Volume 3, Issue 6: Openness
Plus, six new videos on Cary Grant and much more!
Hello hello!
The latest episode of The Video Essay Podcast features reflections from the participants and organizers of a recent symposium held in Hannover, Germany from November 2-4, 2022, "Videography: Art and Academia. Epistemological, Political and Pedagogical Potentials of Audiovisual Practices." Learn more about the symposium here.
The episode begins with a roundtable discussion between the symposium organizers -- Anna-Sophie Philippi, Maike Reinerth, Kathleen Loock, and Evelyn Kreutzer -- and is then followed by short reflections from symposium participants on the theme of openness. Specifically, participants were asked to "reflect on the term 'openness', as it emerged prominently in Hannover, such as in its relation to the local and the global, our sense of community and network, and the challenges and potentials that are associated with it." Listen here.
Film Thought 3. Godard is Dead
Below is the latest installment in my ongoing “Film Thoughts” series.
Cary Grant: A Class Act
The Video Essay Podcast in collaboration with the Cary Comes Home Festival is thrilled to share six new video essays created as part of the program, “Cary Grant: A Class Act.” Learn more about the project here and watch the videos below.
Patreon
What do we make of video essays that use original footage? The following blog post on my Patreon includes some very initial thoughts on this question, and some notes on a couple of works that have helped me think about it. More here.
News & Notes
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.”
January
“Films From Iran For Iran,” currently screening for free on Another Screen, is “a programme of films by women and non-binary filmmakers, made from 1979 to the present day, with a focus on experimental and non-fiction work.” Watch here until January 4, 2023
March
“Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities: Research Method, Communication Medium and Mode of Thought”
“Special issue of online open access journal Academic Quarter addressing the different forms, modes and approaches to academic filmmaking in the New Humanities and beyond, edited by Libertad Gills, Catherine Grant and Alan O’Leary.
This issue (to be published early 2024) will interrogate a shared medium and our common or diverging processes and methods. It aims to bring together a wide range of practitioners and scholars of filmmaking research, academic film and videographic criticism to debate the particular affordances of filmmaking as means and medium of investigation and communication. Proposals are invited for articles or video essays, or combinations of prose and audiovisual work. Potential contributors are invited to contact the editors to discuss ideas before submitting a proposal (abstract deadline 15 March 2023).” Learn more here.
June
"CO-VIDeos: a Collective Videographic Project on TV Series and the Pandemic"
“In the context of the financed project "TV Series in the Pandemic Era » (Université Paris Cite - IDEX 2022-2023), Ariane Hudelet will be curating a collection of short video essays dealing with our personal connection to TV series during the pandemic period. The parameters are:
- 3 minutes max
- Your video will feature footage from a series – a scene, a brief sequence, or a montage of scenes or still shots
- A voiceover, or text on screen, will explain why this particular series resonates with your experience of the pandemic (either because you watched it in lockdown or because it shed light on a particular aspect of the pandemic period, for instance). The video can be in any language, but an English version is required (via subtitles for instance)
Please contact ariane.hudelet@u-paris.fr if you wish to contribute.
Video essays allow a more personal take on the material, balancing a poetic and an analytical approach. They will provide a different way to tackle the emotional connection that the serial form particularly encourages, especially in a very uncertain period.
The main project deals more broadly with the effects of the Covid pandemic on the serial form, in terms of production, representation, and reception. It will lead to a special journal issue (to be determined) including a video essay section.”
The tentative deadline is June 30, 2023, but could be extended beyond the initial publication.
Evergreen
For the fifth year in a row, students at American University, under the supervision of Jeff Middents, have published a new edition of The Contemporary World Cinema Project, 17 video essays crafted by first year students. “Together, this is their response to: what is world cinema today?” Watch here.
Issue 10 of Tecmerin. Journal of Audiovisual Essays was published earlier this month. The issue’s monograph focuses on “Women in Contemporary Film & TV.” Watch here.
Issue 9.3 of [in]Transition, a special issue co-conceived, co-produced and co-edited by Ariel Avissar and Evelyn Kreutzer, features videos from Once Upon a Screen Volume 2, a follow up project to Once Upon a Screen, which originally appeared in The Cine-Files in 2020. Watch here.
Be sure to read and watch the latest issue of NECSUS, which features an exciting collection of video essays. More here.
Monstrum 5, Issue 2 features two video essays and a mix of other work. Watch and read here.
Many congratulations to Evelyn Kreutzer for receiving a DFG grant for a research project on "The Digital Video Essay"! Learn more about the project here and read an interview with Evelyn here.
A recording from a recent event at Aarhus University featuring Ariel Avissar and Evelyn Kreutzer talking about their Once Upon a Screen project, moderated by Alan O’Leary, is now available online. Watch here.
An essay from Scott MacDonald in The Edge, “Is the Video Essay a New Avant-Garde?”
Jiří Anger on the “Audiovisual Essays” section of Film a doba:
“Established in 1955, Film a doba is one of the oldest Czech (and East-Central European) journals for film criticism, with a strong online presence in recent years. The section is curated by me and offers two audiovisual essays a month listed under specific themes (Desktop, Tarkovsky, Analog vs. Digital, Feminism, etc.). … For now, there are almost twenty AV essays available (with more to come). Even though the accompanying texts are in Czech, most of the video essays are available in English. So if you want to know what’s happening with videographic criticism in East-Central Europe, give it a shot.” More here.
Watch the latest video from the Essay Library, “The Exquisite Replay”
“To mark the BBC centenary, Dr Shane O’Sullivan and Dr Colm McAuliffe at Kingston School of Art offered emerging filmmakers across the UK access to 150 films from BBC Archive for creative reuse in short film projects.” Watch here.
Via Katie Bird, who is currently at work on a video essay project, Re-Editing Gunsmoke:
“Re-Editing Gunsmoke is a video essay project and digital archive on the history of the American Cinema Editor’s educational film Film Editing: Interpretations and Values (1958). The project has been developed by Dr. Katie Bird.
As part of a scholarly video essay on the history of the American Cinema Editor’s Gunsmoke assignment, I am looking for filmmakers, former and current film students, or anyone who worked with the ACE Gunsmoke dailies footage in a classroom setting who are interested in contributing to a video essay and digital archive.
I am looking for participants willing to share a recording of their edited Gunsmoke student projects AND/OR a Voice Memo Memory of working on the project. These projects and recorded memories may be used and credited in a Fair Use/Non-Profit/Scholarly Video Essay on the creative practices and history of the ACE project. Additionally, with permission, the voice memos will be made available as a digital archive connected with the video essay, so that other filmmakers, students, and educators may continue to learn from the decades of students who’ve completed this project.” Learn more here.
Check out the latest issue of Screenworks, dedicated to “Musicology on Screen”
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