Volume 4, Issue 3: The Best Video Essays of 2023
Plus, a mix of new videographic publications, CFPs, and more
For the seventh time, the venerable British magazine Sight & Sound has published a survey of the year’s “best” video essays. Curated this year by Irina Trocan, Queline Meadows, and Will Webb, this year’s poll features “48 voters from 17 countries, including academics, critics, online creators and festival curators. Together, their 260 nominations include 181 distinct titles.”
For the fifth time, I sent in ballot, which reads as follows:
Each year, it gets more difficult to be a viewer of video essays; it is a beautiful and frustrating thing. More people are making them. They are longer. They screen at festivals, and in varied corners of the internet. Below are a few of the video essays that have resonated with me this year. Rather than try and explain why I picked them, I will instead attempt to describe something in each work. Here’s hoping it might inspire you to give them all a watch.
Joséphine Baker Watches Herself by Terri Francis
[3:43] On the left, Joséphine Baker performs in the famous skirt made out of bananas. On the right, a clip from a 1968 CBC interview with Baker. Below, a translation on screen: “No, it’s about work. You have to work hard.” A video essay that grows richer with each rewatch.
Apostles of Cinema (Tenzi za sinema) by Cece Mlay, Darragh Amelia, Gertrude Malizana, Jesse Gerard Mpango
“I like quality films. And I like difficult films,” says DJ Black. But if it is bad, “I can’t dub it.” [04:51] An incisive documentary about film culture in Tanzania.
watch me sleep: self-surveillance and middle-aging queer performance anxiety by Dayna McLeod
There’s a moment in the second minute I felt throughout my whole body. A revelation.
Void by Kevin Ferguson
The persistence of Robert Duvall’s bald head, especially at [00:13] and [04:46].
Why the Internet Loves Buster Keaton by Don McHoull
I imagine Don’s masterful montages of the internet’s response to Keaton’s artistry, and also that of Fayard and Harold Nicholas, playing on the wall of a gallery.
moving poems: a raisin in the sun (1961) by Desirée de Jesús
Water ripples. Sidney Poitier, playing with his lighter, gestures for a drink. His finger points to the text on screen, “in the sun?” Off-screen dialogue plays. [00:26] A harmonious blend of sound, image, and text.
Miss Me Yet by Chris Bell
Each episode begins with George W. Bush raising his middle finger to the camera, a gesture that becomes more grotesque and poignant the more one watches.
As always, reading the list this year came with a fantastic sense of discovery, and also the occasional, “How did I miss that one?!”, or “That was released this year?!” I look forward to revisiting the list again and again in the coming months and years.
I am equally excited to share a new episode of The Video Essay Podcast, “Curating Sight & Sound's Best Video Essays of 2023.” In a conversation moderated by Kevin B. Lee, the curators of this year's list discuss the results of the poll, their curatorial strategies, and offer general thoughts on the video essay landscape in 2023.
This episode is the first in an ongoing collaboration between The Video Essay Podcast and Kevin, who, in his role as the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema at USI University of Lugano, is leading a three-year research project on video essays with Johannes Binotto and Evelyn Kreutzer, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
News & Notes
Have something you would like featured in this section? Email me! willdigravio[at]gmail.com.
Lucy Fife Donaldson, Colleen Laird, Dayna McLeod and Alison Peirse have announced a new videographic initiative, Ways of Doing. From their website:
We are fostering an ethical praxis of audiovisual research, including the modeling of feminist citational practices, collective care, and the creation of an inclusive, videographic community of practitioners. We encourage engagement with the resources we offer here and provide suggestions on citational practices for the classroom and for your own creative practice.
Applications are now open for the 2024 Scholarship in Sound & Image Workshop at Middlebury College! From Jason Mittell:
Join me, Catherine Grant and Dayna McLeod in Middlebury Vermont from June 16-29 to learn how to make videographic work, whether you're new to the form or have experience and want to develop your skills & style.
Applications are due February 12, 2014. For more information on the program, tuition, and beautiful Middlebury, Vermont (yes, I am biased!) click here.
Calls for Video Essays
II International Permanent Seminar Intersecting Perspectives on Spanish Media: Women and Horror, June 13th and 14th, Campus Madrid-Puerta Toledo (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid):
This seminar aims to address the relationship between women and horror in Spanish cinema and TV from various perspectives, with special attention to contemporary works, but without overlooking the influence that past works have had on present views in terms of themes, representation, or circulation. We invite submissions of papers or video essays on the following topics:
Horror works directed and/or written by women.
