocene, in which she explores the affective responses to the ecological crisis through cinema.
It's my understanding that this video was made as part of your master's thesis. Were there other elements to the thesis? And if so, could you describe how the video essay complimented the other elements?
Exactly, I made my master’s thesis as a video essay. I believe it was the first time that a video essay was accepted as a master's thesis by UMass Amherst. I wasn't sure that it was going to be admitted as a valid format. Besides that, I was hesitant because it’s still difficult to get tenure track in some universities with projects that can be considered part of Digital Humanities. That’s why I wanted to know that, first, I wouldn’t have an issue with UMass, and second, that it would not be a disadvantage when it comes to entering the job market. The success of this is all thanks to my advisor Barbara Zecchi (who is herself an amazing video essayist and who inspired me to get into it); she had the initiative to make it happen and was an essential part of the entire process.
The Graduate School accepted my video essay alongside a 1000-word document that followed the more traditional structure of master’s theses. This written part was an explanation of my video essay, where I illustrated its structure, the main theories I drew from, and so on. This video essay and accompanying text follows a very similar structure to [in]Transition, which asks for a 300-1000-word statement from all who publish on their site.
The process of making this video essay was long, and it took different steps and perspectives and the huge help of many people around me. It started as a final project for a class with Professor Kevin Anderson in Advantage Digital Filmmaking. There I shared my work in progress with the class, and had feedback from the professor and classmates. It’s incredibly helpful to have that kind of community, where members can share work, reflect on them, and so on. One of the main comments I received at the beginning of the process was related to leaving more space and time for images on screen without me talking over them, to give some breaks to the audience to soak the images. Most of the people in that class were interested in filmmaking more than in theoretical work, and that influenced the rhythm and pace of my work—maintaining the sensations that the movies created for me, while at the same time building something new and different. That’s when I made the first version of my video essay, mostly focused on making something beautiful from the beautiful works I was departing from.
I continued my project with the help of ProfessorZecchi, revising it to become a video essay that could hopefully be accepted as an academic work, with strong theory to support my claims. From there, Barbara gave me feedback related to the conveying of ideas. The balance for me was how to introduce a theoretically sustancial work, with a focus on comparing those four films (which I think that has to do with the explanatory dimension), maintaining at the same time the aesthetics and rhythm I was looking for, that was an important part of my film analysis (that it relates with the poetic approach). Finding that balance was important for me, and I tried to be precise about it. I thought about every element I added very carefully, and I constantly eliminated what was not essential. The combination of that, along with working through different stages of revision and having feedback from many different people, was extremely helpful and crucial for my final project.
Was there something the video essay allowed you to express in ways the other elements did not?
I feel that making sense of an argument through the same material of the work that it's based on (images and sounds in the case of films) offered me huge advantages but also challenges. Taking the images and rearranging them in my own way allows me to better see all kinds of things in the movies, like connections, patterns, contrasts, and so on. Especially when I am putting several movies in conversation. But they also put me in the position of wondering: are the images really telling me what I am trying to say? Does this work? Do these connections really make sense? Sometimes the answer was no, and sometimes they let me see other connections that I hadn’t previously seen. It’s really a very interesting work. In the same way that writers make sense of their ideas by writing, I believe that people who engage in film criticism can benefit from editing the works they are working on.
One of the things that stuck with me most while watching your video was how precise it was; it didn't seem as if there was an unnecessary or extra frame or word in the piece. I was wondering how you went about distilling your argument in this way. What was your approach?
In terms of the final product and how well it translated to the audience, there are many differences between the written word and a video essay form. I can read about the impact of a certain image, or the evolving effect of the sound, but the impact of actually seeing and listening to it personally allows me to move from the abstract to the concrete, to convey the physical sensations that I am trying to explain. For example, my work talks about haptic imaginary, and the way spectators feel about the images, how we connect somatically with the screen and the characters. The difference between explaining that reaction and being able to recreate it for the spectator is huge for me. When it comes to moving beyond the narrative of the movie to actually reflecting on the sensorial power of the work, the use of audiovisual images facilitates my work.
In my video essay I also reflect on the temporality of the images, the particular sense of time that these movies create. It was powerful for me to use a similar rhythm and pace when editing them to convey this temporality. I work with very atmospheric movies that rely on the immersive and emotional power of the combination of images and sounds, and the rhythm thereof. Using the video essay medium to discuss them was helpful.
In a more practical sense, keeping in mind that I work with less popular movies, the video essay allowed me to reflect on them more easily, since it is possible that I am not sharing the same memory of the movie as the person who is reading about it. I believe this creates a bigger engagement with my work than what the sole written word would allow me.
In the end, people who work within Film Studies love movies and strongly believe in the power of the audiovisual language, so it just makes total sense to me to use images, text, words and sounds to reflect on other images, text, words and sounds.
Your video was also published in [in]Transition. I'd be curious to know how you found the process. What was it like to publish the video as a stand alone work outside the context of the thesis? What changes (if any) were made as a result of the process?
I sent my video essay to [in]Transition in a very similar version to what I made for my master’s thesis. I also sent the written part that I’d written for that, which is a requirement for the magazine, as I mentioned before. (I made some changes after the feedback I received in my master’s defense, but they were minimal.) In that sense, both formats were very similar, since they asked to be accompanied by a 1000-word statement.
