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Friends Down Under: my video essay / short film MALE GAZING is playing at the ninth edition of the CAPRICORN FILM FESTIVAL in Yeppoon, Australia. This Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th January it is part of CAPS EXPERIMENTAL, a short form video art selection. More here: www.capricornfilmfestival.org

submitted 44 days ago • 1 comment

GETTY ABORTIONS explores Getty's stock image databases and finds that the photos used to illustrate abortion are very stereotypical. Franzis Kabisch uses her personal story to challenge the anonymity of those images. #favoritevideoessaysof2024 More here: www.filmscalpel.com/getty-aborti...

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

MAKEOVER MOVIE by Sue Ding compiles a long list of objections to the trope of the makeover montage and substantiates them with an impressive array of film excerpts. She also enlisted six childhood friends to give a running commentary on her video essay - a great idea. #favoritevideoessaysof2024

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

HEIMATFILM fashions excerpts from 50 different films into a hilarious supercut. Marion Kellmann deftly combines recurring situations and motifs, and boils the German genre down to its narrative, thematic and iconographic essence. #favoritevideoessaysof2024 More here: www.filmscalpel.com/heimatfilm/

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

MEANWHILE IN LOS SANTOS (DISSOCIATION NATION) is a mod for Grand Theft Auto V that shifts the focus to NPCs (non-player characters, the extras of the gaming world). Their interior monologues are a critique of GTA’s design. #favoritevideoessaysof2024 More here: www.filmscalpel.com/meanwhile-in...

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

LIGHT HANDS is an excellent example of how to revitalise archival footage in a video essay. Historian Lily Ford delves into the Imperial War Museum’s collection of footage of women building airplanes during WWI. She engages with it in a creative and speculative manner. #favoritevideoessaysof2024

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

THE RED GOD strings together footage of foxes recorded by a wildlife camera. Christine Rogers connects her videographic research to her Māori ancestry and her personal history, to decolonisation and the camera as imperial tool, to speciesism and the human/nonhuman divide. #favoritevideoessaysof2024

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

DE SONT OF MJOEZIK is a live performance by Maria Zandvliet that translates videographic strategies to the stage. It turns the video essay into a fully embodied form of research. The result is an exhilarating study of fandom. #favoritevideoessaysof2024 More here: www.filmscalpel.com/de-sont-of-m...

submitted 46 days ago • 1 comment

Here's a great way to start 2025. The Museum of the Moving Image in New York is devoting a screening series to the video essay. From January 3 to 5, they will present four different programs. My video essay THE APARTMENT is part of the second program (scheduled for Jan 4), called REMIXING NEW YORK.

submitted 61 days ago • 1 comment

On this day in 1986, Andrei Tarkovsky left us. He had spent only 54 years with us, but he sculpted that time into seven immortal feature films. Celebrate his legacy with this selection of ten video essays: filmscalpel.com/andrei-tarko...

submitted 63 days ago • 0 comments

Sight and Sound has published its annual poll of the year's most notable video essays. @queline.bsky.social , @willwebbful.bsky.social, and @cydniiwilde.bsky.social tallied a total of 183 videos. Better start now if you plan to watch them all before the year ends. Or skip Christmas dinner.

submitted 74 days ago • 1 comment

On this day in 1930, Jean-Luc Godard was born. He was both film icon and iconoclast, movie rebel and royalty. Defining this chameleonic French provocateur is hard, but these ten video essays give it a go, focusing on different aspects of his output: www.filmscalpel.com/godard

submitted 89 days ago • 1 comment

On November 29, 1954, Joel Coen was born. His brother Ethan would join him three years later. Celebrate their combined creative output with this selection of video essays. 🧵 (Big fan? There are even more on www.filmscalpel.com/coen-brothers/)

submitted 93 days ago • 1 comment

On November 28, 1961, Alfonso Cuarón was born. He has directed just eight feature films but often does double duty on his movies. He's won Academy awards as director, producer, editor and cinematographer. Here's a selection of half o dozen video essays to celebrate his birthday. 🧵📽️ #filmsky

submitted 94 days ago • 1 comment

If you want to contribute to the newest volume of the Screen Stars Dictionary, then here's your chance. Previous entries in this series of video essays can be found on the website of the Journal of Audiovisual Essays TECMERIN (see tinyurl.com/2f74a8ej).