Social and aesthetic representation of women in horror films and TV series.
Genre hybridity, horror & gender.
Horror subgenres (slasher, zombie films, etc.) and gender
Female stars & horror.Horror & the representation of LGBTQI+ subjectivities and bodies.
Horror, gender & class.
Distribution and consumption of Horror Films and its relationship with gender.
Connections between Spanish media and other industries with a special focus on Latin America.
Deadline for proposals: February 15, 2024. More here.
The Essay Library invites submissions for the collaborative project, “These Video Essays Do Not Exist | An April Fools' Day collaboration.” Learn more here ahead of the March 24, 2024 deadline.
The Jimmy Stewart Museum invites submissions for its Video Essay Showcase. No deadline is given, but works will screen at a virtual symposium in May 2024. Learn more here.
The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) calls for academic audio/visual work to be presented at IAMCR 2024, which will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, from 30 June to 4 July 2024. Learn more here before the February 7, 2024 deadline.
New Publications
Over at RogerEbert.com, a host of writers penned a wonderful tribute to Scout Tafoya, whose ongoing video essay series The Unloved celebrated its tenth anniversary. Read here.
Issue 12 of the journal Tecmerin includes a special section, “Urban Spaces and Cinema. Ibero-American Cities in the Audiovisual Field,” edited by Luis Deltell Escolar and Nadia McGowan. Essays include:
“Four individuals in São Paulo” by Luis Deltell Escolar
“A-Ten-Thousand-Legs Madrid” by Asier Gil Vázquez
“Dispossesssion Through Mortgage Debt in Three Acts” by Laura Caballero Rabanal
“Realism(s)” by Sylvia González Rodríguez
“The Mistery of Creating: Murcia under Carlos Saura’s gaze” by Daniel Toledo Saura
“Cities of Ibero-America as seen by Artificial Intelligence” by Nadia McGowan
Additional video essays published in the issue:
“Women on the Verge of Financial Crisis” by Tomer Nechushtan
“Rapuncelia” by Joseph M. Johnson
“Power and Gardens” by Nico Carpentier
“‘Do you really want to have children?’ Off-screen Motherhood in Spanish Dramedies” by Lorenzo Torres, Mariona Visa, and Mª Isabel Menéndez
Two videos published as part of the Student Showcase:
“Los tramposos” by Pablo Manzano Ben
“La virgen de diciembre” by Gabriela Verdú Bisbal, Anabel Cobo Vázquez, and Irene Igeño García
And four new additions to the Screen Stars Dictionary:
“Aishwarya Rai Bachchan” by Sureshkumar P. Sekar
“Leonard Bernstein” by Evelyn Kreutzer
“Robert De Niro” by Daniel O’Brien
“Shah Rukh Khan” by Ritika Kaushik
“Tony Leung” by Jialu Zhu
An exciting new special issue of [in]Transition, curated by Ariel Avissar, who writes:
This is the first of two special issues devoted to videographic pedagogy, highlighting student work. The current issue showcases and reflects on a selection of videos made by students of my own videographic criticism honors course at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University, between 2020 and 2022.
Be sure to watch the Essay Library Anthology’s sixth volume, “Becoming Someone Else.”
Back in October, over at Hyperallergic, Dan Schindel put together a list, “Five Video Essays That Go Beyond the Surface.”
The Autumn 2023 issue of NECSUS, which centers on the theme of “#Cycles,” includes five audiovisual essays:
Cycles of Labour: In the Metaverse, We Will Be Housewives by Veronika Hanáková, Martin Tremčinský, and Jiří Anger
Split Screen as Hermeneutic Tool: Recursivity and Crosstalk in Better Call Saul by Nicolás Medina and Miklós Kiss
Close Circuit by Tripot
I foresee that I’m going to have known it by Vorozheikin Yevhen
The Time-Loop as Game Mechanic, Narrative Device and Cycle of Systemic Racism by Daniel O’Brien
The latest issue of Open Screens, the journal of the British Association of Film, Television, & Screen Studies, includes two publications that will be of particular interest to readers of this newsletter:
“Tennis | House: Medical Imaging as Videographic Criticism” by Kevin Ferguson
“'Enter the Memory': Interactivity, Authorship, and the Empowered Spectator in the Digital Audio-Visual Essays of Chris Marker” by James Michael Slaymaker