I received the approval for the publication with the peer review of two film scholars: Maria Hofmann and Elizabeth Ramírez Soto. Their comments were extremely helpful and generous, and I am so grateful for that! The [in]Transition team was excellent. I learned a lot in the process of publication, and I feel so honored to be published in a magazine that I admire so much, and that shares the space with video essays I admire like Catherine Grant, Chloé Galibert-Laîné and Cristina Álvarez López among others.
Episode 31. Barbara Zecchi
The most recent episode of The Video Essay podcast features a conversation with Barbara Zecchi, a feminist film scholar, critic, festival curator, and video essayist. Barbara has published and lectured extensively on European and Latin American cinemas, women filmmakers, feminist film theory, adaptation theory, gender and aging studies, videographic criticism, and on the use of technology in the humanities. Since 2016 she has served as Associate Member of The Film Academy of Spain (Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España).
Will and Emily chat with Barbara about a number of topics, including her background and videographic origin story, the GynoCine Project, the "accented" video essay, and several of Barbara's own works. We focus specifically on Barbara's recent video, "Filling (Feeling) the Archival Void: the case of Helena Cortesina’s Flor de España." Barbara, who is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, also discusses the upcoming conference, "Theory and Practice of the Video-Essay: an International Conference on Videographic Criticism."
Cary Grant: A Class Act - Call for Contributions
The Cary Comes Home Festival, in partnership with The Video Essay Podcast
The Fifth Cary Comes Home Festival takes its theme as “Class,” celebrating the working-class heritage of Archibald Leach. Taking class in its broadest sense, we invite video essays which explore social mobility and identity across a range of Cary Grant’s performances from Cockney Cary in films like Sylvia Scarlett and None But the Lonely Heart, to the Sophisticated Cary of To Catch a Thief and Charade. The aim is not to invite “poverty porn”, but videos which probe the tension between being both Archie and Cary and the tremendous psychic effort it must have taken for Cary Grant to navigate this trajectory to stardom where he came to represent suave sophistication of American high-society.
We are open to all forms of audio-visual criticism, including video essays, fanvids, and any kind of video that reappropriates footage of Cary Grant. Videos of any length will be accepted but the ideal length will be between 5-6 minutes. All submitted work will be featured on the Cary Comes Home website and on The Video Essay Podcast website. Some of the best work will be featured on an episode of The Video Essay Podcast which will be recorded live at the virtual festival in November. Creators will be invited to join the conversation. Check out The Journeys of Cary Grant screening to see how it will work.
Rolling Deadline until: Friday 14 October 2022
I’m counting down the days until September 22 & 23, when “Theory & Practice of The Video Essay,” an International Conference on Videographic Criticism, will be held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The full program is now available on the conference website and registration is now open!
News & Notes
Have something you’d like to share? Please send news and notes for future newsletters to willdigravio{at}gmail.com.
September
“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.
October
Tecmerin. Journal of Audiovisual Essays has launched its CFP for issue 10: “In issue 10 we propose a special section dedicated to video essays related to the theme "Women in contemporary cinema and TV" that revolve around the participation of women in the field of film and television creation. Works with a historical perspective or focusing on the representation of women in the media will also be welcomed. Section curated by Ana Mejón, Elena Ortega Oroz and Asier Gil Vázquez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).” The deadline is October 15, 2022. Learn more here.
November
Symposium: Videoessays and Academic Filmmaking: Practices, Pedagogies and Potentials (via Alan O’Leary)
“This online symposium is part of a series of events at Aarhus over three days (8-10 November) devoted to videoessays and filmmaking as a means of research, scholarship, communication and publication. Featuring internationally renowned practitioners and academic filmmakers and teachers from a range of career stages, these events will showcase videoessay and filmmaking activity and ask: What are the political, epistemological, and aesthetic advantages of filmmaking in the academic context, and what are its potentials? What place is there for experimental approaches to filmmaking in academic practice? What are the institutional opportunities for and impediments to the adoption and development of filmmaking in the academy? How can academics themselves learn and teach videoessay-making and filmmaking practice?”
December
Via Ariel Avissar:
“I am excited to announce a call for submissions to a special TV Dictionary issue of [in]Transition, that will exclusively feature student work! This call is intended for students (undergraduate + graduate) of any age, and is open until the end of the year (December 31, 2022). For anyone unfamiliar with the TV Dictionary, it is a collaborative videographic collection I started last summer; each entry attempts to capture the essence of a television series using a single word, in a short video that combines the dictionary definitions of that word with a clip or several clips from the series. You can check out the collection, which currently includes 50 videos, here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8660446.
Contributions to the collection (by any one!) are always welcome – and any student entries that will be submitted by the end of the year will also be considered for inclusion in a special issue of [in]Transition, the Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, intended for publication in 2023.
I invite any students who are interested in doing so to submit their own entries – and I invite my colleagues who employ videographic criticism with their students to use the TV Dictionary prompt in their classes and encourage their students to submit their own!
Email me your submissions at arielavissar24[at]gmail.com or tweet me at @ariel_avissar. All submissions will be in English or include English captions, and will be uploaded to Vimeo. Inclusion in the collection might be contingent on a review process; any videos submitted for inclusion in the special issue will be subject to a further peer review process.”
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