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

On November 23, 1887, William Henry Pratt was born in London. He emigrated to Canada, then the US, where he pursued acting. In 1931 he rose to fame under his stage name Boris Karloff when he played Frankenstein's Creature. Celebrate his birthday with these Frankenstein-themed video essays. 🧵

submitted 99 days ago • 1 comment

Researcher and visual artist Roc Albalat traces the genealogy of modern AI visuals back to two 19th-century photography pioneers, Marey and Galton. His excellent video essay LATENCIES OF THE STATISTICAL IMAGE invites viewers to reflect on the ambitions and aspirations that underpin AI developments.

submitted 101 days ago • 0 comments

Dust and lint, scratches and splice marks: what if you started focusing on those imperfections of celluloid film instead of the actual image? Such UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS fascinate @sennahojottonib.bsky.social, and his hypnotic video essay does an excellent job conveying that fascination.

submitted 101 days ago • 0 comments

If you ever need to explain the concept of the uncanny, then this elegant video essay by @filmstudiesff.bsky.social and Lynda Nead is all you need. THE HAUNTED MIRROR illustrates Freud's definition of "Das Unheimliche" with shots from the 1945 anthology horror film Dead of Night.

submitted 101 days ago • 0 comments

The angry cadence of THE RHYTHMS OF RAGE is both catchy and cathartic. @barbarazecchi.bsky.social mixes dozens of film and tv clips of enraged women into a video essay that pulses powerfully.

submitted 101 days ago • 0 comments

The video essay isn't that young anymore... DUST is a Western supercut created in 2008 by Patrick Elliott. Patiently piecing together shots sourced from VHS tapes, he made a montage of Native Americans gathering for a "last ride." The cowboys and settlers are conspicuously and deliberately absent.

submitted 101 days ago • 0 comments

Filmmaking is as pragmatic as it is creative. The song that plays over the closing credits of The Cry of the Owl is a case in point. CHOOSING DEATH ROW SONGS, a video essay by John Gibbs, explains how rights issues complicated the audio post-production of the film, but enriched the end result.

submitted 102 days ago • 0 comments

TWISTIES! is a wondrous and inspirational example of embodied research. Using chroma keying and overlay effects, Alice Lenay inserts herself into footage of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games to explore how athletes' bodies are televised and how viewers develop empathy for this mediated image.

submitted 102 days ago • 0 comments

Since the 1950s, film and tv have presented a variety of quixotic computer interfaces. @sfanders.bsky.social's abundantly illustrated video essay ENVISIONING THE INTERFACE connects these portrayals to shifts in the relationship between humans and computers, and to real-world digital advancements.

submitted 103 days ago • 1 comment

There are a couple of powerful side-by-side compositions in this video essay, pitting Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket against films by Santiago Alvarez (79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Minh) and Hai Ninh (The Little Girl of Hanoi). Construing them as examples of the Kuleshov effect is a bit of a reach though.

submitted 103 days ago • 1 comment

SCREEN JOURNEYS THROUGH BIRMINGHAM: THE CITY, THE CAR AND THE CANAL is a great video essay on "carchitecture" and automobility. @jemsaunders1.bsky.social amassed an impressive array of examples that show how media representations chronicled, championed and critiqued the city's love affair with cars.

submitted 103 days ago • 0 comments

Indian cinema’s rising popularity around the globe is chronicled with clarity and in great detail in this video essay by Suryansu Guha. The unsung heroes of that global expansion? The humble subtitle writers. Their specialized work is the focal point of this study of Indian media industries.

submitted 105 days ago • 0 comments

After cancer surgery, film critic @adrianpmartin.bsky.social discovers an unexpected kinship with Cary Grant. In this video essay, made with the help of Cristina Álvarez López, he discusses Howard Hawks’ I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE... and his own nether regions.

submitted 105 days ago • 0 comments

Happy 82nd birthday to Martin Scorsese. What better way to celebrate a career of well over half a century than with some video essays? Here's over a dozen of them, analyzing his favorite themes and stylistic traits: filmscalpel.com/martin-scors...

submitted 105 days ago • 1 comment